Whited Sepulcher's page

Me Mash! Me big barbarian! Me NEVER knocked out or dying in battle!!!

But me did get very sick in last adventure. Stupid stirges drained blood, and big bad guy curse Mash. Me end up missing 5 constitution points, 1 charisma point, and having bubonic plague.

When Mash look for healer, guards not let me in city!!! If Mash not sick, me woulda killed them!!! Mash not know what quarantine is, but Mash not like it. Only big word Mash like is decapitate. That good word. Decapitate. Mash like saying that. Mash like doing that. Decapitate. That only big word Mash like.

Mash glad friends find priestess. She nice. She leave city and heal Mash. Mash better now. Mash thank priestess. Priestess say Mash should thank Desna, but Mash not know who that is. Mash give priestess money for Desna.

Mash take vacation now. Venture Captain say Taldor nice this time of year. Also say something about mission, but Mash not listen. Just want free trip. Friends come too. Mash help beat stuff up, if friends ask.

i don't get why people see D&D or it's derivatives as medieval european.

you have medieval knights wearing rennaiscane era armor, wielding roman era falcatas, worshipping greek gods, traveling with native american shamans wearing the hides of saharan beasts, who transform into prehistoric dinosaurs who are accompanied by modern japanese schoolgirls wielding Tokugawa Era Daisho and Wearing black pajamas, and old men wearing robes and pointed hats who chant mathematical equations to control reality, on a journey to kill brain eating space aliens, giant sentient firebreathing spellcasting reptiles and sentient jello.

Okay, I don't hate gunslingers, but I would approve of the name change for one reason: Intimidate = "This is my BOOMSTICK!"

Doesn't the SAMURAI do this far, far better?

Seems if I wanna make a badass warrior who can REALLY take it to the face!, shrug off spells and be an all round badass, SAMURAI does this far better.

So,
Why the hell play an Unbreakable?

You might choose the Unbreakable over the Samurai, if you're one of those players who scream "GET YOUR DIRTY STUPID ANIME WUXIA POKEMON ASIAN CRAP OUT OF MY CAREFULLY RESEARCHED, HISTORICALLY ACCURATE MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN SIMULATION, COMPLETE WITH WIZARDS AND TALKING WOLVES!!!1!1!1!!11"

Or if you have to play under a GM who takes the same attitude.

And none of your group are capable of reskinning anything.

i curse Paizo under my breath every time i flip through those pages. had they said we're making a new world that has guns in it here is a class you can use, then i wouldnt care... but people walking around with guns, and guns that suck by comparison to other forms of attacks, just seems like paizo catered to people who wanted them because "its cool".

This attitude never ceases to disgust me. Heaven forbid a company whose job is to produce a game based around imagination and to do so for a niche market cater to their customer base who wants things in their game to be "cool."

Its posts like this that just continue to reinforce the stormwind falacy and give optimizers a bad name as "roll players."

One of the worst ideas I've seen spouted in the gaming community is that we must hold our games to some realistic ideal.

I say thee, nay. This is fantasy, and fantasy can be anything.

Ban things you don't like, not things that are historically inaccurate.

Keep in mind that neither Paizo nor Wizards of the Coast are likely to post in this thread any secret future plans, so everything posted in here is going to be pure speculation, based on pure speculation.

So when you feel like disagreeing with someone (and you probably will, I can tell it has the potential to be that kind of thread), keep in mind that it's just their opinion. They're no more privy to the truth than you are.

And when you post your awesome idea that Paizo absolutely must do or else we're going to go out of business, please have faith in Lisa, Erik and the rest of us that we got to this point because we're not stupid.

Check out Howard's Solomon Kane short stories. You'll get a better feel for the Inquisitor.

Pro Tip: One should open discussion topics on forums only when he/she wants a discussion, and never if what one wants is to find support for his/her position and go "NUH NUH NUH CAN'T HEAR YOU" on folks who think otherwise.

I guess it all depends on how casual/formal your game sessions are, 2 in my group text infrequently, i keep my phone in my pocket and on airplane mode so that there isn't any annoying beeps. I respond to texts when I am not otherwise engaged in other matters.

Bigger Problems:

People who wait until their initiative count to finally think about what their characters are going to do.

People who cannot for the life of them add d6 totals in a REASONABLE amount of time.

People who cannot stop talking about last night's game...I wear glasses and play Pen and Paper RPG's I care nothing for football.

