hmarcbower's page

So as it turns out I managed to take the Paladin to about -7 (I am an out-in-the-open DM... my dice hit the table where everyone can see them) without having foreknowledge of how many hit points he had left - so no accusations of pulling punches or of fudging for extra damage.

When the Paladin went down the others gave their head a shake and actually took Bahor's final offer of "collecting the corpse" and leaving his home immediately (not to mention they had kicked the living snot out of Bahor - PRPG Paladins are stupid... but I'll go find the appropriate forum for that particular gripe). The cleric gave it some thought and decided that as long as they had Neolandus and Vencarlo safely out of there that the mission was a success and agreed, stepping forward to stop the Paladin from bleeding out. Vimanda was, of course, gone when they turned around to look for her, having now broken their bargain with her. She'll be back, somewhere - not sure where, yet, but she won't be happy with the party when she finds them again. :)

The Paladin was most disgusted with his failure when he woke up - good roleplaying all around and I'm happy to see that.

Yah... so it turns out that my lawful good Paladin and my lawful good Cleric of Torag are not willing to go against the deal they made with Vimanda (that they kill Bahor in return for the safe release of Neolandus, Vencarlo, and their lives are spared by her) and as such they will both likely die at the hands of Bahor tonight. Last week they were given ample opportunities to surrender or to turn on Vimanda, but they constantly refused. I had the straight-up Rakshasas pop out (since they all knew what was coming up the stairs from the Vivified Labyrinth)... having a group of 7th level sorcerers around can really dish out a lot of damage in a round (Scorching Rays and Lightning Bolts everywhere!). Especially when they focus on one character...

Anyway, perhaps their new characters will be more... morally ambiguous? :)

I actually tricked out Bahor a little differently... I chose a bunch of Swift and Immediate spells for him so he could really do some craziness in melee (which is a little different than his writeup says, but I've found that the module writers for Paizo seem to think that a spellcaster is going to have several rounds of spell use before the characters are on top of him... it NEVER works that way, guys, so stop assuming it does...). His first spell cast: Persistent Blade. It can provide a flank partner for him, while its damage is near negligible. Very nice spell for a Sorcerer/Rogue.

Anyway... the interplay between Vimanda and Bahor has been such that they haven't faced off against each other directly - both were trying to use the characters to do in the other.

I've been having some fun with this one with my players. Although, now that I've started really looking closely at Bahor's stats... wow, I think even my band of ubercharacters might have trouble with this one. ;)

In any case, I had Eries Yelloweyes actually be Vimanda. She's been sort of following them along (thanks to her little friend) and helping at various points where it was needed. She favours one of the characters over the others (half the party are lawful-good nutjobs - a paladin and a priest of Torag), and he's the one with which she always made contact (had her just appear out of nowhere from behind a building at Trail's End whenever he showed up). Now that they've horrifically butchered Sivit, I had Eries hanging from the other set of shackles in the throne room beside Vencarlo. She opted to reveal herself as a rakshasa and proceeded to convince the party that Bahor was the greater threat and they should work together to dethrone him as head of the family (it helped that she told them he sent them down here for her to kill them).

I don't know how it's going to happen, but it will be gory I think. We'll find out tonight as they're on their way back up from the labyrinth (with which we had great fun once they got separated - I had the map all printed out and was actually spinning the pieces as they pulled levers. Some of them actually ended up totally trapped at one point, just waiting for the other group to pull another lever so they could get out.)

Anyhow, just Pathfinderizing Bahor and Vimanda now in anticipation of something truly scary for tonight's session. :) With Bahor as truly overpowering and nigh untouchable as he is he might just toy with them until he can convince them that Vimanda has lied to them and that they should actually finish her off and be on their way (likely to come back when they're about 15th level and try again, of course... but for now... :)

OK, the running blog is cool, but someone has to take Lisa's camera away from her, adjust the settings, and hand it back to her. Every picture she's posted is somewhere between badly out of focus and nearly unrecognizable. :)

Excellent idea and well executed for the blog during GenCon - congrats to all involved!

I know I'm practising some serious thread necromancy here, but I am just now running CotCT and, as such, am searching through the messageboards for posts relating to it.

