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Hi,

I placed this order ages ago and it shipped on the 4th of August. It hasn't arrived and when I followed up the tracking and went to the UPS site, it says it's estimating a delivery on August 9th which was a while back now.


If the PCs encounter a door, can they attempt to break it (strength check) whilst taking 20? They're not in combat and can take a few minutes.

I'm aware they can benefit from aid another as well on this, but can they also gain the benefit of aid another while attempting to break the door down? I remember reading on the aid another section in the core rulebook that you can't take 10 on aid another, but I don't know if you can aid another whilst HE'S taking 10 or 20.


I'm running an adventure in a few days and I had a nagging thought. What if the players fail the checks in the adventure? It's an investigation and if they fail checks due to unlucky rolls, the story would end up going nowhere (it's the first adventure in gallows of madness). Any thoughts on how to redirect them?


Can you aid another in:

Diplomacy checks
Perception check to taste a potion to find out what it does
Spellcraft check to know what a magic item does
Knowledge check to impress an NPC
Appraise an item
Heal checks to help someone other than yourself and the healer
Strength checks to break things

Also, which of these would allow more than one person to aid another?


Is a quasit's cause fear ability per single target or crowd? Because in one adventure module it says a quasit uses its cause fear ability and then tangles with whoever's still standing.


If character A starts to move away or use a maneuver without the appropriate feat, and character B makes an AoO but the AoO is a maneuver without the appropriate feat (like trip), does character A get an AoO against character B for that?

Also can you use a splash weapon for your AoO? What about if the enemy is in melee distance? If he smacks the foe with an acid flask (if he has to, to get to use the item) as an improvised weapon, could he apply the damage that way?

Also, if a wizard is TRIPPED while casting, how does that affect the concentration check? As there is no damage, does the DC simply become 10 + 0 (trip) + level of spell?


Okay, so here's the thing:

I'm going to hopefully be running gallows of madness tomorrow for my players BUT...one of the players just professed a desire to run an inquisitor who's all about the bluff/intimidate. He's passionate about it and I'm expecting a very antagonistic/hard-headed/zealous character in an adventure that has most social encounters using either diplomacy or knowledge checks, and one offering a strength check possibility and one with an intelligence check possibility. I literally only saw one encounter where bluff or intimidate would do the trick.

I'm a newbie DM running an adventure module, should I be trying to accommodate or just have the NPCs crack down on someone trying to intimidate or bluff them? A successful bluff check against one specific NPC would end up sending them straight to the required location and bypass a whole host of social encounters and two combat encounters, effectively cutting maybe a quarter or half of the whole adventure. Take away the large portion of those social encounters and the adventure minimizes real fast. Gallows of madness has two follow up adventures but I am not prepped for them (haven't read them at all, and I'm a slow reader).

Should I recommend that he 'slow down' and put an eye to diplomacy and knowledge checks or have NPCs crack down on him or....is there some way to work with/around this?


How would one go about dealing with a swarm? I rarely DM and will be DMing gallows of madness tomorrow and there will a few swarms. I know splash weapons are extremely useful but the touch AC of a spider swarm is 17. Throwing a splash weapon at a grid intersection would only deal splash damage to the surrounding squares (which if I'm correct, is only 1 point of damage). Are there other methods aside from splash weapons in case the players finish out their splash weapons?

If a swarm envelopes a character, would throwing a splash damage weapon on yourself also affect the swarm?

In gallows of madness, there are also wands, scrolls and potions. How would 1st level players (without access to special scrolls or wands) identify what each of these does?


So...the demon bile....if it's ingested, I see how to treat it, but does it do anything if merely touched?

For the traps in the first adventure, should I prompt a perception check or should I let them choose to search? Some of these locations are so innocuous it's unlikely the players would choose to search themselves (though then again it would keep them on their toes if they weren't prompted).

Also when the fight against Gellion is over, it says 'IF the apprentices are still alive'. Is this up to DM fiat or is there something that is calculated/rolled over the duration of the fight?


So in the rulebook under the cover section, there's a picture of an ogre and adjacent to him, around a corner is Merisiel. So the ogre has reach and thus Merisiel is not supposed to have cover from him, right? Except no matter which corner of the ogre's space you use to draw a line for determining cover, one of the lines will always go through the wall next to Merisiel. If you use the top right square's top right corner, one line will run over the wall itself, the top left square's top left corner will also have a line that runs over the wall.

I'm confused here, how does Merisiel not have cover from the ogre?

