knightnday's page

Looks nifty! Cannot wait!

I'll add my voice to those that like this book and the new format. Just got it in the mail yesterday and poured over it. Very nice job overall.

yay! Thanks!

I imagine the reason for the black is so that the piece of art has a nice background to play off of. Some might look better against white, but some bright coloured shirts might not look quite as well.

yay! Come on payday!

knightnday wrote:

stuart haffenden wrote:

I wouldn't allow a "scent check" to detect foes while sleeping. Since when did smells wake you up?

If it were that easy to detect smells people wouldn't die from smoke inhalation etc while asleep.

Maybe they failed their scent check? Plus, think of all the commercials (especially for coffee) showing people getting woke up by the smell of cooking or the rich fresh scent of coffee. I'd allow it, with a modifier or two.

That's just crazy talk right there man, those adverts are just trying to sell you stuff, its not like it actually happens in the real world, I mean, that would be stupid, as if a Birdman Sorcerer would actually wake up to the smell of coffee...I think you need to separate what's real and what's fantasy ;)

Wouldn't be the first time someone's told me that! But seriously, I've woken up to the smells of someone cooking in the house and I'm hardly a trained adventurer. Someone who is living on their wits and luck out in the woods picking up on some odd smell .. not too far-fetched.

Thank you for the detailed run down on the various minis.

I wouldn't allow a "scent check" to detect foes while sleeping. Since when did smells wake you up?

If it were that easy to detect smells people wouldn't die from smoke inhalation etc while asleep.

Maybe they failed their scent check? Plus, think of all the commercials (especially for coffee) showing people getting woke up by the smell of cooking or the rich fresh scent of coffee. I'd allow it, with a modifier or two.

To number 7, this set includes 4 different goblin sculpts, combine with last sets 4 (2 sculpts with 2 paints.) Plus a myriad of animals and insects. So while the number in a case isn't necessarily huge, one is accumulating a fair amount of DMable minis over the various sets.

As much fun as it might be I don't think we need a set dedicated to We Be Goblins, replete with goblins, horses, dogs and spiders.

Dunno about that. We've had a lot of comments with people wanting hordes of goblins or other humanoids. I'd bet that you could sell packs of 20 goblins or orks or whatever with relative ease. I'd find myself needing more hordes of certain creatures than others, and while the paper minis are nice, the pre-painted are certainly more preferable (at least to me.)

You used the words "debate" and "discussion". I'm not sure if you know what those words mean.

You're trying to bludgeon everyone around: the devs, the moderation, the people who don't agree with you, the people who agree with you and the people who don't give a flip into accepting that your opinion about Monks is a fact and your ideas are the One True Way of fixing the class.

And frankly, I also have that strange tingle that when and if any changes to the class will come, you won't back down because you got too high already. I'd love to be mistaken, but after years of prowling various gaming communities, I've grown to be slightly cynical.

This pretty much establishes what the problem is. It isn't a matter of dozens of posts to 'fix' the monk but instead just an unrelenting tide of repeated talking points that drown out any discussion. A lot of space could be saved by just linking to the previous iteration of several of these arguments; they aren't changing from the last six times they were tossed up.

I think the devs get it that some people want changes. Will repeating the same talking points change minds or get something done faster, or will it end up irritating the very people you'd like to make some changes?

No one has to read any threads, this is very true. But badgering - and to be clear, many posts come across as badgering - is a poor way to get people to listen to you with a clear head.

While the 12 or so pages of back and forth has been interesting, my question for those who are upset about Paizo 'punishing' those whose purchases have ended up on torrent or other sites: what is your idea about what they should be doing?

While it is great to say that they should follow up on every case and not just go after the person who is named in the PDF, it seems that it would get mighty expensive to do all that legal work, and that cost will come back to the rest of the customers in higher prices.

Saying, "Sorry, Bob Smith, but we found your PDFs being shared around the world and we are cutting you off" seems fairly reasonable. Yeah, it may not be great for Mr. Smith, but I'd betcha a dollar that if you let one person off with a "my drive was stolen/computer was hacked/ninjas broke in and stole my files" excuse, every single person caught would say the same thing. Best to just set a line and enforce it rather than wade through excuses and evidence that may be rather hard to prove.

Laschoni wrote:

Dark_Mistress wrote:

One thing I am really hoping is in this book. Well things I should say. I would like to see culture aspects to help bring them to life. Common forms of dress, any forms of address for nobles etc that is common to them(like in Russia you had a Czar instead of a king), common types of foods(since most cultures develop their own types of foods) just anything to help make that ethnic group/s come to life and stand apart. So when PC's go there it feels different and not just cause the people have funny names and or look a little different.