I was very disappointed with the art for Laori. I've actually been printing out the NPC portraits for my players (we post them on the wall of the gaming room), and I had to tell them that I refused to provide a portrait for Laori. Starting from the beginning, I think the art for the rest of the NPCs has been stellar quality-wise but isn't really my favourite style. Even though I'm not a fan of the style, I can at least recognize the quality of it. The image of Laori was... well... subpar, let's say.

So I was happy to see this thread come up in my search! Did you ever find the time to craft something James? I'd love to see it if you did (and you're willing to share, of course).

My party negotiated - more or less.

I don't know about the intl shipping from Paizo, but when I checked Amazon today to compare the price of getting the hardcopy from Paizo with the sub to the price of getting the pdf from paizo and the hardcover from Amazon, they have the release date listed for September 2. So while it might have free shipping and a lower price point, it doesn't look like they'll even start shipping them out until over two weeks after GenCon.

So thanks, and consider me to be one more PDF customer who will also have the treeware version.

I am a big fan of this book. :) I like NPC stat blocks, chase rules, and would throw my voice behind the movement for mass combat rules.

How about additional class tradeoffs (as we've seen in the Campaign Setting)? Those are neat, and allow further customization of a class.

I think this would be an opportunity to add in a lot of the great suggestions found on the boards that didn't exactly fit the final ruleset parameters as optional rules (a la Unearthed Arcana).

<tangent>

Because our group is prone to running long campaigns, the save or die thing is a bit of an impediment to enjoyment. Not like the good ol days where we'd go through some kind of meatgrinder (read: Temple) and have a few characters go down every session or two.

What we developed many years ago (and have evolved since) is an Edge, Fate, Karma system.

Edge and Fate regenerate with each session. Edge is a reroll (the full outcome of the failed roll is allowed to be known before deciding to "edge" it). For example, beastie gets a critical hit on your character, which is likely to do a horrific amount of damage or kill him. You can find out the critical effect (we use the Paizo critical hits deck for nat 20 crits) and the damage before you decide to force the reroll with the edge. You can only force a single die reroll, so if, for instance, the beastie rolled a 20 then confirmed with a 17, you can just make him reroll the 20. If the reroll is a 20, then the 17 still stands and the critical goes through the same way it would have. Can also be use to reroll failed saves, critical failures (we also use the Paizo critical miss deck for confirmed natural 1 failures).

Fate is a single point on a die of any size (or 5% on a %-ile roll). You can use it to push your save up by 1, your initiative roll up by 1, your to-hit up by one (or the attacker's roll down by one...) anything that is a die roll and affects only you and your attacker you can adjust by 1 (e.g. no modifying the bad guy's initiative). If you declare its use ahead of time, you get double (+/- 2 instead of 1). This is handy where you absolutely, positively have to make the save/hit/reduce damage to avoid being pulped, etc.

Karma is gained only through natural-20, confirmed, critical successes at *something*. For fighting classes this is generally attacks. Rogues and skilly classes, for using their skills. Casters generally get screwed in this particular resource since they have less opportunity to roll the dice, but it works out OK. Karma are used exactly as Fate except they do not regenerate. You have to be out of Karma before you can spend your fate.

Big-time bad guys can also end up with these benefits, depending on how important they are and depending on the DM's feelings on the subject.

Anyway, that has saved our butts many times and made for some very spectacular cinematic scenes. :) When I DM I take the approach that I'm there to tell the story of the characters. If they survive a fight they maybe shouldn't have, but they needed to use all of their special resources to do so, then I am satisfied with that (and so are the players).

</tangent>

Ah, but don't mix up storage capacity with the amount of storage actually used and with processing power. When I first heard the number I thought "OK, who dropped the ball on this one... if anything they should have made it seem ridiculously large."

I'll add my "two thumbs up" for this pilot. It looks like it could really be a neat series. Although... I wonder if it would be as interesting to someone who didn't already watch BSG....?