Also, if Merisiel wanted to fire at Valeros (let's say the ogre wasn't there), would she be able to fire around the corner at him (from her current position) or does it provide any form of cover?


I'll be most likely running the gallows of madness module for my players this Thursday and will be the first time I use a module. How do you guys recreate some of these maps? They're very detailed and while we do have access to a relatively big chessex map, they maps are also kind of on the big side regardless....POSSIBLY bigger than our chessex map (though not sure, our chessex map is thankfully pretty big). The module in particular has one place with two floors, how would one go about preparing for THAT?


Oh God.

Not looking to start a thread for flaming and all...even if it ultimately comes to it.

It's just....I mean....

Advantage? Disadvantage? Excuse me?

I don't want to start an editions war in this thread or anything but....

I mean look, I can see the benefits of 5e, heck, sometimes it just springs out at you, right? I mean it simplifies everything so that if you're in an advantageous position, you don't need to worry about knowing rules like +AC or -attack roll by a specific amount, +attack roll to those guys and such, you can just simplify it to 'you have advantage, he has disadvantage'.

But....I mean....are you saying maximizing my potential to hit the target is impossible....? So if I follow the target in the dead of night, while there's a parade, with maximized stealth, hiding behind the things sticking out of people's roofs....I'm looking at advantage and ultimately a very low stealth bonus due to no feats able to raise specific skills up even higher, and an enemy whose ability to perceive my character is at worst hindered by disadvantage, no reduction in perception due to a dark night, distance, objects and the massive distraction of a parade going full party mode all around him. 5e is heavily reliant on the luck of the dice as well, pathfinder also relies on the luck of the dice but you can actually build your character, actually work on making him less reliant on lucky rolls, actually working on minimizing away the need for good rolls.

All the possible DMs in the group only want to DM 5e, citing how complex pathfinder is. Pathfinder eases you into the complexity as you level up, it doesn't drop it all on you at once. Heck, it's not even complex, it's a robust system that's not reliant on little things that if they go wrong, junks the entire system. THAT'S why you can have so many archetypes for the classes, the classes in 5e have to be finely tailored because the base system is so fragile.

For a one-shot 5e is great, but spend just a little more time on it and you start finding yourself frustrated with how empty the whole system is. This bounded accuracy thing they've created, along with the advantage/disadvantage system are the primary weaknesses of the system. The other problem they created, that originated back in 4e, was the lack of number of attacks and enemies that have either more health than they need or a normal amount of health but last longer because you can only make one attack (for most classes).

3e started out with a great system that got solidified in 3.5 and made powerful in pathfinder.

I'm really tempted to run these guys through a pathfinder one shot, I'm sure they'd be open to it as long as they don't have to DM it. I don't suppose you guys have any free 1st level adventures you can recommend?

Reading through the 5e spell list was so depressing....I've never seen a system ruin itself so badly.


So I'm buying PC parts individually to try and build a good gaming rig, right? But I don't know which parts I should get from the UK, and which the US.

For the most part, I'm getting the pieces from the US, but as the electricity in my country is akin to that in the UK, I don't know which parts MUST be bought from there instead of the states.

Here's the parts list:

http://techbuyersguru.com/supreme-dream-machine-pc-build

I'd be grateful for any help, thanks.

(My buddy tells me I ought to wait for a few months as better parts are coming out, but I think that's true every month)


Hi, could you please cancel all my subs? I have boxes of materials I haven't even opened and I'm not sure I'll ever get to them, same applies to any further subscription material to be honest.


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Here's why I found the Asari race to be a secretly forbidding species:

Asari only give birth to Asari right? And that's ever, right? So while same gender relationships between humans don't result in humans, same gender relationships between Asari do, AND.....this has got to be the most evil social engineering experiment I've ever seen:

They (the leaders of their society) convinced Asari that purebreeding is something bad, that they should breed with other races. What does this result in? Less of the other races and more of the Asari. Here's where it continues to get twisted:

While same gender relationships between humans don't result in more humans, women (the only gender able to give birth) can have same gender relationships (let's be honest, Asari are an all female race) with Asari and while the human woman wouldn't get pregnant, the Asari would.

How does this continue to get more twisted? The average Asari (the majority of the population here) aren't doing this out of maliciousness, they're doing it because their leaders have socially engineered their culture to this place. You CAN'T do something about this without being the bad guy. However, WHILE BEING THE GOOD GUY, your species is going extinct. Several thousand years down the line, while you're saying 'Those awful specists are thankfully a thing of the past', you've become a member of the last generation of humankind and the Salarians have failed to create ANOTHER genome project because Salarian-Asari are intelligent enough to stop this from happening (and guess what, the only Salarians who will be called the good guys will be the ones who wisely sided with the Asari).

