Zherog's page

Allow me a moment to take off my FGG Developer hat and put back on my freelancer hat, and mention one of the final projects I wrapped before starting at FGG in December...

The Demoncall Pit is now available. A 7th-level adventure for Pathfinder, the Demoncall Pit uses Gaming Paper's Mega Dungeon 2 map pack as the foundation for romp through an old crypt with a portal to the Abyss. Players will need their wits to ensure their characters survive while figuring out how to close the portal.

The adventure already has a 5-star review out on RPGNow, from Megan Robertson.

The adventure can be played without the Mega Dungeon pack, but, really, who would want to do that?

So as promised in the "State of the Onion" thread, here's a place to chatter about Dunes of Desolation - the next in FGG's line of environment books, this time looking at deserts. The book is written by Tom Knauss. Currently, the book is about 98% or so done development, and the parts that are done are in layout. We're waiting on some small tweaks to the maps, and then it'll be a wrap from the development side.

I'll use the thread to keep everybody up to date on the progress, and maybe I'll sneak in some peeks as well. In the short term, here's the Table of Contents:

Table of Contents

• Introduction
  
• Chapter One: A Desert Primer
  
• Chapter Two: Desert Travel
  
• Chapter Three: Desert Hazards
  
• Chapter Four: Skills and Feats
  
• Chapter Five: Desert Equipment
  
• Chapter Six: New Monsters
  
• Chapter Seven: Spells
  
• Chapter Eight: Archetypes
  
• Chapter Nine: Faiths of the Desert
  
• Chapter Ten: Child's Play
  
• Chapter Eleven: King of Beasts
  
• Chapter Twelve: My Blue Oasis
  
• Appendix: Random Desert Events and Monster Encounter Tables
  

Chapters 10-12 are new desert-themed adventures.

It was asked in the other thread about whether it was "worthwhile" for a S&W player to pick up this book. As I said there, questions of "worth" are really up to each individual to decide. Hopefully between now and the release of the book, the discussion and sneak peeks excite the S&W crowd enough to make a lot of them say it is worthwhile.

More to come...

--John Ling
Lead Pathfinder Developer

I've always - even going back to 3.5 - assumed liches (and other intelligent undead such as vampires) gained the aging bonuses but didn't suffer the penalties. But then I went digging into the rules. And nothing about the undead type prevents aging - either bonuses or penalties.

So... does a lich gain bonuses and/or penalties from aging? I'm interested in opinions, certainly, but I'm especially interested in any rules quotes that would resolve the question.

Cheers!

Shortly after Christmas, I placed a fairly large order. It arrived yesterday. Or, rather, most of it arrived - one item was missing, even though it's listed on the invoice/packing slip. I e-mailed customer service about the issue. I would like to know what the expected turn-around time is on e-mails sent to the customer service account. (and hopefully I'm not being a pest by posting here less than 24 hours since sending the e-mail :) )

Thanks! :)

So I notice several changes to Power Attack. I think the change from BAB to Strength is interesting, and neither here nor there. Same with the fact that it now works with light weapons. However, the fact that Power Attack is now an "all or nothing" type effect raised me raise an eyebrow.

It seems to me that it sort of punishes the really high Strength character, in that now he can't Power Attack for a point or two just to get a little extra pop on his attacks. Instead, he has to go all-in, and take a rather large penalty to all his attack rolls.

This seems like it would be especially bad for a first level character with a high Strength.

Is there a reason for this change?

I'm looking to cancel my Pathfinder subscription, but I can't seem to find a way to do it. I found how to change the mailing address, and change the billing information, and change the way it ships. But I don't see a way to cancel.

Could somebody point me in the right direction?

So about three and a half years ago, my best friend (Amber Scott) gave me the crazy idea that I should send some of my homebrew stuff to Dragon. "They need articles," she said. "You have some interesting stuff," she said. "They pay money for it," she said. The last one sold me. So I sent an e-mail to Matt Sernett (the editor of Dragon at the time). Matt wanted to see some of the prestige classes I wrote, a bunch of spells I had, and some of the ideas I had for Class Acts.

The spells article got turned over to Wes. I was certain it was the awesomest article he had ever seen. Then I got the rejection. Wes very easily could've told me a simple, "No thanks." He didn't, though. He took the time to point out stuff - the good and bad. He improved my spell designing simply by being fair and honest. Thank you, Wes. While I never sent another Spellcraft query your way, I didn't forget the lessons you taught me.

The prestige class articles got rejected when the Gaining Prestige article was dropped. *shrug* It happens.