Similar thread:

Over here

I'm confused about about Part Six: The Queen's Scapegoat. The text from Cressida implies she isn't convinced of Trinia's involvement. She mentions interrogating her with magic to determine the truth of things. However, the end of Part Six (Trinia's Fate) does not mention at all what happens if the PCs return her to Cressida. It mentions turning her over to the guard, but I'm not sure that's the same as handing her to Cressida. Also, if the PCs hide her, are the PCs just assumed to lie to Cressida about what happened? It just really seems like Cressida's speech at the beginning is at odds with what the guard actually does with Trinia if she's handed over, which makes no sense. I don't mind filling in gaps as a DM, but it seems the wrap-up section should have been a little more clear, or the opening speech a little less open about Cressida's own thoughts/opinions.

That situation was a bit odd for me to work in, as well. Cressida did, indeed, sound like she was going to try to shield Trinia from potentially corrupt "justice" by first determining the truth for herself before handing her over. This is how the text read to me, and how I presented it to the players. I had the Sable Company riders flying about looking for Trinia as well, so for the chase on the shingles they were aware that the party had captured Trinia. Trinia was NOT happy to be captured, especially when it became clear that, despite all the words of "we're trying to help you - if the mob catches you they will kill you!" the party was still going to turn her over to the guards. She had no idea that the party had a special arrangement with the Field Commander - Trinia just knew that if she got turned over to the guards things would not go well for her. The party had an expectation that they were actually doing something good (and lawful... I have a Paladin and a LG cleric of Torag in the group... fun stuff :) by turning her over even though they had become convinced of her innocence - because Cressida had said she would determine the truth using magic.

Of course, when the party arrives at the Citadel, they hear the unfortunate news about the guard who confessed to helping Trinia gain access to the King and saw her poison him having thrown himself out of a very high window in the tower. As they enter the Field Commander's office (Trinia is wrapped up in a carpet at this point - she didn't want to come willingly), there are two Sable Company riders - Lieutenants, I said, to impress upon the party how powerful and important they must be - waiting for them. They demand that Trinia be handed over (as they are aware that the party did capture her). There is a tense standoff, all the while Kroft is silently fuming at having been overruled and unable to proceed with her plans to verify the guilt or innocence of Trinia before handing her over. The Paladin nearly threw his character away by threatening the Sable Company riders - who would have carved him to pieces.

Then the players threw an additional curve at me... they had promised (well, the paladin had promised) that he wouldn't leave her. So after she gets thrown into a prison cell at the castle, the guard agree to allow him and one other of the characters to wait outside her cell (they are, of course, weaponless). I let them spend a couple of days waiting while she was taken to somewhere deeper into the castle to be interrogated - always returning with a defeated, blank expression but never with any physical abuse visible. I never expanded on what kind of interrogation techniques might have been employed.

Anyway, as relates to the timeline, the things that were supposed to be happening in the background seemed to require a lot more time to have passed than my players allowed. It's all good, though. :)

A subscription option to the Core Rules Books at 37% off the cover price...and free shipping...and a free PDF...OK, I'm pushing it, aren't I...

As it turns out she was just as happy to order it from Chapters (the Canadian version of Barnes & Noble) - she's never sure what the discount might be from Diamond (and we don't generally order from that distribution agent, I guess - any comics/graphic novels/whatever that we buy I think come from a local comic shop). The Chapters discount was the same as the Amazon discount (37%).

In any case, I'm now the proud future owner of the Bestiary and the Core Rulebook (once they are released...) and I need to talk to the selector who looks after that section (he usually gets the D&D books that come out - I need to impress upon him how swell Pathfinder will be).

For some reason this isn't showing up in Bowker's BooksInPrint catalogue.... it needs to be in there for me to get it ordered at my library... :) Well, technically it doesn't have to be but it makes life so much easier for our acquisitions department.

A fellow librarian... your acquisitions department might use Amazon, for example, for reference.

