kyrt-ryder's page

If you're playing a barbarian, if you have a rage mechanic where you get stronger, and have special powers when raging, it still feels like a PF fighter.

Why would you want a barbarian to feel like a fighter?

I don't perceive it that way at all Seeker. The game seems like it will reward those who put in the effort to excel. Sometimes, that will mean chasing other people off of resources you are after, other times, it will mean banding together for a common goal, and yet other times, it will mean launching an attack against neighboring city-states.

PvP will be important of course, but so will a lot of other things. Not everyone will need to be a PvP character, it's just that you're risking PvP while going after the glory.

It is not very immersive to have 100 MMO-kidz build a wall the size of the chineese one around the best dungeons...

Sure it is. Climb over it, dig under it, lead your own army in an assault against it. Take the wall AND the dungeon, and turn it into a cheap and easy fortress.

If 3rd party material is on the table, there's Shaft and Shield which explicitly calls out the Lance, Longspear, and Ranseur as options.

Couple it with Near and Far and you've got your basics covered. (Well, and Power Attack, and Improved Shield Bash + massive shield feat chain...)

Have you told him that he's got the fallacy all wrong?

The Rule Zero Fallacy (to my knowledge, at any rate. It's possible I'm the one who's wrong here since I don't feel like confirming my memory right now) is essentially stating that there is nothing wrong with a system because you can houserule it.

Nothing is said about the value of houseruling as a gaming construct, just that the ability to houserule doesn't prevent a broken system from being broken. (Specific houserules can 'fix' said game for a specific table, but does nothing to correct the game's broken status as printed.)

Yeah, positive Karma would be really tricky to implement and would probably have to be programmed in under the surface and NOT told to the playership (aside from telling them that good things come to good people or something similarly vague)

Negative Karma, at least as far as griefing via PvP is concerned, would be pretty easy to set up and broadcast.

I think it likely there will be horribly evil kingdoms run by rogues, assassins, spies and traitors.

Awesome. I'm really glad to see that the potential for being a double agent and switching sides at critical times is there, makes things all that much more interesting. An espionage aspect to a fantasy game, who'd have thought it =D

Sneak Attack would probably work the same way it always does, meaning when you can catch your opponent off-guard and only while they are off-guard. (I strongly suspect the flanking aspect would be removed or at least reduced.) Thus it's good for sniping or the first shot out of an ambush, but it's not going to be a constant stream of bonus damage.

Spontaneous casting from a tiny list isn't powerful, it's just spammable. Spamming the same thing over and over again =/= powerful. With one of two non-core Paizo-published Pathfinder items a Wizard gains far more spontaneity than a Sorcerer.

Yeah, there were a bunch of things I neglected to take into account in that post, from forest fires, to people bypassing darkness (although I seem to recall playability being one of the reasons it's not on the list), and the short day cycle. The fact is that as currently planned people will usually have at least one if not more day and night cycles to play per real day depending on their schedule.

As far as people on auto-pilot, while they wouldn't be as skillful as if their real players were handling them, so long as they couldn't suffer any personal loss from being killed while offline I see no problem with it. Perhaps upon signing on they get a note that their character was killed in a raid while they were away, and they have the choice of either resurrecting at a nearby temple or of having been captured?

Forestry does seem overly vulnerable though... perhaps a change to the ecology is in order. Something about the involved region that causes woody plants to grow a lot faster than they should when there isn't too much competition for resources.

Aelrynth, you're forgetting that by taking your hand off when your turn is done, you stop threatening with that two handed weapon. Sure the AoO you keep talking about could be done with an unarmed strike or gauntlet, but that's a far cry from the Two Full Power attacks you're promoting.

What Kirth was saying, is that fluff doesn't matter here. These are just packages of abilities, you put the fluff on it you want. I could easily play a Wizard as a martial arts sage who bends reality through his chi and communion with the universe.

EDIT: dammit I'm way to young to be getting ninja'd by Kirth >.<

TOZ wrote:

VM mercenario wrote:

TOZ wrote:

Don't speak for every player VM. Because the OP is a player as well.

Nope, he's a DM.

DMs are still players.

No they are not. At best you have semantics on your side. Participating in the game and playing the game are different. If being a GM is being a player then GM's would not complain because they "never get to play."

