greatamericanfolkhero's page

greatamericanfolkhero wrote:

==This is EXACTLY how it happened==

In a high school geology class someone turned to me and asked "Have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons?" I answered that I had heard the name before, but didn't know what it was. "Oh, it's this really cool game. Wanna' Play?" "Sure" I said. He then proceeded to pull out all three core 3.0 books from his bag, hand them to me and say "Cool. We're going to play in two weeks. You're going to be the Dungeon Master."

Yup. I DM'ed a game before I ever got to play. I talked a little bit more about this in a podcast a while ago.

OH! I would have smacked him with his books. ;-)

This was the first in a long tradition of utter BS from this person.

Here's more info about this particular person

==This is EXACTLY how it happened==
In a high school geology class someone turned to me and asked "Have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons?" I answered that I had heard the name before, but didn't know what it was. "Oh, it's this really cool game. Wanna' Play?" "Sure" I said. He then proceeded to pull out all three core 3.0 books from his bag, hand them to me and say "Cool. We're going to play in two weeks. You're going to be the Dungeon Master."

Yup. I DM'ed a game before I ever got to play. I talked a little bit more about this in a podcast a while ago.

Bribery IS a time-honored tradition afterall!

I call them offerings.

Improved balance and perfect balance only reduce the two-weapon fighting penalties for *actual* light weapons. Even with perfect balance, if you're using a one-handed weapon in your off-hand, you get no penalty reduction from Improved balance or perfect balance.

Those two abilities do the same thing, it would have been better to word them thusly:

Improved Balance (Ex): The two-weapon warrior's attack penalties for fighting with two weapons are reduced by –1 when wielding a light weapon in his off-hand. The two-weapon warrior can wield one-handed weapons in his off-hand as though they were light weapons, but gains no reduction in attack penalties from this ability for doing so.

Perfect Balance (Ex): [as above, plus:] This benefit stacks with improved balance.

So basically the two class features reduce the penalties by -2, but if you use a one-handed weapon you get it all at once. (going from -4/-4 to -2/-2)

Cool.

Very nice!

The Perfect Balance special ability: if using a one-handed weapon the penalty is -1/-1 correct?
The way it's sounding to me is that Imp. Balance is letting you treat the one hand as a light to make it -2/-2 then perfect balance is subtracting from that.
Am I way off base here?

I subscribe to DM-ocracy. It is a mixture between Dictatorship and Democracy. Basically, I am the final word, but I listen to and try to accommodate my players' wishes...and succeed more often than not, I'd like to think...

This, right here, I think is the best policy.

DrowVampyre wrote:

Oh, another thread reminded me of something else that kinda fits...but it's something I prefer from 3.0, not 3.5.

Weapon sizes.
I much preferred the old way of handling them (medium longsword used by a large creature counts as a short sword - or was it dagger? I forget - and used by a small creature counts as a greatsword). That's one of those things that left me going "huh?" when 3.5 came around.

I feel the same way.

Do you have any insight into why this was changed? Were there people decrying Fighters picking up Large Longswords and suddenly having medium greatswords?

... The Iron Heart Surge thing should be clearly edited by a DM also, so silly things like stopping gravity don't happen.

That book was tossed into the same bin I put savage species, the spell compendium, the epic rules and psionics the first time I had a player try to drag the sun back over the horizon "with a roar of effort."

Set wrote:

...

That's one of the few specific rules in PF that I think is a step down from 3.5.

One of the most memorable encounters I threw at my PCs was a Fiendish Gelatinous Cube Monk... when I told the ranger the cube deflected his arrow, his face was priceless.

Nice!

I wish Pathfinder could have kept the old domain abilities in addition to the new ones.

POD - it's the future. Lets the FLGS stock everything electronically and print their own copies.

"Elves of Golarion? Sure, why don't you go browse the minis and boardgames and it'll be ready in 20 minutes. Next time, phone or email your order ahead, and it'll be waiting for you. Here's a code so you can download the pdf from Paizo's website."

I can't wait for the day that the POD machines become affordable.

LilithsThrall wrote:

I think everybody in this thread knows that GMs are much more rare than Players.