Texting the girlfriend to reassure them that they are NOT starting to look like their mother is not disruptive and serves important long term purposes for the rest of the week when not gaming.

My girlfriend currently does not mind my disappearance every Sunday for Eight hours to play.

If I tell her that she cannot text or communicate with me, she might develop a problem.

In a perfect world, there would be none of life's interruptions.

In a perfect world, the kids would know where they left their homework, toys, etc....

In a perfect world, I wouldn't need to be reminded to take out the garbage after my session, I would just remember.

Besides, I generally choose to return texts in the 10 minutes it takes the rogue in our party to figure out what he's going to do....

I think opening a book only to find a soggy waffle covered with fish oil would be classed as the holiest of goblin miracles.

Goblins pray, and Goblins shout,

Goblins whine, and Goblins pout!
Should holy book come from up on high,
We pray for blockish print to buy!

Turn foulest writ to mushy goo!
Turn pages filled with sticky glue!
Lick the oil, taste the sea!
Then set on fire, fling it free!

Eat the letters! Munch the words!
Mangle nouns! Cut into thirds!
Like horse and Dog we'll chew them too!
Words are evil, cook them true!

Goblins dance with flaming fish!
Goblins love the sizzling dish!
That's the Goblins' edible text!
That's why Gods love Goblins best!

I think opening a book only to find a soggy waffle covered with fish oil would be classed as the holiest of goblin miracles.

Dear original poster:

This is not your game. You get to play it, but others get, too. They might like things you don't, and as long as they don't play in your party, you either have to learn to deal with this or stop playing.

Or, you can chug 10 litres of haterade and go on a hissy fit about people who share things they like but you don't, having badwrongfun in your city and now you must don your mask and cape and go on a crusade.

Of course, that will generally earn you mainly ridicule, but that's okay. You seem okay with that sort of thing. At least dishing it out.

Edit/Addendum: I hate getting personal, but you complain about people wanting to play powerful characters, maybe even powerful enough to go beyond the core power level, and when I open the profile, I "get" to read this:

"Was an Elf once. Now he's a lich. Malignor hates his old mortal self.

Malignor dwells in his Abyssal Core, experimenting on various creatures and turning them into vile things and unleashing them back upon the world. Enjoys challenging gods and mortals alike to many-layered games of manipulation, cruelty and deception, even if they win. Sadistic, malicious, curious and mischievous."

Yeah, the guys who jump from car to car with two big guns are bad. The guys who want to be undead super-elves who can trick the very gods are totally fine, though.

Currently there is a debate going on about why sword canes were added if they were not mechanically better than X.

There was a huge thread about the Monk vow of poverty, and how horrible it was.

To which I slam my head repeatedly into my desk.

Crazy thought here, maybe every build isn't an optimal build.

Maybe, and I know I'm going to get a little nuts here but stay with me, maybe some people think flavor is more important that power because maybe they actually play the game to create a story with the DM, and they want to play an interesting character in that story.

Maybe, and this could just be crazy talk, some people think that your huge eideolon with 15 attacks would probably not be allowed in most major cities, or your Svirfneblin or Dhampir may cause some interaction problems in well lit rooms.

Maybe some DM actually ask the question "What do these characters look like when they walk in a room, and how would people react to them"

Maybe a sword cane is less conspicuous and that has value. Maybe as a player you want the challenge of trying to build a monk character without significant gear.

Maybe some of us are less worried that the new splat book didn't give you the broken option you were hoping for so you could show all your friends how awesome your broken combo is in a made up world for a little while until the Devs realize a mistake and errata it.

Maybe...just maybe...some of us like having more options, while still allowing old options to have value and not be obsolete.

Crazy, I know...

pew pew

People get a lot of enjoyment out of romanticizing them but there's nothing remotely romantic about them in reality. They're evil bastards who ought to be staked out over anthills in the desert.

People also romanticise adventurers.

It's all about the plunder.

You've just described most Pathfinder Society characters. Your average adventurer will kill anything that gets in it's way. They are a raging racist who is more then happy to kill certain people simply because "everyone of that race is evil." They also steal anything that isn't nailed down and will often lie to law enforcement and flee the scene of a crime they committed.

Doesn't stop people from playing them though.

I'm just not a big fan of the "adventurer" as seen in 4th ed and a large majority of Pathfinder Society characters. I can play one and have fun with it. But I'm going to be honest and acknowledge their alignment is not good (at best it's neutral). I'm not going to be a hypocrit and loot an entire dungeon and then say "I'm lawful good." This is a big part of my dislike for the alignment system and paladins. The hypocricy can be overwhelming.