In VM's use of it he means...well you know what he means. :)

This seems like a state of mind issue to me Wraithstrike. As GM I get to play even more than the players of PC's do. I get to play the whole world.

With spellcasters it's mostly a wash Kelsey. Spellcasting takes longer and is more difficult, but spells are more powerful. If you negate both of those they come out pretty close. As I'm sure you've noticed, the Cavalier has been absorbed into the KF Fighter.

You raise some good points Blazej, and I agree that resources that don't recover independently would be problematic. By the same token though, I would really like to see some sense of long term effect you know? Have trees regrow and animals replenish themselves, but let it be slow enough to notice and perhaps work around through other areas.

Furthermore, doing such widescale damage should take a lot of effort from a lot of people over a lot of time. An army popping on for one IRL night shouldn't do it. Regretably, this is one of those areas where something sacrificed for playability [real darkness] could be handy. Maybe attempting to harvest/damage resources at night should have significantly reduced returns to simulate this? (Having mages around keeping light spells active would negate the effect of course.)

To the people saying a multi-headed dragon is like a Hydra, all I have to say is look at Tiamat.

Something to note, of course, is that wearing a Pathfinder buckler classifies as having an 'open hand.'

Huh, now that is interesting. Fortunately in Golarion we have Druids who know what they're doing and can make sure to keep the idiots in line :P "Don't chop it all down at once or nature herself will strike you down!" (Or just a logical explanation to the local rulers who can keep their people in line)

KitNyx wrote:

As a long time resident of Ryzom I concur this type of setup would be awesome, but Ryzom tech is over a decade old. I would like to see next-gen implementation of this...a large clan of players destroys a Orc stronghold...the Orcs have to move. Maybe attacking and moving into the hold of a less powerful guild. This would give every choice possible unintended consequences.

I would also love to see ecosystems that can be destroyed. A city is built in a region with plentiful game and forest...what happens after long term over hunting and logging? No more resources...expansion, exploitation...move? Welcome to end-game.

But of course, all of this requires a modicum of realism...

Interestingly, like the example of the Orc migration above, this would lead to events that are not player or dev implemented; they emerge from the symbiosis of the system and players themselves. And, if properly designed, the system could be seeded with the members of the ecosystem that find their own balance.

This is why I am actually in favour of non-renewable resources. Once a city has exhausted their resources they then must decide to relocate or become better traders and hope they have something worth trading on the market. Or maybe they just invade and absorb other countries.

I have a hard time seeing a Renaissance era society strip a region bare to be honest. We're talking bows and picks and axes (and maybe the occasional two-man saw) here. Trees and animals are - if not abused to the level we're capable of in our industrial society - in fact renewable resources.

Mines can 'always' go deeper (and get more dangerous of course), more trees will grow in place of the old ones so long as you have enough space to rotate, and animals will repopulate. (Actually, when animals are under heavy predation they tend to breed more rapidly than before.)

The problem with declaring 'no friendly fire' is that this is a game with open PvP. EVERYONE is your potential enemy, and it's entirely possible someone might even be a double agent working for you waiting for the time to make their move.

How is the game supposed to define 'allies' when such allegiences are underneath the programming? If you drop a bomb, everybody in the area is getting hit, friend or foe.

A choice could be good, something to give people a foundation to work with if they don't know how to build their desired character. It'll never be quite optimal, because these sorts of things always have a few general purpose items you don't want (heavy armor on the warrior when you want to be light infantry, for example) but that's not a big deal. When people are ready to customize fully they'll move on to full customization.

I rather like the idea personally. Humans and Orcs and other short-lived races would breed faster and develop larger nations while Elves, Dwarves, and other long-lived races would have a lot more time to develop individually. It could be really interesting to see second third, and maybe fourth generations of humans growing out of the initial playerbase.

The idea of a player's children becoming 'secondary characters' on the same account (similar to the concept of cohorts/followers) could be really interesting if it could be handled right. At the 8 years in game/year irl rate, in one year's time the child could be able to help with certain things around the house/property, and in a second year it would be a full fledged adult.

Can you say how important PVP will be? Will I be able to play through the game doing quests and exploring dungeons without ever engaging in PVP if I have no interest in joining a kingdom or faction or claiming territory or resources for myself?