+1 to this.

+2 to this.

+3 as well. This is exactly the sort of thing that is not only helpful but adds wonders to immersion.

Nifty. Baba Yaga and Princesses. These could be very interesting!

Just got it and looking forward to reading it in detail. Thank you so much for the issue!

As others have mentioned, the Organized Play keeps me coming back. As to why Pathfinder?

• Rules are familiar (and IMHO, improved)
  
• Golarion is a fun sandbox
  
• Community is active and support from the owners/designers/developers is amazingly open.
  
• Support of the community is excellent and not just online. I mean look at their history of recent hires, (not to mention freelancers) they are us. Between that and the embracing of the OGL that allows all these small publishers (and mooks like me) to write/sell/post new ideas and content, it is amazing.
  
• Selling those same 3pp product on the site. I can buy Rite Publishing, Super Genius Games, Frog God Games, etc. right here. The end impression is that Paizo doesn't see them as competition as much as collaberators. Heck, even 5 years in, new 3pp is still working its way into the official adventure paths!
  

This entire list pretty much sums up my thoughts. The world is engaging, the content from Paizo as well as 3PP gives a vast array of fluff and crunch for virtually anything we'd want to do.

He is Neutral Good and describes seeing the Animal Companion as a pet. Not quite a party member, but more than just a weapon.

He has brought up that there should be some sort of penalty.

It should not be losing all druid abilities, since this is the first time we've dealt with it.

We're also discussing the possibility of raising the companion. But I think that a full Raise Dead is a bit expensive. I'm leaning more toward a Reincarnate (but it still comes back as a wolf). Its a monetary penalty, but also sets a precedent so he can Reincarnate again if (when) it dies.

Out of curiosity, how did the other 4-5 wolves/animals die? Does the player use them for target practice or otherwise get them killed? You've said that he thinks of them as pets and more than weapons, but from the one incident that we've heard of, it doesn't seem that is the case. Good, Neutral or Evil, expending your companion over and over again and not getting any gain from it doesn't seem the most intelligent idea.

MMCJawa wrote:

No dog humanoids, although I think there have been hints that something like the Cynocephali exist in Golarion, and one of the Paizo bigwigs has suggested that such a creature is likely to get statted up one of these days.

Ooh, I think I'd like to see that. Especially if they decided to give them a small nation of their own and go with the whole 'Kingdom of Macumeran' or whatever the heck its name was from those old medieval books.

Ah nifty. We'll wait patiently for that then, as well as muck about with the race builder stuff in the meantime. Thanks!

OK, a player has sent me in to ask: with the cat/bird/fox/etc folk in the ARG, is there a definitive "dog" folk race? Other than gnolls, they could not think of any and I cannot recall any that are Golarion specific.

edited to add: I should specify: dog-like races that are appropriate for players to take as a race.

Very nice post with a lot of truth. What is written in the books is a starting point, and unless Paizo has a lot more resources than I think, they cannot afford to come to everyone's house to mandate play. And yes, there are a lot of people that are more interested in showing how smart they are or breaking things and then jumping up and down and saying it is "broken" than playing.

Stebehil wrote:

Dinkster the Dinkmeister wrote:

In the Immortal words of Freddie Mercury

"I want it all, I want it all, I want it all,
And I want it NOW!!!"

The collector in me is going flat out knucking futz.

Yeah, I´d love to go that way, but my wife is not happy with *even more* books, and shelf space is limited...

My wife has always rationalized it this way: I'm not spending money at a casino, at the race track, or at some place where committed persons probably shouldn't frequent. So when I tell her I'm gaming, she knows where to find me; and when I buy more books, it's pretty obvious. YMMV.

This is remarkably similar to my wife's feelings on it. Plus, she's a player in the group so she profits from the books as well!

Yes! I love some winter theme and Irrisen as well. Is it December yet?

Another Christmas present to get!

Andrew Christian wrote:

Deanoth wrote:

Andy please read the rest of my posts before jumping to assumptions that you are accusing me of.

I am not going to sit here and debate/argue how and why some people may or may not be able to go to conventions for what ever reason. It may be by choice and for some it might not. So please read the rest of my replies and comment on them too.
I am not casting negative aspersions on others as you would see and have even gone so far to say as much in one form or other. My goal is to seek change to make PFS better for all involved.