NOTE: This is in response to Wander Weir, but not directed at him. He and his players may all play lawful good characters. They may uphold the law (or even a predefined set of ethos that doesn't involve stealing everything they can from someone's grave). They may do good deeds with no expectation of reward. They may refuse to kill anyone until that person has been given a fair and impartial trial where they are judged by a body of peers.

But if they do play in such a high minded manner, they're certainly the exception to the rule in my experience.

It just turns into white noise that I subconsciously tune out after a few minutes.

Ah, married too I see. ;)

Uh, no. I'm just fine with skeletons and goblins in my low-level adventures rather than xyxivorts and snoovitzes, thanks.

What is the future of paizo? Golden!

But plussing oneself is lame. :P

I would say Paizo is trying to hit the same power level as already exist and trying very hard. But since no one is perfect means sometimes they are going to hit low and sometimes hit high. Do I think some of the newer abilities are weaker or stronger than core options? Yep sure do, but I think as a whole most are close to being on par which is fine by me.

The one thing I don't understand is why people buy stuff they know isn't balanced. Anyone of us could create unbalanced stuff while sitting in traffic waiting for the light to turn green. So, why spend cash on it? Do some people have cash that is just screaming to be spent?

All I wanted was a triple-chicken saber and all I got was this double-chicken saber. Thanks, Paizo!

If you drop an adamantine bullet, it punches through the earth's crust (ignores the hardness of stone) and lodges deep underground. You can recover adamantine bullets if you have a burrow speed and a lot of free time. Also, in the Darklands, caverns under bullet fighting grounds often have horrific bouts of adamantine bullet rain dropping down from above to wreak terrible havoc upon the poor defenseless drow and intellect devourers and cave Santas and all that.

If you have a control hedgehog in another cage that you're not casting color spray at it's Science!

Rage isn't limited to wild-eyed froth-mouthed berserkers these days. It's probably better to look at the various rage powers and ask - 'do any of these match stuff the character does?'. Strength Surge, for example, seems like a Conan sort of thing... Rolling Dodge, Guarded Stance... a great number of the rage powers are just the sorts of things Conan gets up to.

Oh, I'm sure you could make a barbarian version of Conan. I'm reading through the Del Rey collection again now (HIGHLY recommend) though, and he keeps striking me as a straight fighter. A straight fighter with high stats, especially intelligence (and the correspondingly high number of skill points). I mean, you'd need a lot of feats to cover the stuff he does in game.

Still, this is an argument that could go around and around forever. Howard obviously didn't write Conan with D&D in mind so trying to pin a character class on him would be as subjective as trying to figure out Batman's alignment (which could be totally different issue by issue depending on who is writing the comic at the moment).

Liz Courts wrote:

Zark wrote:

I want FEATS.

The feats table alone takes up nine pages in this book. Trust me, there are plenty of feats in this book. :D

You serious?

<The Monarch>DEADLY!</The Monarch>

You may want to consider the enter key once in a while. It'd make the whole thing a lot more readable.

Adding so people can vote (remember the idea is to post an idea so people can favorite it)

Worldwound

Arcanamirium Academy AP

PCs must have some manner of magic talent Bard, Cleric (of Magic), Wizard, Sorcerer), Summoner, Witch, Inquisitor (of Magic), Alchemist or Magus. Each book encompasses about 2 years of time at the academy as the characters progress from apprentice, journeyman, maven to an esteemed arcanscenti.

The PCs must tangle with the politics of the school, of Absalom itself and uncover a plot to topple lord Gyr of Gix and throw all of Absalom into chaos.

Actually I'd like to see something really experimental after the Pirate AP.

All Dwarves.

or all spellcasters in an Academy of Magic (There's a pretty wide range of classes that could be in that: Bards, Clerics of Magic, Wizard, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch, Inquisitors of Magic, Magus).

or an AP that starts the PCs off as Humans, Half-Orcs, Half-Elves and Halflings so that the first adventure can be the PCs as 0 level children who eventually grow up to defeat a great evil.

or a Crusader AP that focuses on Divine and Martial classes.

or a City Watch of Absalom campaign where PCs must be no further than one step from Lawful Neutral.

There are stories to be told that don't necessarily work as well with the crazy mix of classes and races that your typical adventuring group provides.