That's why psionics is such an issue.

There are many more people here that want to play psionics than there are GMs who want to run psionics. So, the only resource the players have is to b*!~* and complain about how GMs won't let them play a psionic character. See, it's not enough to have psionics in the campaign. If it were, then all the people who want psionics could GM games that have them and the problem would be resolved. But the people who want psionics want to play psionics without being saddled with the burden of GMing psionics. They want to push that burden off to someone else and most GMs don't want that burden.

You make it sound like every single psionics fan out there is a big old douche bag...

Can't really disagree with you on that from personal expierence...but I'm sure none douchy psionics fan exists...

statistically they must. :-)

James Jacobs wrote:

There will be some vermin shape spells coming soon!

Awesome! I knew there was a very good reason to switch to PF! How soon will I be able to defeat Mad Madame Mim by transforming into a desease?

"I hate sunshine!"

...

What happens if the player you say no to psionics to is the one whos place you use to game. If you say "find another game" he can be rights say "find someone else house to game". Or the game is held far away from your place and the player is the only one with a car...

What if the DM and the player are conjoined twins? :-p

Stereofm wrote:

It is true that the one flaw I find in the design of 3.x is the nerfing of fireballs and lightning bolts, due not only to the too-easy ref saves, but also to ... Evasion. And everybody and his dog having more Hps, while these spells did not scale.

I sometimes long for the days of yore when they were the most damaging exterminator spells around.

Change the damage output to d8's or d10's?

He could also make them volumetric again. That would be fun... until the day someone miss-judges the back blast.

Jagyr Ebonwood wrote:

Apparently there's a large emphasis on "Space Travel" in the GameMastery Guide, since it's featured in the index twice. ;)

There's several redundancies in the index for ease of reference. Just as you'll see "space travel" under both its own heading and under "travel," you'll see other topics appear by themselves and grouped along with related topics as appropriate.

I love when a company decided to make an index actually worthwhile! Thank you for that.

...

To the GM, say "We're heading back to Restov. I hope those bandits don't destroy Oleg's while we're gone. That would be a shame. Oh well, too bad. Oleg, my friend, good luck with the bandits. If they show up, I'd try to bluff. Or run."
...

Very nice.

We’re playing Kingmaker and using Oleg’s trading post as a base. I was able to convince a runner to purchase the supplies I need from the closest city - he'll be back in a couple of weeks. I should be able to continue this into the future, so I’ll be able to transcribe spells from scrolls into my spellbook and “backup my data” in case of another mishap. For now, I’m basically using my bow.

I’m really hoping the GM changes his mind on the research aspect of the class. I’ve played wizards before and those two spells /level make a huge difference. In most Pathfinder adventure paths, there are long periods of time when characters are isolated from civilization. It doesn’t make sense to allow other classes to gain new skills and abilities without training but to limit wizards.

I would respectfully request that your DM reconsider his position. Let him know that you feel that his interpretation of the rules has unfairly limited your character. If he decides that you still can't research without being in a city then ask him if you are banking up the ungained spells or if you are going to lose them and only get the two from the most recent level. If you aren't banking these spells up then I would recommend having your wizard wander into the woods alone and covered in honey. After the wizard is mauled to death by owlbears ask him if he has any special house rules regarding sorcerers. If he does then roll up a monk, because that's the only way you're gong to avoid being a commoner with a good will save.

I mean, it's not good, but is it really evil?

I had a concept of a Necromancer who can also resurrect and heal people (And I know there's the life school in the APG) but who is also protected by undead. (He's also supposed to have a Skeleton Dragon)

Also, while we're at it, any help in fleshing out this concept?

I guess I can houserule that raising undead isn't evil. Anyway, looking for reasons why it should be evil.

A lot of people think that icky automaticly equals evil.

3.5's complete arcane has effegy's. make a robot version of any thing for pretty cheap. to make it costs 1000 gp per hd + cost for body (2k for a medium creature, 5 k for a large, its in the book for the rest). so a medium 8 hd creature would be 10k

If I'm reading it correctly isn't the body itself built using the mundane item crafting rules?