So please, please stop with the comments about how choice is involved here unless it is that we can choose to join together to seek change to make PFS what it could actually be. It can be better and I seek that goal with all my comments.

I did read your other posts.

I don't agree with them.

That doesn't make me cliquish.

So you do not think that we should make PFS better and come up with a way to get boons out to others that can't make it to conventions at all?

That is what I am trying to achieve. A system... not guaranteed success on getting one but a chance. A system that will draw more people to play more locally as much as go to conventions because you can double your chance by going to a con to get a boon then too.

BTW I never once mentioned you were being cliquish. Disagreeing with someone does not make you so.

I believe in this thread, or one of those that were very similar, there was a discussion to open some boons to smaller get togethers with a certain number of tables. That seemed a functional suggestion and one that could go a long way towards helping people achieve their goal of obtaining one of these boons.

The problem seemed to be that people were unhappy with any solution that involved them having to go into a place with "smell dirty gamers" in order to play. That seems to make it pretty hard to get people involved and yet maintain some semblance of a system on handing out boons.

Thirty-six posts just on my commute?

I'll just put myself on the record saying that I'm solidly in the bottom half of the socioeconomic spectrum, have an infinitesimally small chance of ever getting a major boon (such as a race boon), and DON'T feel excluded/left-out/marginalized/cheated/gypped/whatever.

Exactly. I've not gotten to go to any con or organized game in quite some time and don't feel like there should be some special dispensation made for me or people like me. Sometimes, you don't get everything and that's ok. That's the other part of the "It's a game" comment that people have been tossing about.

What I'm saying though is making stuff entirely exclusive to cons doesn't make sense, because you're allowing some people to have more fun than others by virtue of circumstances that others may not share (financial, time, etc.) which, outside of very specific circumstances, they're not actually able to catch up to. The comparison that stuff isn't fair of in real life doesn't make sense, because things like economic distribution ARE zero-sum games. Contrast that with pathfinder, someone else playing a funny race because they went to a con doesn't get to have any less fun than someone playing the same funny race because they spent Prestige or something opening up access to it. In both cases they're rewards, but one doesn't assume it's reasonable to place a financial burden on someone for the sake of a fantasy game.

But some people are, by what you are saying, having more fun (for a given value of fun and more) by going to the convention, by participating with specific GMs, specific adventures you may not have access to, networking with a wide assortment of players/GMs/devs/etc, and so forth.

It isn't always a matter of fair or not, it's sometimes a matter of timing and participation. If you didn't get in on an adventure, you missed whatever was offered, from XP to treasure to boons, simply from not being there. Should whatever was earned at the con be sent out to everyone out of some sense of fairness?

As many have stated, the new guidelines will be here soon and then we'll know where we stand. The book hasn't been out all that long on top of it, and it feels like some people seem adamant to try to force a decision before things are ready. Take a deep breath and wait, and perhaps frog people and fox people and humans and gnomes and whatever will be here before you know it.

The more curious part of the OP's post is "a new innovative PC race that is Pathfinder exclusive". I wonder what they are aiming for?

As for gnomes, they seem pretty popular in our games as well.

Nifty. Added to the want list.

If Pazio wants to give out boons at conventions to reward palyers that can attend conventions that is fine with me but they should not restrict

big things like races to convention only things. That takes away the value of the ARG that I paid $40 for which is more important to pazio
rewarding convention goers or people that will spend on average $50 a month on their products and not get full value for thier money because Mike and Mark want to pump convention attendance. Do not lock races or classees to convention only things. There are many things that Mike and mark can give out for boons other than races. Give out a on time stat bump a unique magic item.

But it doesn't take any value away from your book. The book still works for play, still has value, still supplies ideas, still is good for any game you play and perhaps con play if/when things are approved.

I'll add another no vote. Doesn't seem to be much of a problem, and as someone up thread mentioned, this (like other problems) can be short circuited with a GM call of "no".

The Atan from Edding's books were another martial artist that didn't seem to necessarily follow the Kung Fu theater style as well and interacted with armored knights and the like. If I recall correctly, one of them tossed around the knights and was openly critical of their styles, and as a race they were frightening. In fact, their King ran up and jumped off a cliff onto the head of a big demon/devil creature. They were fast, strong, could rip out your spine with their bare hands and didn't wear kung fu outfits.

Don't call them monks if the name bothers you, reskin the background or whatever to make them well trained fighters who learned blah blah blah to fight the horrors of the world. Learn to embrace them rather than hate!