BTW, didn't they tell you that all librarians are expected to join the Cheliax revolution? And we *do* have the best parties... ;)

Librarians... not known for their partying, but perhaps the foul outsiders have corrupted you. Sifting through an endless sea of sand for a grain of knowledge, however... :)

Here's a thought... it might not be a good one, but it's a thought nonetheless... :)

Have a portal for approved vendors to access. Through this portal they buy x number of coupon codes. Paizo charges $2 less than the normal price they would charge a non-vendor (or $3, or whatever... enough that there is a very small profit for the store), and the vendor can then sell these coupon codes at the store for a very small profit (perhaps even undercutting Paizo by $1 to bring people in, or selling it at cost just to get people to come into the store... or they offer it at cost if the person buys a print book, or $2 more if they don't, or something... I'm sure they can be creative). It costs Paizo only a little bit (a couple of dollars off every PDF - only Paizo knows what kind of hit they would take for that), the LGS gets something to value-add to the package, and there is little chance of fraud since the store has already paid for the coupon code. The worst that happens is a whole whack of coupon codes get sold for less than they could be obtained directly from Paizo - but that's why you keep the profit margin very small for the LGS and just let them use it to entice people into the store. You could write off the difference in price as marketing expenses, honestly. There might be people unwilling to drop the money on a print book that might be interested in a deal on the PDF to have a look at it first. Anyone who buys the PDF instead of the print book would only have done that from anywhere else anyway, so you aren't losing a sale of the print book.

When the vendor is approved (through whatever method Paizo determines is appropriate - maybe they could work with their distributor to see who buys the print versions, as you wouldn't want these to get to an online-only place that has no hope of ever doing anything but selling the PDF), then they pay for the coupon codes just like they would any other stock. The assigned coupon codes are keyed to the vendor - of which he is made very aware, in case there is a large case of fraud involved somewhere. The coupon code is transferred to the customer, who then comes to the Paizo site, sees all the awesomeness that is here, and dumps the rest of his paycheck on cool stuff while he's buying his PDF (well, OK, that might be a little more optimistic than realistic). Paizo could even then take advantage of it further by offering something else (a reduced price on an older product PDF, for example, or a mass coupon code like the current PDFLove one) for people who redeem these vendor-supplied PDF codes for the Core Rulebook to be used on Pathfinder Chronicles material, or some other subset of available material.

For those shops that have an internet connection it could even be done live (once the shop is an approved vendor) for customers. For those that don't, they go in and buy their stock from home (or from the public library, or something - anywhere with an internet connection) and take the codes to the store. A template could be made that has a nice printable coupon or something... 10 to a page so printing is not a cost factor, for example (if they buy 10 at a time, of course - otherwise there could either be multiple templates, or just blanks where there is no corresponding coupon). This would provide the opportunity to give instructions on how to redeem the PDF coupon at the Paizo website.

Duplicate codes would have to come from the same shop, so make the vendors responsible for any duplicate codes with the same vendor code. Duplicate codes with different vendor codes... well that either means a system error or someone scammed the codes from a different shop and sold them at their own place multiple times. Chances are good that you could include some kind of licencing agreement as part of the vendor approval which precludes selling codes for resale.

Anyway... off the top of my head... I won't even feel bad if you poke it full of holes. :)

The smvrfing specifically doesn't offend me, but it's no different than any other form of threadcrapping. Even at its worst this thread maintained a pretty high level of civility compared to what happened in the 4e forums when 4e was announced. There was actually some useful information in this thread.

Now I come back and check every however long and there are 20 new posts, with 18 of them being people who can't keep their smvrf in their pants. How is that different from any other form of threadcrapping? It doesn't keep the discussion light at all, it just gets in the way of people actually being able to use the thread for the topic for which it's intended. If there's nothing left to say then it won't be said and the thread will drop off the top of the messageboards. Who made the smvrf brigade into the roaming saviours of the boards so they could come along and *decide* when a thread has run its course and it's time to make it nigh unreadable?

It's no different from Vomit Guy, and he was politely and insistently asked to stop by the mods - except now anyone who can type the special word gets to crap in the thread, too. Just because it says 'smvrf' instead of 'blarrrrrgghghhhhhh!' doesn't change the fact that it's useless and a waste of time to sift through. There is no reason for Gary to leave it in if that's how people are going to abuse it.

Seriously - if you want to have smvrf wars, make a thread for it. No need to pollute other threads with it.

And I've left no bait out there to be bitten on, for the person who suggested such.

For some reason this isn't showing up in Bowker's BooksInPrint catalogue.... it needs to be in there for me to get it ordered at my library... :) Well, technically it doesn't have to be but it makes life so much easier for our acquisitions department.

