hogarth's page

Been there, done that. I usually end up getting hosed. As a player, I always say I'll never do it in a game again, but then I keep playing characters that would take the chance in a heartbeat.

My problem is that I see the other PCs getting good stuff and I think "One draw can't hurt..."

Yes. Yes, it can.

Step 1: Cast Grease on his +5 greatsword.
Step 2: When he drops it, grab it and run like hell!
Step 3: Profit.

In summary, I feel that Angel Wings is a raw deal compared to what other classes receive. How do you all feel about this?

I feel that it's at least ten times better than Angelic Blood, at any rate.

I like what Steve Geddes and the others are saying. Rather than taking offense (which I understand), keep it in-game. Instead of moving the monk 40 and arguing, move him 40 feet and describe how every step is perfectly placed, how he strides forward with practised economy of motion.

As a player, I'd then be paying more attention to what you're telling me about this guy than counting the steps he's taking.

I agree: I think there's a gap between what you're describing and what the players are seeing. If you describe a guy moving forward in "a blur of speed", for instance, then the players won't be surprised if the guy is moving faster than a regular human. And if you describe a wraith's "eyes glimmering with malevolent intelligence", then they'll realise that some undead are smart. Etc., etc.

I would probably attack unconscious PCs only if it made no sense to do otherwise (e.g. in Sammy T's example, it wouldn't make sense for the bad guy to disadvantage himself in order to avoid hitting unconscious PCs with area attacks).

Robertson is apparently confusing D&D with WoW -- the latter is a video game, and there are examples of people doing stuff like not sleeping or going to work or feeding their kids, because they got too into it.

I think he's talking about the Intellivision game. ;-)

I dream of a day when faction points are gone completely, and all factions can live in peace and harmony.

Imagine there's no factions
I wonder if you can
No freeing slaves or macguffins
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all pathfinders, sharing all the loot...

Tamago wrote:

I think my favourite bit is Merisiel's reaction to the treasure horde. Wheeeeeeee! :-D

Mine would be Seltyiel getting pulled back.

Friggin' caryatid columns...

I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of the philosophy "it's okay if X is better than Y because only bad guys will take X". Ugh.

upon reflection, I suppose it's not really his crafting so much as he's really REALLY good at exploiting the rules, especially with magic.

That's what I suspected. Taking Craft Wondrous Item is a symptom of him being a power-gamer (or whatever your preferred term is), not the cause.

Does anyone else have any SUCCESS stories so we can make the first-ever positive rant thread?

I have several success stories about joining a group that wasn't a good fit, bowing out gracefully, and then later finding a group that's just about perfect for me.

I don't have any success stories about joining a group that wasn't a good fit and trying to change it from within, however.

I believe the Blog that informed the FAQ indicated the extra tricks per higher intelligence.

Not in the blog itself, but in the comments to the blog.

I'd think a non-combat trained dog would rather flee that defend itself if attacked.

Would it make a difference if it was a wolf instead of a dog? If not, can I tell that to the GM every time our party gets attacked by wild animals? "Sorry, they don't have Combat Training so they'd rather run away."

;-)

How does sharing a language factor into Handle Animal checks? (less common of a factor for Animal Companions though a gnome druid or any druid who has cast Speak With Animals could be in combat and speaking with their companion)

You beat me to it. Speak with Animals says that a friendly animal "may do some favor or service for you". Does that supercede the trick/Handle Animal rules? What about intelligent animals who have taken the Linguistics skill: would they similarly be willing to perform favors or services?

What about animals acting in self-defense: are they also limited by the type and number of tricks they know? It doesn't seem right that a wolf without the Attack trick would never bite anyone, but on the other hand it doesn't seem right that a wolf without the Flank trick can flank on its own initiative but not when ordered to attack.

Meh. Pulling out my old school cred again: There were rules lawyers back in the day. There are rules lawyers now. There were hack and slash gamers then. And now. There were Monty Haul gamers then. And now. There were roleplaying prima donnas then. And now.

I'm suspicious of any claim that there's been some vast social change. The rules are clearer now, but there are a lot more of them. Leaving more for rules lawyers to work with. And there's the internet to magnify anything into a flame war.

It's an indisputable FACT that I hear much more complaining and whining about D&D on the internet now than I did 30 years ago. The inescapable conclusion is that people are whinier and more entitled. Q.E.2.