Whee! Book is here straight out of Paizo's hands. Fast, fast, fast delivery I might add. Now to get distracted for several hours.

One example of a monk co-existing with westernish middle ages setting can be found in the novel Witchblood by Will Shetterly. The main character is a martial artist (just called artists in the book) who has to deal with a castle siege and magic.

The crux of this (yes I was indeed jealous that Skeld used "crux" in his opening sentence) is that you are an articulate person while others are not. One could then theorize that linguistic talent is a sign of intelligence, but there are certainly many other forms of intelligence that often come with poor communication skills that give this theory far too little credibility.

Generally speaking, it's difficult to view the world outside of your own abilities, but that's the trick to understanding people. It may be a challenge, but we can't assume that others with poor linguistic skills are unintelligent or not creative simply because they are lacking in a way that we do not comprehend.

While the use of profanity may or may not be an indicator of relative intelligence or communication skill, the perhaps deliberate misunderstanding of "Please do not curse while you are here" may be a sign that they have trouble understanding simple concepts and a lack of empathy for those around them.

Since we only have the OP's side of this we aren't sure how much he was cursing. Did the hosts overreact about a single term or was it a Dennis Leary-worthy rant of epic proportions every time they opened their mouth? Those with children are often more sensitive to this sort of thing, but they are not the only ones with a problem about it; my wife's sister just doesn't like profanity at all.

The ability to use profanity isn't anything special nor is it a sign of intelligence or maturity in my opinion; I hear children on the playground that are quite proficient. Most of the arguments I've heard about the "right" to curse are more centered around the person not wanting to be told what to do rather than some defense of the words. My kids know that those are words I don't want them to use, and those I've played with in my home are polite enough to ramp down the language and I thank them for it.

Other people have sore spots about talk of gore or sex or politics or religion or whatever, and it would seem that if your hosts ask you to not use that language or let a topic go, the polite thing would be to not do whatever it is so that we can get back to the more important thing, playing!

As far as the food and milk goes, I've always cooked for my players or at least had food around for them at my home, but the vast majority of those people were close friends. Even then, they'd ask before riffling through the cabinets or fridge for something. The milk may not seem like a big deal to many, but if the OP's host had children or infants, you are taking a portion of those kid's daily food. $2-4 here and there adds up and means an extra trip to the store to replace it as well.

If you're a big milk drinker, or other beverage for that matter, bringing extras to replace what you're consuming is a polite thing to do. I've seen people down a case of soda in a gaming session, or an entire bottle of booze or whatever. It isn't cheap, and while the host is polite enough to provide food and drinks doesn't mean it's your obligation to take as much as you can shove in your body.

The OP was a poor guest. We only have his side of this and don't know how many times or how vocal the host or others at the gaming table were. For all we know, it was a constant point of conversation that the OP blew off because it wasn't important. I've noticed that many that post on the Internet tend to gloss over the points that make them look bad.

It's like that in a lot of subcultures I had a goth friend who would say things along similar lines. I ended up believing your not a real goth unless you have sacked Rome.

From what I've seen from online and tabletop gaming, this is pretty much the truth. Every subculture has those that are at the far extremes, where every single character has to be whatever their special need is, be it furry, a particular sexuality, a particular monster, drug, what-have-you.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with it, but it can become tedious after a while for others in the group. And when that is writ large in game books, it can make folks think "Those People" are forcing their views on their hobby.

With anything, people can like whatever they want and game however they choose. Everyone just has to remember not to cram their particular world view down the throat of the other players to the point of obnoxiousness .. which tends to happen all too often in our hobby (hence all the horror stories we hear about The Gamer/Furry/Otaku/etc Stereotype).

We snagged the module last night (a happy chance that there were still some left in the early evening!) and ran through it later that night. While a tough fight, the adventurers won the day and most importantly, everyone had a good time.

Nifty!

Time to add more things to my buy list.

Our group prefers to roll. After all, that's why we have all these dice!

Welcome back Nick. I'll add my voice to those that are happy to hear from you and glad that things are looking up for you personally. That, in my mind, is far more important than the book(s). Hopefully this will be the beginning of many more good things to come for you.

Very nice!

Gorbacz wrote:

If we're talking about "throwing babies out with the bathwater" and over-reacting in general, I believe that this thread needs to be remembered.

This is why we need an ignore list here, as another thread brought up. I find it funny you manage to over exaggerate just a few sentences of mine into some hyped up frenzied fiasco. Good job being a troll! :D

Wouldn't trolling also include posting the same thing over and over again and/or starting the same topic in as many threads as one can?