But in case you have missed it: I consider you a hypocrite, since you tell others to do (ignore posts they do not like) what you won't do yourself. I do hope you will amend your behaviour.

Just so we are clear, I only responded to your original comment because you singled me out for a personal attack. Otherwise I would have ignored your comment like I have so many others in this thread. This thread really needs to go bye-bye.

Maybe the toy should be taken away if you can't play with it responsibly...

FWIW, the example I laid out? Not theoretical. Conglomerate A eventually spun off Division D so that it could focus its business on Divsions B & C.

Also, contrary to what Scott inferred,this poll had more respondants than the first

And for those who want to take a look at the polls, I've screencapped them for you. The top one is the old poll, the bottom is the new poll.

EN World Poll Results

For a quick analysis....

Those playing any amount of 4e (from Slight Changeover to Complete Changeover) went from 50.59% down to 44.83%.

Those who tried 4e but left it behind for an older edition went up from 22.17% to 29.12%.

Those who have never tried 4e dropped slightly from 27.24% to 26.06%.

The biggest move seems to have been people who tried 4e then decided not to continue playing it. All of the "partially 4e" options went down, with those choosing not to play 4e anymore going up 31% and those choosing to play only 4e going up about 8%.

Overall, on a website seemingly quite dedicated to D&D4e, surprising results (to me, at least).

No, I was pointing out that this poll isn't an accurate representation of ENWorld gamers because of its self-selected nature.

Regardless, though, when comparing one poll to another, as long as the methodology remains the same the imprecision is likely to carry from one to the other, thus a statement can be somewhat reliably made when comparing the results relative to one another. The actual percentages (whether it's 50%, 40%, or 60%) could be questionable, but if the same poll is given later then a trend could be seen.

And having fewer people answer a poll doesn't change percentage outcome.

Let's assume hundreds of thousands core books really means hundreds of thousands player handbooks. If we limit the range to 200,000-900,000 (thereby excluding "just over 100,000" and "nearly a million"), we end up with 302,000 - 1,356,000 book equivalents in use.

That assumption is probably the biggest stumbling block to actually figuring anything out from the phrase "The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies are are now in their third printing." Is he talking about each book of the three core rulebooks, or the core rulebooks as a whole? The language would lead me to believe he's speaking of the collection of books known as the core rulebooks since it's consistent with earlier language in the filing:

Excuse me hmarcbower, for quoting your post. This isn't directed at you, but it does refer to assumption of core books sold.

I can't refute anyone's analysis of the numbers, even if I don't believe the results. The math is solid.

But as far as the assumption of how many "hundreds of thousands" results in, I'd think all of you were assuming too high.
If we assume the filings aren't exaggerated (and 101,000 doesn't equal hundreds of thousands) then I would put the number of core books between 200,000 and 400,000. With 260,000ish being my uneducated guess.
Once you start to break 300,000 I'd expect the speaker to want to say "half a million," "nearly half a million," or "about half a million," to strut their stuff and/or brag about it.

But that is just my take on it.

According to the last poll, taken in January I believe, the total percentage of 4e players was only about 50%. A good percentage of us had never even tried it and an increasing number had tried it and dumped it. Tellingly the percentage of 4e players at Enworld had decreased between July and January.

No, the percentage of ENWorld forum-users who chose to respond to the poll decreased between July and January.

Since nobody provided links to the polls, I can't check for myself the actual situation.

If you're providing a lower number of respondents as a reason for a lower percentage... I'm sure you know that math doesn't work that way. :) If Wicht was quoting a wrong stat (drop in percentage versus drop in respondents) and that is what you were correcting, please do enlighten.

Can't this be done through the paizo store? You do it with the subscriptions. I don't see an easy way to transfer this to other stores, so I guess this could be a benefit of getting the book here instead of through Amazon.

Let's assume hundreds of thousands core books really means hundreds of thousands player handbooks. If we limit the range to 200,000-900,000 (thereby excluding "just over 100,000" and "nearly a million"), we end up with 302,000 - 1,356,000 book equivalents in use.

