The press is having a field day calling these things white house scandals.
IRS: Not a scandal really. The white house had nothing to do with it. It was a couple of office workers who were trying to cut their workload by getting creative in search terms. It amounted to profiling. So, how do you feel about profiling now?
Benghazi: I fail to understand what they are trying to find. So we get things wrong occasionally? The IRS does not have a clairvoyants on staff? I just don't get it.
AP News: Remember when you had a problem with Bradley Manning leaking information? Well, now you see the other end. What do you think now?
I've been looking for more family-friendly adventures too. Seems everybody wants "darker and grittier." these days.
The free Paizo module "D0: Hollow's Last Hope" is mostly family friendly. It was written for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, but it's similar enough to convert. It has the main characters searching for ingredients to make a cure for a plague.
I'm thinking of house ruling bonded objects in the following ways. Can anybody see potential problems in them?
1) In addition to the standard bonded object possibilities, you may also choose anything else that will take up a magic item slot. For example: Hat, Gloves, Boots, Belt, Bracelet.
2) Witches may also choose the bonded object option. It holds their spells just like a standard witch's familiar and is treated as one for the purposes of learning spells from other witches.
Monk/Cleric -- Take a 1 level dip into cleric and you can use Wands of Cure Light Wounds and cleric scrolls.
Bard -- Just chock full of abilities and has access healing magic
Druid -- Concentrate on shapeshifting and get a tough animal companion
Oracle (of Battle) -- Nice abilities and spell list
Fighter -- Yes, fighter. I know you said you wanted healing, but let your companion handle that. Fighter is the best at dealing and taking damage reliably in all situations. You can always carry healing potions.
I want games that do not take themselves so seriously. I want something more like Discworld, The Labyrinth, The Princess Bride, or Monty Python & The Holy Grail.
I would like a Kaiju that is in the CR20-25 range myself.
The only "controversy" about the Bestiary 4 is it didn't come out last year. I just hope my expectations aren't too high because it has been awhile since the last one.
All kaiju are above CR 25.
The "giant destructive monster" niche below CR 25 is already VERY well represented by behemoths and spawn of Rovagug. To say nothing of the tane or dragons.
Yes, speaking of the tane. . . are there more in bestiary 4?
Well, there's the old Wizard feat Cooperative Spell which was not released to the SRD but I see nothing conceptually wrong with it allowing wizards to link up with witches with the Coven hex and vice versa. But that's sort of an aside from what I was getting at with this feat.
Are there any other creatures that would be better for witches to get a "horned one" added to their trio, both to pull in old legends and also to get a bit of extra power without the eldest hag always being the senior party?
I'm talking having three young beautiful witches and a dude with horns or antlers. Any other likely candidates in Pathfinder, 3.5 or even 3.0 sources?
Werthead, I vehemently disagree that Doctor Who is not serious science fiction. The show holds, in the both the 20th and 21st centuries, the top 5 best characters and plots ever.
Iirc, the word "hobbit" was invented by Tolkien (unlike elf, dwarf, orc, etc.) and thus couldn't be used because it was someone else's Intellectual Property.
Not exactly. While it was sometimes attributed to him, Tolkien never claimed to have invented the word, "Hobbit," just the concept of a race of people like the ones in his books. The word "hobbit" itself as referring to fairy creatures is much older and prior sources have been uncovered proving it.
I think what Dinklage was talking about are the stereotypical roles that small people are usually handed.
There is a tendency for fantasy races to be flat characters with unidimensional personalities. What I don't like are the typical lazy fantasy worlds where you draw a map and throw the races at it like a Jackson Pollock painting. The dwarves go here. The dwarves are stout, dour, and like to mine things. The elves go here. The elves are beautiful, haughty, and wise. Halflings like to steal things, but prefer their comfy agrarian holes-in-the-ground with fine food .
But humans. Humans have many different cultures, languages, countries, personalities. They are treated as individuals.
I usually play halflings, but roleplay all my characters as unique individuals--so much so that DMs have gotten upset with me for not playing halflings "correctly".
In some eyes, all halflings are either Bilbo/Frodo or hyper-active children.
I say as long as a player halfling is more than a walking cliche, but a full-fledged character, then it's not what Dinklage meant.
I take offense to the idea that any PC needs to behave like a stereotype or is being played wrong.
1) When making a new character, should a player beforehand, tell the GM what class he wants to run and ask what materials he's allowed to use? Or should a player create the character he wants and the GM should figure out a way to accomodate him?
The player and GM should work together. The player should tell them GM what he or she wants in a character and the GM can decide how such a character can fit into the campaign.
Quote:
2) When it comes to optional materials: Is the burden on the Player to prove why he should be allowed to use certain optional spells/classes/feats etc. or on the DM to show why these materials should NOT be used?
Why or why not?
The best option is for the GM to pre-clear books or other material as allowable in the campaign. Players may ask for other materials to be included, but the GM has the final say.
The reason why is that GMs do much more work than players in preparing for the adventure. They have an entire campaign world to balance. If something they did not expect can cause problems, players cannot reasonably expect for them to be allowed.
The reason medical bills are so high is due to the cost of college education.
It works like this:
Doctors graduate from medical school with around $200,000 to $300,000 in debt.
Doctors have to charge more for their services to help pay back their loans.
The hospitals need doctors so they pay it.