/If I'm wrong that that dragon effigy dropship idea I had just got more practical.

Hockey_Hippie wrote:

Knowledge: Engineering

One word: Catapults...

Engineering is far more than just catapults.

For one let us not forget balista's, mangonel's, trebuchet's, and the dozens of other myriad machines of war through the ancient times up to and including any device that could be construed as an artillery piece. Engineering would cover the building, maintenance and firing of those as well.

Also, there is bridge making/river fording. Field fortification building, such as quick walls, earthen ramparts and embankments, trench digging, emplacement of sharpened logs/battlefield obstacles to limit enemy troop movement and create funnels on the battlefield to steer or slow the enemy. Pitfall and trap placement (shallow hidden pits to cause horses to break legs when charging over what was supposed to be even ground or flame trenchs by soaking specific troughs or even area's with large amounts of oil as examples).

And there is also the classical use as for designing tunnels for mining or siege work, design and creation of myriad mechanical/clockwork devices, and plain old building/castle/fort designs, construction and how to get past/destroy or defend against all the above.

Lastly, in a world were some sort of explosives exist, either magical or mundane, it also covers how to best use such to damage static emplacements and clear obstacles such as fences or barbed wire, or the same defensive fortifications I listed above.

Even in fuedal/medieval/ancient times, these skills were all very advanced.

I'm reminded of a story of Caesar. He once, in full view of enemy scouts, had a bridge built over a river, marched his entire legion across the bridge then had them all return to the other side and had the bridge destroyed. Just to point out the fact that he could go anywhere he wanted to and there was nothing they could really do to stop him.

I believe that's as good enough reason to have Knowledge: Engineering as any.

Thazar wrote:

I think the Big Book O NPC's should fully integrate some key monster NPC's along with some of the options from the APG and maybe even the magic and combat books scheduled for future publication. So with that in mind I think Bestiary first then NPC.

Would you still be okay with this if the big NPC book didn't reprint rules for how witch hexes work, how the Dirty Trick combat maneuver works, what a mancatcher does, or how hungry pit works, and in order to know that stuff you'd either have to own a copy of the APG or be able to look it up online at a PRD type site?

I would be fine with it, or at least have a small footnote at the bottom of the NPC to reference the page numbers for easy lookup.

I have to admit, one thing I'm looking forward to is hunting for random pieces of 1st and especially 2nd edition D&D stuff. Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Al-Qadim and Jakandor stuff in particular(since there really isn't much Planescape left for me to buy, really).

Does it generally work out in the buyer's favor to shop for that stuff at conventions though? Or do con prices for older stuff tend to go higher than what you would typically get elsewhere?

There are some really great deals to be had if you search hard enough. I had a friend pick up a complete Keep on the Borderlands last year for what he later found out was about half of what it went for in the same condition on ebay. I know that I found a d20 CoC for around cover price a couple of years ago (it was going for about $50 online at the time) but in the same booth there were a few "deals" that I would have recommended passing on (the old 3.0 class books for cover price for example.) I would recommend searching the smaller booths if it's not something that you "must have" and have no problem not picking up this year if you don't find it. The larger vendors usually have a better selection but also usually hold closer to what the current market value is.

...

If you could pick just ONE PFRPG Bestiary creature that you would want to be able to play as a PC ... which one would it be?
...

I would love to see a playable ghost that wasn’t completely borked.

I wish we hade more info. I miss Zogonia.

http://gamingpaper.com/

you have two wishes left

:-)

I had to build a dice case because my dice bag got too small.

Back in the 3.5 days I had an idea for an awakened monkey mage/effigy master who passed as the familiar of the effigy he built. It was a mid to high level requirement and wouldn’t work in the more serious games the other members in my group tend to run, so I’ve never gotten the chance to run it.

While I have a new system of choice for modern and future genres, I was a huge fan of d20 modern in general and your 3rd party stuff in specific (one of the few companies that had a blanket “allow” at my table). I wish you guys the best of luck in this and look forward to seeing what you guys come up with.

Alas, if only it was in a landscape format.

I'm not sure why it isn't listed here or on their website, but I was able to buy the landscape version from the guy at GenCon '09.