So yeah, Asari? A disaster waiting to happen.


There was a hoax a while back about a Russian drilling thing in Siberia where they heard sounds from hell, and the movie I'm looking for was about that. I only remember the most minor of moments from the trailer, can someone please tell me the name of it?

From the trailer I got the impression there weren't so much monsters as there were ghosts and people either hearing or seeing them. I really couldn't tell you much more.


All the zombies movies now (did I say all? I meant LITERALLY all) have zombies that eat flesh or brains, I mean what, you can't have a zombie movie that also has wraiths in it? Walking skeletons? Ghosts?

And don't give me the whole 'it's a virus, you can't animate a skeleton or make a ghost/wraith with a virus', we're talking about the living dead, this is pseudoscience territory. Pop something new on us for a change, even Romero experimented with land of the dead by having zombies begin to learn how to use tools (he even experimented with one movie where a zombie was somewhat restored its sentience).

Undead movies (as in if it features werewolves it doesn't fall under undead) are now:
1. Vampire only
2. Ghost only
3. Zombie only
4. All or two of the above

I remember I found the mummy to be entertaining because it was different (in the first movie he wasn't some mummified corpse walking around, he took on a human form and had some magic to him).

Some newer zombie movies have them with some degree of sentience but it's still just zombies. Even video games explore a wider range. If I'm correct L4D has several types, Jericho was all about the undeadie goodness and others such.

To my knowledge I can only think of two places where several variations were touched on:
1. Evil dead (and they weren't really undead, they were demonically possessed)
2. The TV show angel (and most of its foes were demons)
3. Lord of the rings with its nazgul (I think even in the hobbit elrond, gandalf and the other two fight off some different forms of undead creatures).

If you get rid of the whole 'zombie bit you, now you'll become one' mentality, inserting creatures like wraiths becomes easier (and yes, I want to see wraiths) because wading into combat with zombies becomes easier.


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I was reading an interview with Patrick Rothfuss when he mentioned that one of his favorite novels was the last unicorn. Growing up, I WATCHED the animated movie and never knew it was based on a book. I'm reading the book now and it's awesome, and it encouraged me to look up the last unicorn movie again (in case you're interested, I'll be discussing secret of nimh, flight of dragons, last unicorn and possibly even the nutcracker prince cartoons).

I haven't gone back to watching it because I've forgotten many segments (except for the Mommy Fortuna section, I'm never forgetting that one, or the ending with the red bull and Haggard) and I want to finish reading the novel first before watching it again.

One of the first things I noticed (just quickly skipping through it) is how beautiful the artwork is. Disney had always had a certain style they refused to deviate from and could never match the beauty of the last unicorn movie or the secret of NIMH movie, nor did their movies usually have storylines that were half as good (I also hope the sentence is clear enough that you understand that yes, I know last unicorn isn't a disney movie). The unicorn in both its unicorn form and human one are just beautiful, Haggard looks absolutely malicious and Mommy Fortuna and the harpy both vie for most terrifying, and Rukh also looks like a real thug. Even though I didn't want to rewatch the movie until I'd finished the book, I HAD to see the section with the skeleton going 'Haggard, Haggard! Unicorn! UNICORN!, and it's just as awesome when I first watched it as a kid. I can't remember the last time I saw artwork in an animated movie that was as beautiful as the last unicorn. There's none of that annoying singing, no annoying comedy character, and romance isn't one of the most important plot points (hell, romance BARELY figures in towards the last half of the movie).

Now voice acting....this one's gonna be a REAL breakdown:

The unicorn had the softest and most beautiful voice I'd heard since Ms. Brisby (whom I'll come back to later). Even though I haven't watched the movie in years, I'd never forgotten that voice. It's a crime that Mia Farrow isn't voicing more characters in animated movies. Those two annoying childish witches from frozen have HORRIBLE voices, it's so blase I wouldn't remember them the next day. The female characters in how to train your dragon, ice age, kung fu panda (why am I picking on female characters? Because I'm comparing them to a female character in the last unicorn, I'll get to the male characters in a bit), madagascar and oh my God why are each of these movies like 50% comedy?! Their voices are horrible, but then again so are the characters themselves. Mia Farrow's voice brought LIFE to the fairy tale. Then you've got Ms. Brisby voiced by Elizabeth Hartman, it lacked the beauty of Mia Farrow's voice, but it had the power of a loving mother's touch. Either one of these voice actresses would put the entire VA cast of those movies to shame.