The medical equipment companies see large sums of money changing hands, so they charge hospitals more for the equipment.
Hospitals pass these costs on to the patients.
Patients can't pay such high costs, so they turn to insurance companies.
Insurance companies pay hospitals for the care and patients pay their insurance.
Hospitals, doctors, and medical equipment people charge the insurance companies more because they have more money.
Insurance companies respond by trying to pass more costs to patients and deny care as much as possible.
Providers respond by charging more.
Health care providers and insurance companies merge to leverage their size in a market power arms race.
The last 5 steps repeat in an endless recursion as the costs climb.
Meanwhile, patients get progressively worse care for progressively more cost.
There you go. Notice it all started with the cost of doctors attending college. That's where we need to start. Obamacare is a band-aid for the symptoms of a broken system at best.
Anything you do that could possibly help someone else infringe on copyright is itself an infringement. Also, somebody can demand a take-down of material without proving that any of their copyrights have actually been violated.
Frankly, of all of the one- or two-episode candidates for animation they had, The Reign of Terror is the least interesting. Though you do get to see the Doctor beat a French guy into unconsciousness with a shovel.
The Dalek's Masterplan needs restoration. I read the synopsis and it sounded like it was awesome.
So afterr hearing a smuttering of prise for this series, and realising it's about urban fantasy (A gener I'm curious about exploring further) I got the first book and read it.
I thought it was fine. Like a 3.5 star review (out of 5). I had some fun moments with it, and it really picked up towards the end with some really great action scenes and a kind of dry humor which I appreciate.
Overall I'd say the book was rather mediocre. Nothing BAD, but nothing that really got my attention either. Also I don't appreciate the rather sexist approach it takes with it's female chracters.
So, given that these are my thoughts on the book, should I go ahead and get the next one? if the opening book was only O.K for me will I be interested in reading the next?
Anybody interested Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or urban fantasy will love the series.
It gets better with each novel. The author didn't think he could get an audience for his story arc until his 3rd book., so the first two were written mostly as one-shots. It's the events in that book that set a story arc that continue throughout the series.
Harry is often anachronistic and clueless in dealing with the modern world. He grew up training to be a wizard in isolation and only has childhood memories of watching TV and some movies for cultural reference. Wizards in the series are all old fashioned and set in their ways due to not being able to use technology. While he has a sense of chivalry towards protecting women, he never expresses any sexist attitudes that women should stick to their traditional roles. In fact, he seems to like women who are confident, intelligent, and capable if taking care of themselves.
There are some undertones of sexism in that even though all the women are strong and independent, they all are clamouring to get physical with Harry, while he remains mostly naive about until they throw themselves at him. But really, Harry is a nice guy character and I think he treats his female companions with respect, even if the author keeps throwing him into romantic situations with them.
It hinges on how your GM uses the Leadership feat. Some GMs will allow you get specific builds like that and others just give you a random generic NPC.
Let's see, RPGs that have a history of not working:
I've been a long-term fan of Doctor Who, but I have to say I've never seen a Doctor Who RPG that actually worked. Sure, its fun for a session or two with other fans of the series, but it just falls apart quickly.
Another genre I've seen attempted many times but to date but never succeed is any game based off anime or manga. For some reason, they just can never seem to capture the fun of the source material.
Same thing happens with real-world espionage/military RPGs. Spycraft was briefly popular, but quickly disappeared. There was a James Bond RPG that really tried to make a splash but failed. I don't know anybody who played Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies (without some other palladium setting). I remember a company that tried to put out a WWII RPG that nobody liked either. I think real-life RPGs in general are just too dull.
And strangely enough: Star Trek. You would think this would be easy to do but for some reason, they never seem to stay in print. Star Wars doesn't have this problem, so I never figured out why Star Trek did.
I would also like to add mystery/detective/police RPGs, unless they are some kind of LARP. I think its the real-life problem that the epsionage/military RPGs have.
Book series, no matter how old or popular never seem doomed to fail: Narnia, Dune, Amber, Middle Earth, and others all failed. I personally liked Amber and it seemed to have a cult following briefly but it went away. Middle Earth RPGs never seem to last long either (how many different versions have there been again?). Dresden Files RPG looked cool but I haven't seen any new material out for it after the first two books.
Buffy was occasionally entertaining but mostly repetitive. I lost interest in Angel after they killed off Doyle. I didn't like any of Whedon's other shows.
Keep in mind that comedy is subjective, so this is just my opinion.
I think the BBT characters are not stereotypes. Yes, they display some stereotypical behavior, but are realistic characters themselves. They have more than flat personalities and each one has shown many facets during the course of the series.
Compare this to How I Met Your Mother, where the characters never change or break from their assigned niches.
It sound more like "I love to break the game, but woe if the Gm do that to me."
Bingo, end of thread.
Every supporter of this feat (both in it's original version, and the current version) has said that a GM that uses it on the players is being a jerk, but it's ok for the players to use it.
Sorry, that's cheese from limburg. It stinks to high heaven.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If this is in for the PC's to use every game, then it's in for the GM to use every game, just like every fighter class feature, every rogue talent, every spell, etc.
Do you think NPCs should be able to intimidate PCs into submission too? Should NPCs be able to use Diplomacy to change the attitudes of the PCs?
For me, those answers are both no, so Antagonize shouldn't make PCs lose control of their characters either.