We get it. You don't like the book or are sad about the number of errors that make the book totally unplayable (for you). Maybe relax a bit and find something else to dwell on.

I have said so before. I am now saying it again:

Get over it already. Either that, or hire a british lawyer to help you get your money back. If you don't do this, you are out of options, as has been pointed out to you guys.

There is nothing more that needs to be said.

This. SO much this. This is a horse that died a long time back and has been dug up and beaten over and over. I'm not sure what going over this every few days is supposed to accomplish.

Razz wrote:

...if I have a damaged product then I take it back and either get it fixed or replaced with a new one, at no cost.

It's an awfully long stretch to justifiably compare a pre-errata sourcebook to a damaged product. It's such a long stretch, in fact, that it weakens any other sensible arguments you may have.

-Skeld

I agree with Skeld here. Furthermore, I'd say if you're worried about errata and the fairness of it all, hold off purchasing the book until a later printing or after a errata becomes available. I *love* the books and try to get them as soon as I can; that said, I've yet to purchase anything that is so broken or in such need of errata that I cannot wait till it pops up.

Heck, the guys here are nice enough to get errata out at all. I have dozens if not hundreds of game books, novels, text books and so on that will never ever see any errata or corrections.

Remember also that there are people on the boards who dissect stat blocks or combos to point out errors, but actually are *wrong*--they point out things they think are errors, but aren't (you forgot he had X feat, or the buckler has Y property, or Z gives a size modifier that you didn't include, etc.). Every not-an-error reported as an error must be evaluated by the design staff, and that takes just as much time as evaluating and correcting the things that are errors. And how do you determine who is qualified to give this sort of playtesting evaluation?

This, to me, is where the real issue is. You can look over any number of threads here and find "broken" powers/classes/combinations/etc that aren't necessarily broken but rather not what someone likes. The infamous Vows come to mind immediately. So you've got to have people picking through these threads looking for actual issues compared to "X didn't like Y", which seems to generate a far greater volume of posts and stomping of feet/gnashing of teeth.

It comes to a halt when something is missing from a feat or spell or archetype feature and have nothing to work on to help us fill in the blank and move on. Just look at the UM and UC errata threads, I can point out dozens that can cause a game to halt.

Stuff like Antagonize, yeah, we have no choice but to make a call. Stuff like the two Rogue talents that do the same thing, yeah, we'd probably ignore the UC one and keep the PF Corebook one in such a case, until they fix the UC one sometime this century.

See, this is where we differ. I don't see any problems that just cause the game to come to a grinding halt until the Powers That Be come in and tell us which way to go. If you (or I, or they) dislike, disagree, or don't understand a rule, power, or whatever, then the group makes a call and lives with it, perhaps tabling it till we can all sit around and discuss it at more detail. Could just be different strokes for different folks, but I've never found myself waiting for Paizo, or Wizards, or any other game company to give me errata or a FAQ or whatever. If/when they come out, they can be useful and/or replace what we've already decided.

Then again, you get stuff like the argument over what Sean K. Reynold mentioned on the Adventure's Armory thread and how people dislike the ruling that came down. Sometimes, it appears, that the rulings/errata/FAQ that comes down isn't quite the fix that people seem to want.

Long story short: the game only comes to a screeching halt if you let it.

Instead you have several dozen of us here pointing out errors and no fast answers after a release. A lot of us have games to run and we can't have them come to a screeching halt waiting on a correction for weeks or months.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but why does your game have to come to a halt? As the GM and players of the game, you have the ability and right to make a call on the issue. If/when the folks here make a call you can check it out; in the meantime, your game goes on and everyone is happy.

edited to add: I might just be naive, but this is what we did when there wasn't the internet and boards like this. You make a decision and move on.

I'd say the developers should focus on things that make the business flow better, instead of making experiments in social interactions.

Pretty much this right here. I'd rather the busy people running things not have to take time out to play hall monitor. I spend most of my time lurking, and it takes about as much effort to push IGNORE as it does to push REPLY. Skim over things that don't interest you and use self-control to keep from replying to those comments/patrons that bother you. It's hard, but as pointed out earlier your ignore won't do much good when people quote some or all of the commentary. It just delays the irritation.

Looks very nice!

Very nice. Thank you, Crystal!

The sad part is I cannot tell if people are joking about this or are actually serious. I'm not sure which terrifies me more either.