Now, on the male side of it:

The red wizard (ohm? or was that the blue wizard?) from flight of dragons was just an absolute beast, you can't get that kind of evil in voice acting again. It was inhuman, it was ancient, it was commanding. Oh God...I just remembered....the knight from flight of dragons, 'Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die, serve right and justice one last time, seek one last heart of evil, still one last life of pain, cut well old friend, and then farewell ', I couldn't remember this quote exactly but I always considered this guy to be THE image of a paladin (even though he wouldn't technically be of the paladin class). His voice resonated with the nobility you'd expect of a knight, and even when he was being jovial he still sounded regal. Even the green wizard sounded like an old wise man. Today though we have the clown from how to train your dragon, the mammoth from ice age (or the sabertooth, pick your poison), that annoying panda and oh my God why are these all designed to be humorous?! The ONLY villain I thought was well designed in every way, in EVERY way, was the kung fu panda villain in the first movie (and they had to mess that up with how he was defeated.....skidoosh pretty much describes the sound that movie made flushing itself down the toilet). When Haggard (last unicorn) grabs the unicorn in human form and demands 'why can't I see myself/my reflection in your eyes'.....that voice was just commanding. Schmendrick's voice could reveal a buffoon (though in a way that you would be dismissive of him having any capability, not in a self deprecating way) or it could reveal someone who was wiser than he let on, you never th0ought this guy was a clown. (Secret of NIMH, I know I'm switching through animated cartoons like I'm having a seizure but bear with me) The owl in that movie.....his presentation alone was powerful, then you had his voice, this deep, booming voice. The contenders to all these people? Let's see, on our roster we have the male characters from ice age, male characters from frozen (all of them in a bundle), the buffoons in how to train your dragon and cloudy with a chance of meatforbrains....this is sad....just sad. Gone are such voice actors as the guys who voiced the villainous rat and Nicodemus in secret of nimh, gone are the noble hero's voices like the mouse from secret of nimh and the guy who voiced robin hood in the old anthropomorphized cartoon (that's ONE movie in disney's favor), and gone too are voices like the terrified rabbit recounting the bleeding he imagines coming from the nearby forest (watership down, ANOTHER movie in Disney's favor....and admittedly extremely disturbing). Instead, what movies do we have to look forward to? Incredibles 2, frozen 2 and I don't...even...want...to know, I'm depressed enough.

Then there's the stories: I won't go into depth on this but suffice it to say that movies like secret of nimh, the last unicorn and flight of dragons respected their audience enough not to treat them like children even though they WERE children. The stories had their share of darkness and scary villains, and there were times they showed us the villain die like in flight of dragons and secret of nimh.

One of the primary points I wanted to rant about was the disappearance of beautiful voice actresses like Mia Farrow (MIA indeed) and Elizabeth Hartman, but thought there's still a bit more I want to rant about so what the heck.


I was curious, now in Golarion and several fantasy realms the inhabitants know the gods exist but there are still evil folk (there are even those that hope to die and become demons to their chosen patron like drow in forgotten realms), right? So what if you took your average bandit (the guy who kills the people he robs and such) and you showed him a vision of the abyss, or even TOOK him there temporarily, and then he changes his ways. He doesn't do so out of a desire to help people or do good, it's because he was traumatized by what he saw and still has nightmares about it, so he even does good things because he's eager to please a patron to keep him out of the abyss.

Does his alignment still show him as evil? Where does he go after death in THIS case?

In this scenario I'm envisioning, the character harbors no love for the people he helps and (if he didn't know what awaited him) would gripe and moan about doing all these 'annoying' things like help people.

I ask because I was trying to imagine if it was possible to change the smarter of the irredeemably evil races (minus demon and devil worshippers) by frightening them out of their evil. After seeing the abyss, even if you want to be evil, supposing your orc mate just took an arrow through the heart and you very nearly joined him, you'd know where you would have very nearly ended up and I would imagine it would drive some changes.


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I'm doing some research for a pet project of mine and was curious to gather notes on common problems with DMs and players. So far I got:

Player side
1. Flaky players who either arrive late, not at all or have to leave mid session, yet still wants to continue in campaign.
2. Guy incessantly fooling around with his phone and getting distracted.
3. Metagaming.
4. Quoting everything....ironically not the holy grail though.
5. Murder hobo-ing.
6. Acting out of character.
7. When it's their turn, they don't know what they want to do and end up delaying.
8. Pauses session to argue with DM on what constitutes evil, rules and other such.