In 1978, the original publisher of the game, TSR, released Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, with its comprehensive and elaborate rules contained in the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide core rulebooks. Since that time, the game's rules have principally been detailed in updated versions of those two rulebooks along with the Monster Manual core rulebook. These three core rulebooks have been revised and released in highly anticipated updated editions over the past two decades. TSR released 2nd editions of the core rulebooks in 1989.
16. In 1997, Wizards acquired TSR and began development of 3rd editions of the core rulebooks. This substantially revised set of core rulebooks was released in 2000. Updated to reflect fan feedback, in 2003, Wizards released revised versions of the 3rd edition core rulebooks (version 3.5). These editions enjoyed worldwide success and formed the basis for hundreds of supplemental D&D role-playing game products over the ensuing decade.
17. After years of additional development, and again inspired in part by player feedback, Wizards released a 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons in 2008. The 4th edition provided for more streamlined game play, plus new options for character creation and interaction. Again, the rules were detailed in the three core 4th edition rulebooks. Release of the rulebooks was highly anticipated, and Wizards sponsored a Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day and coordinated release of the 4th edition with D&D events held around the globe. The core 4th edition rulebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and are now in their third printing.

As an aside, to anyone who has seen these kind of filings before... are they always filled with marketing spin like this one?

It's appreciated that the brains at Paizo have directed some thought toward it, though (and glad I was on the right track as far as the "least bad" method :)

Alas, I doubt there will be an "all-win" situation.

(Didn't want to resurrect that old thread Vic pointed to)

So if I understand the situation correctly, the criteria for having a way to offer a free/reduced price PDF when purchasing a print book would have to be as follows:

• 1. unique to each print book
  
• 2. not easily removable while browsing the book in the bookstore (and shrink-wrap is not an option)
  
• 3. no reliance on the LGS to distribute (for two reasons: one being that it is an extra burden on the store employees and two being that there is nothing to say that one or more of the employees wouldn't abuse the trust placed in them)
  
• 4. can't be redeemed by having a friend's book or a library book (I intend to make sure my library buys all PRPG books starting with the Core Rulebook, btw!)
  
• 5. Can't be too onerous for Paizo to manage - either time-wise or money-wise
  
• 6. Can't be static information that can be leaked/passed on to another person who didn't buy the book and still be used
  

Hmmmmmm.... How about this: Send every print book out with a cardboard envelope that has to be "destroyed" to be opened (so it's obvious that it has been tampered with if such occurs). Inside the envelope, which is securely attached to the inside back cover (similar to how many computer manuals are shipped), place a unique coupon code. Get your web guys on making a fairly simple "gateway" page that people can go to, enter in their coupon code (which then gets compared against a simple database of the codes that exist), verifies the code has not been used before (in which case you notify the user that the code has already been used and they should contact their Paizo customer service for resolution - by this point you have the user's information as they need to register on the site in order to access the PDF code entry page, let's say, so you can stop them from trying an unreasonable number of codes), and generates a cart item with the reduced price (free might be too generous... and you'd have to recoup the increased costs of including such a device in each print book) for them to personalize at their leisure once payment is received.

I think that satisfies the criteria I came up with above (but I really have NO IDEA about how much it would cost to have a small cardboard envelope stuffed with a unique code glued to the inside back cover of each print book) - but I don't know if I've covered all the criteria to satisfy the people who need to be convinced. :)

I did a little comparison of what it costs me to buy from Paizo, FLGS, and Amazon in another thread. For the price of just the Core Rulebook at my FLGS I can get both the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary at Amazon with free shipping and no tax. At my FLGS I also have to pay tax. If I buy from Paizo, I have to pay shipping charges to Canada.

As has been said many times before: blame Amazon for the demise of the FLGS, not the producers of the material who also make it available as a PDF.

Only trouble is that is the cool perk Paizo uses to generate subscription sales... :) I think it would be neat, too, but I can't see a benefit for Paizo in that scenario. They'd lose money for getting it sold through a FLGS (to whom they would sell it for less than they would me, for example), and they'd lose the opportunity to sell a complementary PDF (or perhaps get a subscription for that benefit).