Another idea, another e-mail - this time to Jason Bulmahn. I had this crazy idea about creating "Initiate" feats for the core deities, as well as unique spells. (and we see where some of Wes's help paid off!) Jason catches a lot of flak (some of it from me) about how slow he is to respond to e-mails. But I'll say for the record: when I had an actual problem writing this article, Jason was quick to respond, and full of fantastic help and advice. He gave me more words with which to work, and helped me focus. So despite all the grief I gave you over the article (I can't tell you how many e-mails I sent asking if he was going to publish it), thank you, Jason.

I saved the Class Acts stuff for last. Of the twelve articles I've been lucky enough to have published in Dragon, 10 of them were in the Class Acts section. I had ideas, and I had the ability to write mechanics. But wow was my writing style really poor. I didn't even know what passive voice was back then, let alone how to go about fixing it. It would've been really easy for Mike McArtor to look at the sloppy writing style and just blow me off. But he didn't. Mike worked with me, and taught me a whole lot about the craft of writing. He always made my articles look good once they hit the pages of the magazine, and he was always willing to help me learn. Thank you, Mike. For your efforts to help me get better, and for the friendship we've developed.

I'm sharing all this publicly for two reasons.

First, everybody needs to know the amount of effort and love these guys put into every issue of the magazine. I have no doubts in my mind at all that whatever they touch in the future will be rock solid.

Second, I specifically want Erik and Lisa to know about the quality people they have working under them. And while I'm completely certain they already know that, it's always good to have it reinforced. They're not just good writers and editors; they're good people, and I feel special for having received the opportunity to get to know them over the past several years.

Cheers, fellas! I look forward to seeing whatever you produce in the future. I know it'll be top notch!

So my players are wandering through a forest as they travel between adventures. After reading the Ecology of the Ettercap, I decided they'd make a really cool "random" encounter. They're different, and the authors did a nice job making the ettercap seem like a fun encounter (kudos, gents).

So this morning, I popped open the SRD and looked up the Ettercap. And I noticed their "advancement" line only advances them by hit dice. I distinctly recall, though, the authors had an advanced critter in their article that included class levels. So is this one of those "designers can get away with bending some rules when it makes something cool" things, or is there an explicit rule somewhere that discusses this sort of thing?

I'm pretty anal retentive, and I like to follow the rules as much as possible. ;)

So how do some DMs out there deal with divination magic - especially at higher levels? Even 9th level characters can fiddle around with plots by using spells such as commune, commune with nature, and contact other plane.

Moving into the slightly higher levels, spells such as find the path and discern location have amazing plot-busting potential. Once you factor in non-core spells, it gets even worse. Mysteries are no longer quite so mysterious, and the characters will never misplace their car keys or have mis-matched socks ever again! :) (wow - that'd make a cool magic item in real life! Zherog's automatic car-key and missing sock finder! I'd be rich, I tell you! Rich! :D)

Do the folks around here who write the higher level adventures ever take divinations into account? It seems every time I come up with a plot for a high level adventure that's anything other than, "go here and kick some ass" I find my plot tumbling down once I consider the effects of divinations. Any advice?

So I finished reading Prince of Redhand last night. It's quite good - I think I'll be yanking it to use in my home game with some slight modifications. But Rhorsk makes no sense to me.

Specifically, I can't understand how a 9th level cleric has to resort to canabalism, and then starve after that. Why didn't he simply cast create food and water? I guess I'm not seeing why he'd opt to eat dead bodies instead of just casting a simple 3rd level spell once a day.

Forgot a point...

So for a project I'm working on, I need to actually develop an entire city. Not really a problem, because a lot of it just involves putting ideas onto paper - a large chunk of the city exists in my mind, and is used in my weekly game. But one thing I'm doing for the first with this city is defining stats. And for the life of me, I cannot find in the DMG the calculation for "assets" of a community. I've found population and gold piece limits and all those fun things, but no assets.

Can somebody give me a big circumstance bonus to my Search check and tell me where to find the formula for this? Thanks bunches in advance. :)

--John

Yep - it's definitely happening with this thread. If I'm in the Website Feedback forum I can't even see the thread. But if I go up to the main index of forums, I see the last post in Website Feedback was in this thread, though there's no timestamp.

Normally I'd just flip through a few issues of Dungeon and see if I could find an example, but I'm not at home at the moment.

When making a stat block for an NPC with levels in the Expert class, do you list the 10 skills selected as class skills anywhere? If so, where, and what should the format of the line be?

Thanks!

-- John

So over on the Dungeon board, there's a thread that started off asking about the status of submissions and queries, but has turned into a really good thread providing lots of cool feedback from the editors to the writers. This thread is going to start the same way, and maybe it'll evolve in a similar fashion. :)

I'm not too concerned about the submissions I have outstanding. I know from talking with Jason B. and Mike M. that everything I've submitted has been received; with the fear of things being lost in cyberspace gone, I'm willing to wait a little while longer while they evaluate my stuff.