My worst house rule story (I've told it before, so bear with me)...

I was starting a new Pathfinder campaign with a group of people I didn't know. Two minutes into the game, one of the PCs was being attacked by a goblin. The goblin hit his AC, but the player asked: "Can I make a Reflex save to avoid the attack?" The GM answered: "Sure, why not!"

So after two minutes of playing, we had already created a brand new rule that doubled the amount of die rolls needed for every attack. I winced, but I thought to myself: "Maybe it'll get better."

It didn't.

What I'm saying is--is it reasonable to expect players to understand when they are outmatched and to expect them to run away. I only ask because I've had situations where the characters were obviously completely outmatched from the very beginning of the encounter--had options to run and simply chose not to.

I would argue that it was probably not completely obvious that they were outmatched.

As a GM, don't be afraid to literally say: "Seriously guys, if you attack this guy, you will die. You have no chance of beating him." Big hints are not enough!

For better or for worse, the most appropriate time to fix a bunch of problems is when you're writing a brand new edition of the game. So be careful what you ask for...

;-)

I'm going to get in on the ground floor and claim that I wrote most of the Pathfinder Second Edition bard.

Buy him a teeny, tiny Headband of Intellect.

Here's one (although it's an old thread):
Any possibility of a large vinyl map of Golarion?

Here's a guy who printed his own:
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Poster Map Folio#172

I could have sworn there was another, more recent thread on the subject, though. One that specifically referred to Gale Force 9.

Evidently this player had been punished so mercilessly by a string of DMs for perceived "metagaming" that he was now basically unable to play the game, he was so worried about it all the time.

Not to mention that there are people who reason: "If I deliberately make enough terrible in-character decisions, that will prove that I'm a ROLEplayer, not a ROLLplayer!"

(I wish this message board had an eye-rolling smiley so that I could succinctly express my opinion of that line of reasoning.)

hogarth wrote:

I can't tell if you agree with my point or not, since you keep asking whether the GM should explicitly mention DCs or not (an issue I don't feel very strongly about, frankly).

To be honest, I'm not completely averse to sharing DCs [..]

Uh...I guess I better bow out here...

The original anime fox guy, yo.

I was sure you were thinking of this guy.

Every-time we almost get TPK but then to add humiliation to injury he pull his punches! I feel that at least he should suffer the consequences of his actions (unbalanced fights) by making the TPK happen.

If hating this phenomenon is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

Seriously, I hate, hate, hate when GMs do this.

Again, if you're a Druid, you don't do the Teleport thing.

Except for Transport via Plants of course (another level 6 druid spell) and, to a lesser extent, Tree Stride.

I refuse to use these on account that they look so stupid. Anyone know what sword in real life this is suppose to resemble?

Nair temple sword

My understanding is the same as yours:

In situation #1, the undead minions can use Aid Another to help the wizard grapple, but they can't grapple the fighter directly.

In situation #2, the other PCs can use Aid Another to help the first PC reverse or break the grapple, but they can't grapple the eel directly.

Does it make sense? Not really, but the 3.5E multiple grappler rules weren't a whole lot better.

I hate the way the chase mechanics work. I would avoid scenarios if there were warning labels that said "this adventure uses the chase mechanics". Really.

Let me be the first to say: The chase rules are great, as long as you ignore the chase rules!

Vug moves over to Valgrim's corpse. "I knew your hot-headedness would get you in trouble some day, Valgrim," she sobs. "Well...on the bright side, it's not every day that I get to see the inside of a dwarf. I better not waste the opportunity. F-feres, does he need all of this stuff to be brought back to life?" Vug holds up a link of Valgrim's intestines as she rummages in her backpack for a pen and paper to make some sketches. "You never know when I might want to make a clone or something."

Amen. In my experience, only the best home-brewed adventures can compare with the average adventure path installment.

This didn't last long though as even the latter 1E books (and into 2E and on) suffered from poor quality (I'm looking at you UA).

Curse you, 1E Unearthed Arcana!

I want it to matter if I make a mistake. I want there to be consequences for failure.

Consider the first movie in a movie series, like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

In theory, it "matters" if Indiana Jones or Harry Potter makes a mistake. And yet there's no chance of them dying in the first installment, since you know it's the first installment of many featuring the same character. So how can they be exciting or suspenseful? Well, the excitement and suspense shift from "Will they survive?" to "How will they survive?"