What's killing FLGS is Amazon, IMO. I can preorder the Core Rulebook for $38.78 (Canadian) from them. Even if I order straight from Paizo, I am looking at $49.99 US, which converts to about $61.26 CAD plus shipping. At my FLGS I expect the price will be somewhere in the $65 to $70 range. If I also pick up the Bestiary at Amazon.ca, my total is $69.80 and I get free shipping. That's a significant savings over buying at a FLGS that can't be ignored - it's basically a "free" Bestiary. Or instead of buying the Bestiary from Amazon, I could probably get the PDF of the core rulebook (which will be very handy for quick searches) for the difference from Paizo.

Sorry... my math brain kicked in and I had to figure out just how much this is going to cost me (because I *am* buying everything lined up for the Pathfinder RPG... just need to figure out how and where. :)

It took about 15 seconds of web surfing; they're all still out there, and I don't even know "where to look" I just know "how to run a Google search".

_If_ this was an attempt to actively attempt to stop piracy, it's not going to work. People who pirate will get the material regardless of what companies attempt to do over their DRM. Frankly, that's been the problem with DRM all along. First there was Napster, then KaZaa, now BitTorrent, next year it'll be something brand new. All it takes is one person with the free time and drive to pirate something and it's out and about. Frankly, there is little stop djinn, it's already out of the bottle and it's not going back any time soon.

Jason, I hope that they take your first post and paste it into their Strategic Plan. :)

One of the most notorious posters is Titanium Dragon.

Moreover, getting angry at WotC is wrong. WotC isn't the company which screwed you. Paizo, drivethrurpg, ect. are the companies which screwed you.

THEY promised you a service, and sold you that service. It isn't WotC's fault that this was not a service those companies could promise you.

taig wrote:

I have a feeling that it's someone who doesn't know Paizo and saw their name prominently featured on the "cease and desist" list. The unnatural conclusion being that Paizo, a competitor, encouraged the illegal file sharing. Since RPGNow/DriveThruRPG isn't a direct competitor, then they can't be blamed.

No, it seems to be raw, pure hatred of Paizo for daring to compete with WotC. There are three posters who take every opportunity to throw dirt at Paizo with hate speech. The moderators already warned the crowd a few times that everyone should honor the CoC and be respectful, but why these three posters which are the epitome of unrespectfulness are not already banned is beyond me.

I wouldn't be surprised if the above-mentioned rowdy few weren't plants. (And I don't mean in the punny way, Mairkurion ;)

I think I will let you guys know something. I have seen most of wod, wotc and other material on filesharing sites. But I have never seen pathfinder stuff on there. It's not because you can't distribute it (you can easily erase the watermark), it's because we purchase it legally. But WotC material is up there all the time.

What does that say to you?

Also, thanks for the support Erik and Vic. You guys are awesome, and you write quality material.

That was my workaround. Turns out it was easier than b*!%!ing about not being able to use PayPal. ;)

Excellent. If we ever try to ship something, and your card is empty, we'll send you an e-mail letting you know it was declined; everything will just be held until you reload the card.

They didn't mention it, but I can see that it is probably on its way.

For those that don't want to use a real credit card online (me) or don't have a credit card and have the great fortune to find yourselves in Canada, check out Money Mart. They have MasterCard cards that you load up ahead of time and then use when you want to. It's a real MasterCard for all intents and purposes, but there's no credit involved. Drop into the store, put any amount on it you want, and then use it til it's gone. I think there's a monthly fee of $8 or something similar, but if your balance is 0 then they don't charge you anything. So load up exactly what you need (or close to it) and use it. When you need it again, load it up some more and then use it. Avoids monthly charges and gives a workable solution to shopping online at places that don't accept PayPal or other non-credit-card solutions.

That was my workaround. Turns out it was easier than b*@!@ing about not being able to use PayPal. ;)

Thanks for the help Vic, Cosmo, et al.

I don't work for Money Mart - never even used them except for one time to send money to the states... just happened to be looking around for something like this. I know the debit cards in the US have worked like this for years (the ones with a Visa/MC logo on them) since my wife is American, but the concept hasn't made its way to Canadian debit cards. Apparently MuchMusic also has a prepaid mastercard/visa.