Of bigger concern, though, is feature queries I've sent in - some going back as far as late May. Other queries were sent in late June and late August (right after GenCon, actually). Each mentioned the previous queries as a sort of follow-up. But I've yet to hear back on any of these, and so there's two fears:

1) The queries got lost in cyberspace
2) Ya'll are sitting around the office on Fridays, pointing at my queries, and laughing. :P

I pondered just sending an e-mail off to Jason to pester him once again. And while I'm sure Jason just sits around waiting to get e-mails from me, I thought maybe a thread similar to the one for Dungeon would work better. This way, other potential authors who are waiting have a resource, and the editors have a place to keep us up to date on any submission meetings, or any time consuming events (like GenCon) that will affect the schedule.

So I'll end this thread the same way Steve ended the Dungeon thread: I still love you guys. :D

-- John

So, Dungeon 127 has a Map of Mystery. Let me state right up front that this is absolutely nothing against Rob's map. In fact, the artwork of the map was quite interesting with the 3D perspecitve and all that. Very cool looking.

But I have to say... I just don't get it. People on this messsage board begged and pleaded for more map of mystery articles. I honestly could never recall seeing one during the time of my subscription - so I was happy to see one in 127. So, um... what's the big deal about this feature? It's a map. It's no better or worse than the other 8 maps in the magazine (counting page 24 and page 70 each as one map).

So, what's the big deal? Why are these so coveted? Frankly, I don't see the value. I'm hoping somebody could help me.

Last gaming session, my party entered The Styes. They quickly encountered Refrum, who I described as being afflicted with Redface. The party's Arcane Trickster stayed as far away as possible - afraid that she would catch whatever he had. Guess who was the only PC to fail their fort save? :) In addition, this same PC has received a prophecy about some form of betrayal happening in her future - though she hasn't figured that out yet.

So playing on those two components, I wrote the following dream for the Arcane Trickster. I'll be mailing it to her shortly before our game session (we play on-line) so she'll have little time to react to it. The session will start with everybody hearing her screaming. In addition, she'll wake up with scratch marks on her arms - though they won't impose any penalty. :)

Hope you enjoy it.

The building is old – really old. No doors or windows are visible, and the only light in the room comes from a single torch in a sconce on the wall. The torch flickers, sending shadows all around the decrepit building. In the shadows, creatures flitter and skulk; they seem unnatural somehow, but whenever you focus your attention, they disappear. Shelves are everywhere in this dilapidated building, covered in jars and bottles and tubes. Dust and cobwebs are thick on everything, and the air is oppressive, seemingly trying to strangle the life from you.

What you notice most, though, is the itching. The horrible, burning itching. You have to stop the itching before it drives you mad! You decide this is an apothecary, and begin opening jars and jugs – looking for anything to stop the itch. You rub all sorts of liquids and powders into your arms, face, neck – anywhere and anything to stop that itching.

Nothing helps, and you scratch at the itching. You dig into your skin, intent on ripping out the source of the itch. It doesn’t help, of course, and only serves to make the itch more concentrated, more painful. You dig your long, sharp fingernails into your arms and face. Rivulets of blood appear under your incessant clawing at your own flesh, but that itch won’t go away.

A man is behind the counter. You’re certain he wasn’t there a moment ago, but here he is now. He seems larger than life, though you can’t see his face. The shadows jump and swirl around him, intent on keeping his identity a secret. Somehow, though, his presence comforts you. He seems oddly familiar to you, but you can’t place his presence. He extends his hand towards you, and you notice that he’s holding a small urn. You remove the lid and inside the urn is a foul smelling, sickly green paste.

You hold the urn away from you trying to get the smell as far away as possible. But the itching – gods, the itching. It consumes you, intent on driving you insane. The man behind the counter looks at you through the shadows and nods, and stretches out his arm to push the urn back towards you. Hesitantly, you dip a finger into the goop inside the urn, and instantly the itching in that finger ceases. Relieved to have a solution, you dig into the urn, slathering the foul smelling cream over your arms, face, neck, legs – anywhere. As the cream rubs into your skin, the itching stops almost immediately.

The man behind the counter laughs; suddenly, his presence no longer comforts you – quite the opposite, it unnerves you. His laugh isn’t pleasant, and you get the feeling you’re the target of some joke. You look down at your hands and arms. The itching and burning is gone. All sensation is gone, you realize. You can do nothing but watch in horror as your skin slowly melts, sloughing off your body, exposing muscle and bone underneath. The man cackles madly, and you shake off your initial terror and scream.

Suddenly you’re awake, in your room in the inn.

Ever since writing this, I've decided that anybody who fails their save for Redface will have an odd dream. :evil grin:

I've seen a fair bit of talk about them. They seem like they could be interesting, both as a reader as well as a potential contributor. But as I sit here searching my memory, I can't remember ever seeing one since I subscribed a year ago.