Will non-core classes like alchemist, witch, magus, and gunslinger be playable? What about cavalier? Will there be mounted combat?

It's a skill based system, but I certainly hope that all of those (with the possible exception of gunslingers, but the River Kingdom is exactly the kind of lawless 'old west' environment I'd like to see Gunslingers in) will be capable of being somewhat emulated via skill development.

As far as PvP, I can't say for certain, but based on what I've seen there will always be a chance of getting caught in some PvP you don't want, but if you're cautious and not interested in resources it should be fairly rare, especially if you're not interested in the quests in the low security areas.

And this is why my houserule gives the bloodline spell and a spell of choice of the appropriate level. It only gives one spell per day at that point though, so unless you've got bonus slots from casting attribute, you have one slot to choose which spell to spontaneously cast in it.

This talk of aging ignores one fairly large point. Every race ages at different rates. Elves and Dwarves aren't going to care about an aging penalty that doesn't very very quickly screw humans.

I imagine the game intends to support people killing one another outside the city limits Doggan. Within the 'safe zones' getting caught killing is a serious violation with severe punishments.

I agree with OP. Haste is far too good for a level 3 spell. I'd wish for a separation of the spell into two spells at level 3, one grants Extra Attack and the other grants all the other benefits of haste (movement, AC, attack, etc). Or alternatively make haste a single-target spell; and add mass haste at spell level 6.

This kind of design choice always screws the spontaneous casters.

With short days (something under 4 hours if I recall correctly) a 'month' would be a long time, but not nearly as long as a real month. Furthermore, it only happens if they get caught (which should be pretty likely but potentially avoidable.)

There are some interesting ideas here, but if you want it to be taken seriously you might want to adapt them to a skill based system (I may have missed something, but these Avatars and Jobs feel like classes to me.)

Thumbs up to Elyas for style and manners.

.

kyrt-ryder wrote:

...sanctuary...

Implementing a way to avoid non-consensual PvP makes it a consensual PvP game.

True enough, but the proposal I delivered was intended as a VERY LIMITED PvP elimination principal. We're talking the equivalent of maybe a 2-5 mile radius depending on the size of the city.

I started a thread dedicated to the idea of Zones of Sanctuary so if you have any further comments please give them there.

Dispel Magic is kind of a pain in the ass to be honest. It works, but I really would rather not have to deal with the paperwork it creates. (I played an abjuration specialist once in 3.5 taking advantage of the different ways to dispel, my GM had me trade places with him while he ran the Abjurer and uh... just let me say it was miserable xD)

Look at the Monk's flurry of blows again. At any point does it say you can use those maneuvers with Shuriken?

Here's a possible solution (which will have interesting balance effects.) Give constant buffs.

Choose a certain level to start and a pattern at which to give them (the most generous I might agree to would be 4th level and every even level thereafter)

Restrict them to spells of one level lower than the highest level a wizard of their character level can cast.

So, for example, the 4th level monk might take Mage Armor, while the 4th level Fighter might take Expeditious Retreat or similar.

Round per level buffs count as one level higher than normal for this purpose.

Speed is already measured in feet Merlin. Determine the feet traveled in a round (a standard humanoid clocks in at 30 feet per round with a move action and 120 feet per round with the run action.)

Take that, multiply by 10 to get your feet per minute (1200 feet per minute) and multiply that by 60 to get your feet per hour (72000 feet per hour) divide by 5,280 (feet per mile) and you find that the average humanoid runs a paltry 13.64 (rounded) miles per hour.

Honestly, I'd just say take Silent and Still, and follow it up with a 'Secret Spell' metamagic feat which requires both of them, and costs 0 levels. It's still a full round action to cast it, but it's free (aside from two typically weak prerequisite feats.)

Wouldn't the solution to the 'Holy Trinity' be as simple as adapting the game's intended playstyle to something a bit more along the lines of the way Pen and Paper parties are put together? In Pathfinder, for example, in-combat healing is generally a suboptimal approach, and literal tanking is almost impossible to enforce.

That could be pretty cool Coldman if it were worked into the setting rather than just slapped in as a mechanic.

(But what happens to the houses that have been built where trees used to be...)