Thanks for the directions, Vic. :)

Hrm. Not available in Canada, apparently (it doesn't show up in my Profile and the customer support person confirmed that it's only for U.S. accounts).

Someone made a good suggestion in that other thread, Cosmo - allow Paypal for instant-supply items like PDFs. That way the transaction is over and done with, no need to keep the authorization open or reopen it.

That thread is also more than a year and a half old... perhaps someone should check in with PayPal again and see if their policies have changed to accomodate your business model yet.

Anyway, I guess I'll figure out something.

I know this is an older thread, but I thought I'd work some necromancy on it. :)

Where in your paypal account do you set up this pseudo credit card number? I'm looking around for it, and can't find it.

Of course the easiest way would be for them to use PayPal as a valid way to pay for stuff from the Paizo site... I really can't believe they don't take it directly.

This is awesome - congrats to both companies for this great partnership. WWG produces by far the best 3d paper modelling stuff and Paizo produces by far the best adventures.... how can this not go well?

It'll be a long time before I get to Legacy of Fire (we're just starting CotCT), but that will give me lots of time to build the terrain in anticipation... :)

PS: Hey Webmonster, check this out: CoolIris Your Site. It'd be great for collections of photos like in this item description. :)

Strangely enough this just came up for us last week. We decided on-the-fly that since exhausted was worse than fatigued that you couldn't do something when exhausted which you couldn't do when fatigued.

Probably best to clean it up, of course, but it is pretty straightforward to figure out. :)

I find this an odd exercise. First the OP acknowledges that nobody but spellcasters really use Concentration (though there is opportunity to do so, most DMs don't, and there are some of the newer classes that use it from ToB - a questionable resource at best when looking at core 3.5), then goes on to find new uses for the skill as some kind of justification to keep it. It is nonsensical. :)

Concentration, as a CON based skill, is silly. Almost nothing that it is said to do is based on a physical effect, it's almost all mental. Most are also much more suited to a Will save than a skill check.

Good riddance to Concentration as far as I'm concerned. It was an anomalous skill that never really fit. To generate new uses for the skill when the system is trying to consolidate skills down a bit (this isn't GURPS, after all), seems counter to the direction 3.P is headed.

I'm all for moving "spellcasting concentration" into the Spellcraft skill (though I think Spellcraft should add whatever primary casting stat the character uses, not just INT).

That said, I would like to know how people who want to keep the Concentration skill justify it being based on CON. Pretty much every example of how it might be used is an exercise in mental focus, not physical resistance. Enlighten me. :)

I gotta disagree here. The spell ought to be powerful since you're burning up a 3rd level spell slot and investing a feat to make it work. 1d6+5 plus up to half the roll for a potential of 6 to 14 points penalty for 10 rounds is roughly equal to hold person in save or suck spells, only you have a hit roll instead of a save.

Make it empowered and maximized and you're looking at a greater investment of resources, so it should be even more effective (takes up a 6th level slot now). Is that better than circle of death or about the same?

IMO the reduced duration does a fine job in balancing the spell and should not be tinkered with further.

A fair number of DMs however prefer the easier route of just nerfing the spells, or in some cases, eliminating them entirely.

Exactly. Its just easier than making up a half dozen new spells which may themselves be broken or introduce other unforeseen combinations resulting in even greater headaches. Its just easier to nerf or kill the offending parties. If they could get fixed in the official source then thats one less house rule my players have to remember.

Well, this is rapidly devolving into the exact arguments that I thought it would.

I am well aware of the problems of scry/teleport and the issues it causes in game. There are other ways to solve this other than changing two spells that have been a core component of the game for a long time. Spells that counter this tactic are being considered (as well as altering a few existing spells).

If you have something else to contribute to this discussion, other than arguments about scry/teleport, feel free to post them. Otherwise, leave this one alone please.

I think that minkscooter made a very good point about it being more difficult to make characters if all of the information you need isn't in the same place or at least in order of necessity (the beginning of the book flows well right now, unless you're making a wizard where you need to flip to near the back to figure out your school powers).

I think the classes chapter can still be "clean" while incorporating the information specific to each class.

I'd rather see Teleport require you having BEEN to the site instead of just SEEING the site. Then we have a reason for exploring the unknown continent.