Interplanetary Portal Adventure Path

Kaer Maga mega-dungeon.

Columbuslike Journey to Arcadia

Linnorm Kings Viking Adventure

For anyone who needs a realistic castle for their next adventure, or just appreciates castle design in general, I stumbled on a great site.

If you're interested, check out this link and scroll down to the part that says "here are the contestants." A few of them are so-so, but others are just incredible. I really liked Anonkrankie Castle, Blaumannbourg Castle, Cragshaw Castle, FitzFirbolg Castle, Lumpkin Castle, Optipal House, Thornhaven Castle, and Tregarnet Hall.

Do we really need this to be about 4e?

Even if, in some way, the MMO-like aspects of 4e are on-topic... this is the thread of inclusion.

People should be every bit as open-minded about 4e as they are about MMO terminology.

Let's grow up a bit, and stop deriding games because of an imagined opposition to the product we chose to buy. That opposition is in your head, children! Paizo and DnD are friends.

Can't we be friendly community instead of reverting to tribal warfare at every imagined slight?

Pretty much every time we talked about it, one of the other 20 people in the raid would stop and ask "Hey, what're you guys talking about? What is this?" and when I told them D&D, they'd say, "D&D? But isn't that for nerds?"

The correct response is, "You're up late at night in front of a computer killing internet dragons with your magical elf. You'll fit right in."

I'm not sure it is fair to assign to the entire rules board and the it's users the views of a single individual and as a result deny the those users, your point of view.

James gives advice about how he personally runs the game. I think it's pretty cool of him to take the time to do that and really appreciate it.

Unfortunately way too often instead of just taking that advice for what it is people choose to dog him to turn his comments into some sort of official "Paizo Blessed" call on the rules or to go chase Jason or Sean down in the hallways to get some official blessing or explanation on every little issue. Other times they glomp on his answers and want to argue minutia about his replies or tell him his choices are sub-optimal at which point he winds up in a frustrating debate about rules or the nature of the game.

None of this is fun and none of it is part of James' job so he has no incentive to be here.

RavingDork isn't the only one who does this but he is one of the loudest voices in the choir.

Rules do not want anything. They can't. Rules do not have a mind, desire, or will.

I think part of the reason this comes across as rude is that you're confusing result and intent. When you don't get the result you expect you assume that there is no intent to get it.

The folks at Paizo may WANT there to be a large variety of builds including mobility builds. What they think is that the builds work well enough to be played.

What you see is that these builds are not optimal enough to be viable at your tables. Paizo may plan for easy going monsters that attack attack attack and attack and may not be considering your games of precisely calibrated death traps, devious dm's and deadly encounters where its optimize or die. Paizo offers a smart car, but you drive on the autobahn.

I can't share the opinion that monks are too bad. Might be connected to the fact that I reduced my GM to tears with my monk character on a regular basis ;-D

The problem is that a book largely intended for PC use ended up getting large amounts of NPC stuff. Putting a large amount of rules like this in a book that is suppose to be intended for PC use, is like having going to a Chinese buffet, but all the food is reserved for the cook making it.

Actually, UM is intended for anyone who uses magic in Pathfinder, whether player or GM. It's not "intended" to be exclusively, or even mostly, for PCs.

See, if I was going to play a game with little to no adventuring in it that was based entirely on espionage and politics and that sort of thing, I wouldn't play D&D. I'd play a game built for espionage and politics.

And that's your game. Fortunately, there's a lot of PF players who aren't playing in your game.

I'm kind of ambivalent to Pirates. They never appealed to me as something that I'd want to play in an RPG. Continuous seafaring adventures wasn't something that I was into, my only exposure to these types of things were Flynn's Captain Blood and Disney's Treasure Island.

I grew up in the 80's so between Sho Kosugi's movies, Shogun Assassin (aka Lone Wolf And Cub) and Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Golden Harvest and Shaw Brothers movies I had a healthy exposure to Asian action film. I was also just getting into actual anime (not Robotech, but Gundam, Heavy Metal L-Gaim, Aura Battler Dunbine and Giant Gorg) as well and liked the backstories of the characters and the sometimes complex moral conflicts in those stories that I found lacking in Western Animation.