DM side:
1. Railroading
2. Meat grinder of PCs
3. Doesn't want to pull punches (not necessarily a bad thing, I personally prefer not to)
4. Rules lawyering (can also appear on player side)
5. DM NPCs


If a guy was writing a story involving named products like dungeons and dragons, could that cause issue (cause....you know...MAZES and MONSTERS instead of calling it DnD)? Could a character call out the system he plans on using in dialogue or is using the name going to be a problem? For instance a character asks the DM (another term I'm curious if I could use) what system they're going to play and then names a few.

What about using the names of spells and creatures from the manuals? (This wouldn't be a novel set in a fantasy world, it would revolve around actual gamers)

Any input from legal staff at paizo would also be greatly appreciated.


Hi, could you guys please cancel my pathfinder: adventure card game subscription?

Thanks


Been reading some ciaphas cain stories (did not get a hold of the first novel, but I did get two short stories), and DAMN is it amusing.

There's a hilarious scene where he 'charges' the enemy (he's actually running for cover and swinging his chainsword in a mad frenzy) and his howls of terror are being mistaken for battle cries by the rest of the infantry.

Heheh, there's a funny scene where someone tells him that he's the 'greatest man I've ever met' and Ciaphas thinks to himself 'and you're a terrible judge of character'.

Given the world of warhammer(craft :P), these novels are really funny because while everyone else takes themselves seriously, Ciaphas feels like he's ripped straight out of a reality check. The stuff he fights? Tyranids and other horrors? He's realistically frightened whereas the other marines are exactly as you'd expect from an action/serious novel.

It's been a while since I've read 1st person, but the writer is truly talented.


Hi, I ordered two of the Sihedron medallions but the order is still pending, is the item currently out of stock?


Hi, I haven't gotten into any sessions in over a year and am finding myself overloaded with minis.

Could you guys please cancel my pathfinder miniatures subscription?


I wanted to ask, when you read a novel and you come across something that doesn't sit right with you, like how a government is handling itself or laws in the land, or how certain officials somehow have more time on their hands than their jobs would indicate, or how peace between two nations can be easily achieved whilst not making mention of things like how trade would be impacted or how in real life it's more complicated than that and such, do you let it be an issue or just go with it? For example when reading about an isolated tribe, do you ask yourself how they have use of steel tools when the author makes them out to be more like stone age folk? What about asking how their homes are wooden shacks/cabins/cottages when they wouldn't actually have the tools to make such?

I've been thinking about writing a novel but there are some things I intended that I know are impossibilities when you actually sit to think about it. What's more, some of these may be brought up such as one character actually helping to build one of those houses when, again, you think about it and realize those necessary tools shouldn't even be there. The folks live more like barbarians/native indian tribes and have no access to outside cultures, nor do they have any sort of mines yet their housing is wooden, made of planks (even though I'd probably just mention wooden homes/cottages without ever bringing up the word 'planks'). They don't even keep livestock or farm, they just hunt and live off the land (their tribe is small and never grows that high due to a genetic condition that specifically knows to keep their numbers down). They don't have any complicated structures, no mills, no specialized tools, just axes to cut trees down with and perhaps a few other steel tools that they'd require (THIS is something that will be brought up since the main character will be living with them for a while and helping in these issues such as building a home).

Even if I added relatively complicated structures, they'd never see use in the story but worse than that, I end up starting to raise the tech level above what I intended. Is it even possible to make properly built wooden homes (with rooms and such) with stone age tools? More importantly, is there any point to asking myself complicated questions or will the reader not care?


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Anyone here find that you do the same? It used to be that in my youth, there was pretty much nothing else to do and reading was a great way to get into some pretty awesome story-telling. At first I read stuff like goosebumps, fear street and animorphs stuff when I was really young, then I branched into Christopher Pike's more adult/young teen (based on what cultural view you have of what's adult and what's young teen :P) horror novels. I read some sci-fi novels as well but truth be told, I can hardly remember them (save for obernewytn(sp?), deathworld 3 and one of the doom novels). I got into fantasy novels after reading the hobbit, there was something fairy tale-ish about the story and I think that's what drew me into it. I started reading other fantasy novels but it was hard to find a good one, some of them just felt so....dull.