From my point of view, when I hear the beginning of an interesting story, I usually like to hear how that story will end.

One effect of random encounters is that players can't be sure they won't have another encounter later that day. If they go Nova on encounter X, they'll have a hard time with encounter X+1 and (if really unlucky) encounter X+2.

Right -- that's the BAD thing about random encounters: they encourage the players to go from having a 15 minute adventuring day to having a 10 minute adventuring day (in order to hold back some resources in case of random encounters).

I think that Wish spells, like most things in d20-based games, have only become more and more unmanageable from the attempt to hard-code everything about it.

And I feel, on the contrary, that specifying that a Wish spell can do certain things safely is a giant leap forward for Wish-kind.

I'm not sure how having fantasy Africans living in fantasy Africa is racist.

Is it racist that real life Africans live in real life Africa?

Firstly – The encounters are ridiculously tough.

With regards to the more recent seasons, I tend to agree with you. But prepare to be bombarded with people saying "there's no such thing as a tough encounter, that's a failure on the GM's part or the player's part, etc., etc." :-(

...this one goes to 11.

The party is using sound tactics, which should produce some easy victories. Their enemies may also learn from those victories, adopting countermeasures and adding wrinkles to forestall the party's actions.

I think you're missing the point a bit. There are spells that can lead to easy victories that are tolerable because they make fights shorter (e.g. hold monster). The problem (well, I think it's a problem) is with spells that make fights longer, countermeasures or no countermeasures.

The RotRL should be the new edition using PFRPG rules and not the older version using 3.5 rules.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems odd to say (paraphrased) that running the adventure path using massive house rules and with the GM rewriting every encounter would be just fine, but the slight difference between the 3.5 and the PFRPG version would not be fine.

Or am I misinterpreting things?

hogarth wrote:

If this happened once (treasure consisting of an item that is only valuable to one particular bad guy), it wouldn't bother me. If this happened on a repeated basis, the eye-rolling would begin and/or my next character would be a Rat King anti-paladin...

I would say first time in probably eight years.

Then Thornborn hit the nail on the head: the item is worth more, but only to Rat Kings, so the party can go looking for another Rat King or not, as the case may be.

I would dial back the overall level of civilization from the 1600s-1700s to the 1200s, say. I think having so much settled/urbanized land cuts back on some of the exploring the unknown ("Here There Be Dragons") fun of D&D.

If everyone that played this game had an above average vocabulary, it wouldn't be as necessary.

Roughly 0% of the arguments I've seen have centered over the meaning of a word like "polyzygotic" or "funambulism" and roughly 100% of the arguments I've seen have centered over the meaning of words like "is" or "that".

:-)

My two cents:

If your argument in favour of a particular interpretation of the rules involves the words "Webster's dictionary defines this word as...", you've already lost the battle. ;-)

I'm also not crazy about the idea that the Pathfinder Society is some sort of paramilitary organization. When the campaign setting first came out, it sounded a lot more like a loose affiliation of like-minded individuals (like an explorer's club) and that's how I treat it when I'm GMing.

I have a fair amount of arena fight experience from 3.5 (the Core Coliseum forum on the WotC boards).

My two cents:

I agree with Mattastrophic's sentiment: If you're regularly eating up play time at the table explaining your PC, that's bad form. Similarly, blasting stinky farts at the game table is PSF-legal, but I wouldn't encourage it.

Try wild shaped feral combat style, Janni Rush, Vital Strike. Even extremely experienced GMs take 15 minutes to look it all up and actually believe that it all stacks. It just doesn't sound like it should.

Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't the combat bit of Janni Rush require a charge, whereas Vital Strike doesn't work on a charge? That took me three minutes, so there are 12 minutes left to explain it. :-)

And when it did, people would cast defensively. That DC is paltry.

Say what now? In my experience, 15 + 2x spell level is a pretty hefty DC (about 50%-60% chance of success for your highest level spell, say).

I need to take Acrobatics? Or spend feats on Dodge and Mobility?

You don't need to. Cowering at the back of the party and sucking up the occasional AoO should be pretty effective most of the time.

I waited until I got home from work before googling "stretched out tramp stamp".