The first time I saw Bruce Lee was probably in Fists Of Fury, but the movie that I saw after that was Way of the Dragon. His consistent dismantling of Chuck Norris at the end of that movie flicked a switch in my head. "Holy Crap. Someone OTHER than the white guy can be the hero and badass! And the white guy CAN get his butt kicked!" I dont know about anywhere else in America but in my neighborhood, we loved Ninja, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan not only because they were cool but because they weren't the same old corny old soldiers or cops or cowboys that we'd been watching prior. You didn't have to be white to be cool or kick ass. Granted I still loved Steve McQueen and all of my other white heroes but now I had other options. I never considered, even as a kid, Blaxploitation to be serious (well maybe Shaft...) it was just buffoonery to me.

So I grew up accepting Ninja and Samurai right alongside the fantasy tropes of movies like Hawk the Slayer, Dragonslayer (Why dont more people appreciate this movie? I know it came out the same summer as Raiders and got overwhelmed by it but it's a REALLY good movie!) and John Boorman's Excalibur. In my head ninja and Samurai stuff were happening in another part of the world around the same time as Western Feudalism. I've run into people who dont want to mix asian stuff into their western fantasy games and I just kind of stare at them incredulously.

"So wait...Dragons and Elves are fine, but Ninja and Samurai and Wu Jen are what not realistic? All of those stories and movies about the white guy visiting another culture and learning their ways and then being accepted by that culture are fine? But God forbid the other way around? Huh."

You've got to see these things from my point of view because I was enamored of the western fantasy tropes especially from films, but there were NEVER anyone who looked like me in them. And I was fine with that, for a while anyway. But as far as RPG's went, all of that exclusionary BS was going out of the window if I was running or playing. A white washed world was never something that I was interested in being part of. The same would hold true if someone told me we were going to be playing in an African setting with no Western Fantasy aspects. Or an Asian setting that was to be completely homogenous.

Which brings me to the Horror games. I played CoC exactly once when I was about 17-18 years old at a con and will probably never play it again. I'm not partial to HP Lovecraft and the closest I've ever gotten to his works is my love for Stuart Gordon's film, Re-Animator and From Beyond. I've been told that his work is fairly racist and so I wont be bothered with it.

It's another reason, strange as it may sound that I don't play in games that take place before or after the Civil War in America, like Westerns. I'd want to at least play a character that resembles me and to do that would have to introduce a whole new bag of worms that I know that I wouldn't be comfortable dealing with especially with white players at the table. I'm not saying that all white people are racist asshats. What I am saying is that I never know who might be a racist asshat and who might not be, so better not to put myself in a position to find out at a gaming table where I'm trying to have fun.

So in short, Maybe to Pirates. YES to Ninja. NO to straight horror RPG's but yes to horror aspects in them.

*eh* Crit happens.

Don't worry about. Let the PC have his glorious victory and move on. As for the heavily tweaked bad guy, keep him and use him for something else. It's not like the PCs knew the full extent of his powers, so they won't know the difference. Also if he died in one shot you are either at a fairly low level, or he wasn't "tweaked out." BBEGs should be able to take a scythe critical especially if magically prepared.

On another note I remember a time playing Rolemaster a demon from beyond the pale showed up that we were supposed to run from, but I (decidedly the weakest character in the party) took a pot shot and killed it. If you are familiar with Rolemaster that was an open end on the hit and a double open end on the superlarge creature critical. Totally changed the course of the adventure.

Sorry for reminiscing, but it goes to show that events like this in game are great and memorable. Don't look for ways to take them away.

This thread is unnecessary at this point. Pathfinder is what it is. We're not going to revise it or release a new edition anytime soon. If somebody thinks they can make a more balanced game, there's the PRD. It's OGL. Go for it.

Pathfinder is bad at game balance for a simple reason: that wasn't one of Paizo's design goals when they created the system.

Umm see below in the intro for the corebook..you will see the words balanced and fun to play written by Mr Bulman...

"When design of this game first
began, compatibility with existing products was one of my
primary goals, but I also wanted to make sure that all of the
classes, races, and other elements were balanced and fun to
play."

Nuff said

I hear Rock, Paper, Scissors is well balanced. But I read on a blog somewhere Scissors is getting a splat book soon that might mess that up.

RPS™ hasn't been the same since the 2e of the game introduced lizard & Spock as player options. How are three inanimate objects or a lizard supposed to compete with a highly intelligent vulcan? I'm sticking with RPS™ 1e myself.

I hear Rock, Paper, Scissors is well balanced. But I read on a blog somewhere Scissors is getting a splat book soon that might mess that up.