The thing is, back then, cheap and quick entertainment was just not that entertaining. I had a sega master system (along with an atari, some keyboard that you could insert cartridge games into and some other low tech stuff) even past the PS1 era and late into the PS2 era, I also had an EXTREMELY difficult time getting access to shows and movies so I ended up watching very little media. Today on the other hand, I've got several consoles (not getting the current gen stuff, I've got more unfinished/unplayed games for the old one than I care to admit) and I can easily get access to watch whatever media I want, it's gotten to the point that I get home from work and the first thing I do is pop the PS3 on and start gaming, when I'm done, switch to PC view and pop a DVD in the drive.

I feel like I'm sacrificing good story telling for quick and easily achieved shots of entertainment. It used to be that if I started reading a book (and back then, I really did like most of the Christopher Pike horror stuff), I'd be so entertained I could finish the book in a day or two and my mind would be swimming with the awesome of what I just read for weeks, today it can take me up to a fortnight to finish a thick book like one of the codex alera novels and I hardly take to the book in my free time. I watch stuff like movies and TV shows and I can't help but just switch my brain off automatically (you ever read a review where the author just points out how stupid some of the characters are? Or how the 'subtle' plot was actually quite simple and easy to figure out? It makes you realize just how much you switch your brain off and just accept the garbage you're being fed), video games rarely (if ever) have good storylines, usually probably because a good story comes with a build up of what's going on around you and unless you're willing to read a novel's worth in text (like in planescape...actually apparently from a quote I read somewhere, it's more like THREE novel's worth) they give you a basic rundown: You're part devil, your dad was a devil, today's bad guy was a devil that was involved somehow with your dad, now fight (devil may cry)! Even metal gear solid, as entertaining as it was, the story was pretty simple, the depth came from playing all the games and seeing the sum of its parts rather than individually (and then...you were still stuck with one good story from several games put together).

It used to be that I read about a character who was having doubts, fears and concern that impacted her views and sometimes no dialogue to show it, games have no choice but force it into dialogue and into the face of the character, no view on what's under the hood. I play a video game and at best it's like 'yaaaaay' and then when I turn it off I don't give what just happened in the game a second thought. For me, true art lies in the written word and the places it can take you, from the minds of the characters to the landscapes of the many worlds, everything else just falls flat. I remember reading about characters who DO the research to find out what's happening behind the scenes, today, it's a montage or 'I found a book/googled it'. When I picked up a few novels, I just began to see what I've spent the last decade missing out on for quick shots of empty entertainment, where you meet someone and in the span of three days or less (a couple of hours in a movie's world time at worst...at worst and most prevalent), they're suddenly everything you ever wanted in your life.

And for that, I lament that I don't read as much as I used to.

Goblin Squad Member

Here's the thing, my little brother is interested in an MMO that would let you pretty much do what PFO is promising: own territory, be a king/general/some form of leader (if he's lucky enough to get that far) where you can also invade other players' lands and such. I think one such possibility was shadowbane but the emulator for it isn't working properly for him....if there's anyone even playing.

I recommended EVE for him, but he couldn't stand the gameplay that he didn't understand (there were a lot of features that excited him, but the gameplay just wasn't his style).

I guess what he's probably looking for is an MMO that revolves around player created content. He's still ticked off that I didn't tell him about the PFO kickstarter :P (in my defense, I had no idea this was the type of games he was interested in).


Hi, I just got my hands on this order but I noticed the year of the demon messenger bag was not in the box. It says on the list of contents that the bag was included, but it's not.


I placed an order just a minute ago, but the orders aren't showing up at all. When I got taken to the page that shows details of what I'd just bought, the box that's supposed to show the items was empty and the stuff isn't showing up in the orders page.

Should I place another order for the two items?


Ummm....

Two knew foes....?


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Unnecessary background info (but should help paint what I'm looking for):

Spoiler:

Here's the thing, I've read Drizzt novels in the past and while I hated the unbeatable swordsman aspect (while it may be fun reading about a skilled swordsman taking on several at a time, it's another thing entirely when you know that no other single swordsman can ever take him) I very much enjoyed the understanding/accepting aspect (I mean he didn't simply kill evil creatures on the spot (at least not all the time)) of his character (which got a better focus on the trilogy featuring his life in the underdark).