The Writer's Guidelines say we should look to recent Critical Threat articles to see the proper format. Could somebody point me to an issue with one of these articles within the past year? I have some interesting NPCs in my campaign world that I wouldn't mind turning into submissions - but with the thin guidelines and no sample, I'm not sure how to go about it.

Thanks! :)

So this is killing me. How do some of you come up with estimates on word counts for your proposals? I sit here and fiddle around with my ideas, but I have no clue how to guess the length in words. My biggest fear with a proposal is I end up way over my estimate and have to cut out some cool stuff. My second biggest fear is that I'm way under and have to find ways to fluff up the adventure, weakening it overall.

Any tips, or do most of you just guess?

I received my copy of 333, and I've been reading through it. I've noticed a trend to use "blotchy" backgrounds on which to print words. It was the case for the demonomicon article, as well as the relics of Faerun article.

I certainly can't speak for anybody else - but I find these images detract a lot from the article. In fact, there were spots in both articles where I simply wasn't able to read the words that were printed over the images.

Does anybody else find these blotchy backgrounds for articles to be distracted, or worse yet - to make a section of the article unreadable?

So I've finally managed to pull two ideas together that I think might make for fun adventures to be published within the magazine. So, naturally, I re-read the submission guidelines again. And as I sit here, I find myself unsure just what a good query should look like.

I would absolutely love to see a good sample query - preferably one that is for an adventure that was recently published, but even a fake one would be helpful. Seeing the level of detail and the information included would be immensely helpful - at least to me.

If it can't be posted, I would be willing to swear a vow of eternal secrecy if one could be mailed to me. ;)

Thanks in advance!

So as to keep this thread on topic, I'm gonna bring part of the discussion here.

Basically, the question of whether or not it was OK to fudge dice (in particular as a DM) was OK. When? How often?

While it's something I generally dislike, I'll admit that I have indeed done it on ocassion in my games. As a general rule of thumb, I only do so when I severely overestimated what the PCs can handle, and tossed them a challenge that's really kicking their ass.

I don't cover up for dumb mistakes made by players. Medesha loves to tease me about the time I killed my wife's PC. She opted to stand from prone while next to a raging orc - knowing the orc could easily hit her and do enough damage in one hit to kill her. It would have been easy for me to say, "The orc swings his greatsword down at your head; you think you're doomed when suddenly your reflexes kick in, causing you to roll to the side just in time." That wouldn't have been fair, in my opinion, to the other players though - especially the ones that use wise tactics. My wife's character got raised - and some cool RP opportunities came from it. Her character is deathly afraid of being prone now; her character talks endlessly about how cool the afterlife is - she's a cleric of Olidammara. She regularly mentions how the wine on Oerth isn't nearly as good as that in the afterlife. "Compared to the sweet nectar of Olidammara's home, this wine is but vinegar."

I could also very easily fudge the dice when my players either come up with an awesome plan or just plan get lucky. But this isn't fair, either. I once had a PC manage to kill a "boss" in one round. The first round - well, two actually. He got surprise, then also acted first in the initiative order. I spent about 5 hours carefully statting the NPC, picking equipment, making his spell list, etc. It was really tempting to fudge things and add a few more hit points to his total - to give him a chance to fight on or escape or whatever. I didn't though. It wouldn't have been fair to the player. And even to this day (it's about three years later), I still hear this player tell the story of how, "In just one round, I killed an NPC that took John 5 hours to create. Man - you should have seen his face when I rolled back to back crits!"

Finally, there's comments such as this (apologies to Marc if it sounds as though I'm "picking" on him):

If you want to define a modified or disregarded die roll as cheating, then I'll be the first to tell you that I've cheated many times to prevent the party from getting killed off outright, to keep a colorful, dominant player character from being disintegrated and to keep the game moving forward in a productive, entertaining and thrill-enducing manner.

I have to ask - why bother rolling dice at all then? Why not - as DM - just resolve things as you want them to go all the time? I'm glad I didn't fudge those two examples above - even though doing so would have been easy and kept things on the "path" I had intended. Yet, in one case I got a PC who made the best of it and used the experience to create some cool quirks for her character; in the other, I have a player who gets to tell an awesome gaming story. I wouldn't trade either of those.

So let's see if I understand... Mike is playing a character with a Vow of Silence? And, he's actually *not* talking?

I never knew it was possible! :P

Hiya. :)

I've noticed that when I quote a long post from somebody, invariably I get the first few lines, followed by an elipse (a "..."), and then rest of the post is cut off.

The only thing I've found that can be used as a workaround for this is to open up a second browser so I can copy/paste from one window to another.

A) Is there something I'm doing wrong?
B) Assuming not, is there any way of turning this off?

Thanks!

John/Z