For offering such resistance, the monster that challenged me, now flattened by the hand of god should become my magic carpet

Dude... combining the concept of a bear rug with a magic carpet? Sign me up.

But... Reese's are awesome!

Can you identify your youtube channel now so we can check it and make sure who the owner is and that they don't already have a hat-eating video? Granted that person 'could' make a hat-eating video later, but by pre-identifying it (whether or not that person actually is you) then we dramatically reduce the odds of cheating.

Something to keep in mind tad is that they have time before they reach those numbers, time to experiment with different technologies and applications of those technologies. While it's a difficult slope to climb, I have a feeling it is indeed possible to reach the summit.

kyrt-ryder wrote:

I'd say I tend to prepare about 50% of my spells as combat spells in the morning, prepare a couple common utility spells, and leave the rest of the slots open to prepare mid-day based on what I've used up and what I need.

If however you're in a time-sensitive scenario, as a lot of network play, you're not going to have that time to go digging through your spellbooks (how many of them and how heavy are they?) to come up with what you need.

Blessed Book

Wizards also have Pearls of Power Jackspeed, which tend to significantly increase their versatility and staying power. While the Wiz can only prepare what he can prepare, he doesn't have to double up on spells when he can whip out a PoP and recharge a given spell between fights.

While I agree with you Onishi, a glance around this forum shows that many do not. And honestly, even though I wouldn't worry too much about it myself, as a smithing character creating valuable equipment used by powerful warriors... I would much rather have that safety net than not :P

leo1925 wrote:

Writer wrote:

Okay, from reading the posts I think this discussion is vaguely centered on something to do with Minmaxing and/or optimized gameplay. My thoughts are as follows:

I'm a bigger roleplay fan then an optimizer. That said, if a player is roleplaying a barbarian that is absolutely focused on doing as much damage as inhumanly possible and is optimized to suit that notion, i'd think that the character's mechanics fit the roleplay. TBH if somebody likes to optimize their character I would be fine with that, so long as they don't look down on OTHER CHARACTERS OR PLAYERS for not being as optimized or minmax'd. That is my biggest concern. For me, the story and the fun of the game are always above streamlining the mechanics in your favour.

That depends....

If your character being unoptimized (for any reason) causes the death of my character because your character can't lift his own weight then yes i have the right to look down to your unoptimized character and even tell you to optimize.

I can pull my own weight just fine; as a guy who tends to play rogues i know how to fill out the rogue's shtick very well. I just can't do it to the effect of some of the super-optimized builds like a God-Wizard or Battle-Oracle or the AM Barbarian or the superSummoner. I don't want to have to take advantage of every single RAW loophole just so im not to be looked down on at the table.

Just thought I should point out that 'God-Wizard' isn't a 'super-optimized build' it's a fairly straightforward playstyle. This approach is only so effective because of the power and versatility of the Wizard class's spellcasting. It's basic tactics.

I could potentially see something like that working Dyraele. Sending in some assassin types to sew the seeds of chaos once the safety net comes down, taking out important leaders and such. It would make for a hell of a story, but it would need to be so difficult it's not worth doing for the evulz no matter how much someone might want to.

(Also months would be too long, but weeks, up to one month, might be appropriate.)

Competition for shop space within the safety net could get pretty fierce ;)

jackspeed wrote:

@LazarX a wizard probably should have a rod of silent lesser its only 3 spells but that's 3 very useful spells

While that may be something convenient to whip out at a discussion, in all my years of campaign play, I have YET to see a wizard even where MagicMart is available invest their creation time and/or funds in such a rod.

Again you're using a magic item to try to blunt my point, I can whip out items of my own I wanted to complicate the discussion. Lets keep it to class rules.

It costs 3,000 gold. I've yet to see a wizard above a certain level NOT take it. Be prepared is the Wizard mantra.

I'd say I tend to prepare about 50% of my spells as combat spells in the morning, prepare a couple common utility spells, and leave the rest of the slots open to prepare mid-day based on what I've used up and what I need.

See, that right there, talking about damage spells, explains to me why you wouldn't see Wizards dominating.

Damage spells have their place, but I can't fathom building a sorcerer myself who has more than one damage spell known per spell level.