I may have been interested in books with lots of 'slay ALL the evil!' stuff going on a few years ago, but I've just lost interest after a while. I remember reading a short story from a Magic the gathering anthology where the main character meets a minotaur (and in that setting, minotaurs are supposed to be noble creatures) and they travel together for a while, in addition to another story where a king (mistakenly) trusts a lich because there was no alignment system in MtG and the lich COULD'VE been a good person (he wasn't). I read another story where an elf (MtG) meets up with a goblin and guess what? He's JUST a goblin, she befriends him for the rest of the (trilogy?) and even in that very same novel they tangle with a nutty goblin cult (although overall, the quality of those stories weren't interesting enough for me to finish the book series). There was even a (dragon lance?) book about a female fighter who befriends a strange lizardman (who apparently in his culture is something close to a paladin) and even temporarily befriends a red dragon (who initially wanted to kill and eat her, so this might not be the best example to add) who helps her out (well, perhaps 'befriends' is a bit of a strong word...).

I remember reading an article on Keith Baker's website on alignment and I read about how Eberron ESSENTIALLY doesn't have any evil races (daelkyr don't count, they're not local to the world and neither do their creations since they logically follow the aspect of their creators), just strange cultures and biologically problematic (for instance ogres would cause any settlement's food to dwindle fast) races. He mentioned his queen of stone novel and I just had to get my hands on it.

While queen of stone (warning, minor spoilers (not plot-related) ahead) didn't have me glued to the book, seeing the races in such a normal light (for example the ogre guard who's frustrated/bored of escorting his charge because he'd rather be out partying, or the tribal-like gnolls who aren't evil, just perhaps very rough around the edges, or the medusa who begrudges the fact that the human nations see them as vile monsters but is ready and eager to end that chapter of the world(peacefully)) was EXTREMELY exciting for me. This meeting of cultures nearly DID have me glued to the book.

I honestly don't want to read about another character for whom killing comes easy or a world where pretty much half the races (or perhaps moreso) are born flat out evil. Also I'm bored of elves, dwarves, halflings and gnomes (unless we're talking Valenar elves from Eberron, cannibalistic halflings from dark sun or vile dwarves from dragon age), I'd like to read about characters who either are (from exotic races), adventuring or dealing with exotic races and their strange cultures in a peaceful setting like how the gnolls were presented in queen of stone (we didn't really see anything of the medusa's culture). The spirit of cooperation and kindness between the main character and the gnolls (from the queen of stones novel), while minor, was one of the best parts of the book for me.

I would love if the setting was based in Eberron, but I can go with any other fantasy heavy (as in eberron, forgotten realms or even MtG) setting but am not interested in stuff like Conan or worlds with a lack of many races or magic.


There was a tip in the back of the book that recommended that if I'm playing solo, I should roll up a second character. If I do, do I then treat it as having two players and use that many locations (for example, with brigandoom, it would be four locations due to two players instead of three due to 1 player)?


So let's say I roll REALLY badly against a creature and take 6 damage, right? Let's say I have three cards and use a boon (discarded to use) to reduce damage by two, does it reduce from the overall damage (so technically it's four damage and I lose my remaining two cards anyway) or does the damage readjust to my remaining number of cards (so instead of 6 damage, it's now three damage to match the cards in my hand) and it protects at least 1 card?


Ok, so these issues cropped up during my second session:

1. When aiding another, am I allowed to use one of my spells to aid him? I remember my brother was fighting a shadow without the aid of any magic so I used my (magic missile? force missile?) to help him out. Are spells, weapons and armor actually useable to aid someone with?

2. If a creature (say a goblin with a 9 to beat) has only a combat check available and I have no spells in hand, can I use my (Seoni) charisma 1d12 + Arcane something +2 (1d12 + 2) to still make an attack against it or does the creature need to SPECIFICALLY say arcane/charisma/divine?

3. If have a character like a barbarian or a fighter with no weapons in hand and I come across a combat encounter, can I still roll my strength +2/+3 (from melee) against it or do I NEED a weapon to actually make an attack against it?

4. When a villain escapes, do I shuffle the villains and the blessings into the location decks?

5. If a card effect (like a monster or a 'when closing') says banish/bury/recharge a card or two, can the banish/bury/recharge effect of those cards still come into effect?


Here's the thing:

I know how to acquire cards except for the blessing type. So I draw a blessings card and stick it face up on the discard pile, right? I roll a check to acquire it and succeed, do I put it in my deck, my hand or leave it in the discard pile?

Also, supposing I'm in combat and a player (who is in the same location) wants to help out, he simply uses an item, spell or blessing card right? He can't use a weapon card since he's not in combat with me at the time, correct (nor can he use an armor card because that applies to himself only I'm assuming)? Can allies be used in combat and if so, can ANOTHER player use his ally?

Actually, on acquiring cards, do I put them in my hand or shuffle them into my deck?

Also, if I want to close a location that doesn't have the villain in it (but does have a henchman in it), does the henchman have to be defeated first? Do I banish all cards upon trying to close the location whilst leaving the henchman there (much like I'd do with a villain)?


If I successfully manage to get my group to pick up PFS, I was curious about how to play up atheism in PF. Given that there is clearly divine and arcane magic in the world, along with angels, demons, undead, so on and so forth, how am I supposed to make atheists work?

A: "There are gods"
B: "No there aren't"
A: "But clerics channel their power"
B: "No they don't"

A: "There are demons"
B: "No there aren't"
A: "But there's the worldwound"
B: "No such place"

A: "We can use magic to contact the gods and angels"
B: "I speak to them too, in the middle of a drunken stupor"

I honestly have no idea how to portray atheists in a fantasy setting where you can contact divine beings as early as level 3. Agnosticism I can understand, but I'm worried about making the Greycloaks look like fools.

(This is not a thread to discuss religion, please keep the real world out of this thread and please open your own if you want to bring in all of those arguments with you, this is PURELY an in-game quandary)


So I'm going through the first introductory scenario for PFS when a few of the skill checks had me wondering, what if the player doesn't think to use that skill check?

In one of the first skill checks, you make handy use of the surrounding paraphernalia (in specific manners) to successfully rescue a crate of books away from water. The tips were that I should give advice to the players to roll intelligence and engineering checks. In another case, a woman had obvious signs of alcoholism that weren't apparent unless a player rolled (apparently without prompting) heal.

I was thinking to myself that my players would never think to roll these checks and then almost inevitably I realized I'd have to be pretty arrogant to think even I'd think of such things. In the case of the crate, if I described the room in good detail they'd probably be able to pick out useful methods without prompting, but the one with the old lady? If I described her condition, the guy wouldn't have to roll heal. I'm worried that if I prompt my players to roll skill checks they may feel like they're being led rather than thinking for themselves. They also most likely would not think to gather information from surrounding people about the old lady and just go straight for the source and miss out on a lot of information and pretty much try to use a combination of purely sense motive and brute force. How should I treat some of these unprompted skill checks and 'puzzles'?


Hi, I know that this will differ based on scenarios and modules but I was curious about what the bare minimum reading materials are. I'm currently reading the pathfinder society field guide (the free pdf) and have the other book on the matter. I also have the book on Absalom (I think) and numerous books on the other regions. How in-depth should my knowledge of Golarion be?

How in-depth should the PLAYERS' knowledge be? Myself and my players don't know much/anything about Golarion (I know a LITTLE but the knowledge is minor).


Hi, I didn't get the NPC codex pawns added to my orders, I was pretty sure I'd started up with either it or an earlier pawn collection. If I didn't, should I go ahead and add it or is there something in the system that'll add it itself later?


So the characters got to a town filled with essentially gollum-like people (except without the strange voice) and sincerely hated the townspeople (who were quite nasty and offensive, though not violent whatsoever (with a body like gollum's, would you seriously pick a fight with a group that's armed to the teeth?)). A ghost told them that the people of the town robbed his dead body (he was killed by someone else, they simply robbed his dead body AND his house), so because they wanted the info, rather than try and peaceful means, they went first with intimidation checks (which failed) and then proceeded to torture the fellow, they broke arms, legs and fingers.

I'm NOT (I'd like to repeat NOT) asking about repercussions or whether or not they're evil, what I AM asking is, how do I handle this interrogation? I'd imagine in the real world, a guilty party or a person who's got knowledge they want would immediately spill the beans considering the horrific pain, but there must be some form of skill check involved here that makes sense. There was a book on crime and punishment (Keith Baker) that mentioned this, but they never mentioned what to do in the event of a simple bash and ask (they brought up the whole heal check thing, but this is a simple matter of breaking the guy's legs, no finesse about it whatsoever).

Should I just ignore trying to fit a skill check to it and just stick with harsh repercussions (the village isn't guarded but they ARE under the official protection of a nearby fort)?


For those buying or have already bought and want more, check out the unofficial zogonia facebook page at:

Zogonia

I want to mention that while this page is unofficial, it's being run by a magazine trying to prove to Mr. Moseley that the fans do want more zogonia. If they can prove it, they may even be able to convince him to run a kickstarter. Drop by and show the love by hitting the like button and perhaps we'll get the additional comics we've always wanted!

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