niel's page

If you are asking for dream settings, I would love to see setting books for Sterling E. Lanier's Hiero books.
Post apocalyptic, mutated races, psi-powers, and mutations.
Menacing groups opposing all life, lost civilizations, mutant beavers, Morse, hopping steeds, and more.
Sort of a combo of Gamma World and Conan, with a strong Thundar the Barbarian vibe.

Spooon!!

Thanks for the info.
I can the appeal to running a Salvager character.
(Icon- younger nephew on the reality show, slowly growing his own name, constantly having to tell fans "Yes, the Captain's a @#$% in real life, too.")

Now, we're going to need Circus ships, traveling between the starts, delivering 'The Greatest Show On Any Planet!'
Loaded with family acts, aliens, animals- wild, domesticated, and trained, to wonder and amaze!, crooked carny games, and runaways, working on their player character background stories.

If you want to ask questions about the lasso, start with 'What is the range?"
All we know is that it works 'like using a net'.
A net has an effective range of 10'.
Lasso?
Maybe 10', maybe dependent on the length of the rope.

My wife has a pin that says, "Move aside Coffee, this is a job for Alcohol!"

I disagree, which is why there's alcohol in my coffee.

(Specifically, I used O'Donnell's Cappuccino as cream. Sure it's only 15% alcohol, but it's bonus alcohol.)

What about a kineticist instead?
You take an energy blast (targeting touch AC) and can use it infinitely.
Water gives a defense of either +4 AC or +2 shield AC.
Other elements give DR, hit points, natural armor, or something else.
Sure it's only a d6, but he'll always have a fallback when he's out of spells.
You only lose 1 caster level and don't need to use any feats.
And you stay at range rather than getting into melee.

By the time 1d6 is completely irrelevant, he will have enough spells he'll never worry about using his blast again.

Really though, pearls of power, wands, or even a Int boosting item to give him a couple of more spells will work out better in the long run.

Unless he's just missing out on being in melee, in which case a character rebuild to magus might be a better idea.

Ohh- Mediterranean!

If we go by Rome, I'll take ya'll to see the family niche at the Vatican.

(Not that I've ever seen it :)

Now I have an urge to run an Urban Arcana game where the Boss baddy is a necromancer who is attempting to shift to the afterlife echo of the French WWI trenches where some evil MacGuffin was hidden back in 1920. The heroes would be Dept. 42 or something like that tasked with preventing that.

Hmmm..

Sounds like that should be a Bureau 13 game.

Dibs on the Hellboy substitute- I'm thinking Kid Frankenstein, son of The Bride and The Monster.
Maybe he wants to be an actor, but can only get sideshow or stuntman jobs.
Hey Rube!

OK, that explains it.

I think everything I own is jeans and black t-shirts, with work uniforms tossed in.
So blue or black.

However, in my dreams, someone hit my car in a hotel parking lot, which made it roll down a hill into a swimming pool. Then I rescued a living stuffed rabbit that was losing stuffing but was very sweet so I determined to save it.

Pff, amateur.

I woke up this morning from a dream where I had offended Baba Yaga (who lived on the second story of the 200+ year old jail found in the courthouse green of the county I grew up in- that would be Mathews County, Va.)
Bab Yaga was chasing me because I had moved the bike rack made of cast iron pipe which was on the landing of the rusty steel and concrete stair which led to her house.
I took off running, thankful the county had replaced the water treatment plant which was there when I was a kid, 'cause I could run across the grass which replaced it.
I woke up trying to figure out if I should duck into the nearest church or if She would care if I did.
Also thinking, why doesn't she run faster?

I had no idea how many unread books I have. A pleasant problem to have.

The problem is the inevitable guilt when you go by the library or bookstore or want to go by the bookstore/library and remember how much you already have to read.

However, if you make sure all your book shelves are on exterior walls, books make great insulation.
It's good for the environment!

Or so rationalizes the man who bought more books today.
Strahd for 5th edition! (except I've never played 5th edition)
And 'Disciple of the Wind'. (It's book 3 of the Fated Blades series by Steve Bein- and I enjoyed books 1 & 2- I had to get it!)

possibly I have a problem

Also thematically appropriate: the straight man.

A character not aware, trained, or part of the mythos, fumbling his way into (or out of, considering the wake-up-and-confused start) insanity.

So likely not a full caster or devout, something more like an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.

Fighter, rogue, maybe a monk straight out of the monastery, possibly even a kineticist awakening to powers he doesn't understand.

Hard mode: npc class.

I shoot my crossbow at the elliptical.
(I didn't like the way it was looking at the monkey.)

"Well, you ass me," the old lady said, "dat boy had sumthin wrong wi' him."

The Brotherhood of the Wheel by R S. Belcher

Someone needs sugar and caffeine.

For atmosphere.

“The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.”

“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”

“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.”

“Never Explain Anything”

“To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..”

“At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.”

“I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Outsider

“If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!”

“It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.”

“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.”

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability. To trace the remote in the immediate; the eternal in the ephemeral; the past in the present; the infinite in the finite; these are to me the springs of delight and beauty.”

“Religion is still useful among the herd - that it helps their orderly conduct as nothing else could. The crude human animal is in-eradicably superstitious, and there is every biological reason why they should be.
Take away his Christian god and saints, and he will worship something else...”

“I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”

Creative minds are uneven, and the best of fabrics have their dull spots.”

“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

“Contrary to what you may assume, I am not a pessimist but an indifferentist- that is, I don't make the mistake of thinking that the... cosmos... gives a damn one way or the other about the especial wants and ultimate welfare of mosquitoes, rats, lice, dogs, men, horses, pterodactyls, trees, fungi, dodos, or other forms of biological energy.”

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”

“Ultimate horror often paralyses memory in a merciful way.”

“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.”

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

This is the spell description for mythic flame blade.

The blade's damage increases to 2d6 points of fire damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +20). The blade threatens a critical hit on a natural 18–20 as if it were an actual scimitar.

Augmented (3rd): If you expend two uses of mythic power, the blade threatens a critical hit on a natural 15–20, and bypasses hardness, fire resistance, and fire immunity.

It spells out that flame blade does get a crit range once it's mythic.
Strongly implying that it does not from the basic spell.

My opinion has always been the language referring to scimitar in the base spell description is to enforce that a druid can use it without non-proficiency penalties as they are proficient in 'scimitar' but not 'sword'.

gizmo-gnomes

I blame dragonlance.

Before that, gnomes were simple forest creatures, possibly wearing pointed hats, with a love of gems, illusions, and burrowing mammals.

Now they have a reputation as experiment crazed weirdos with a penchant for accidental destruction and dangerous gadgets.

From Varisia, Birthplace of Legends:

Feat: Thunder and Fang
You use an earthbreaker 1-handed and attack with a klar in the other.
The klar is treated as light and you retain your shield bonus from it when you use it to attack.

Preq: Str 15, 2 Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (Earthbreaker, and Weapon Focus (Klar)

It's an ancient Shoanti barbarian combat style.

And we're up!

New comic shattrers 4th wall but implies action figures!

I'm not enjoying bandana'a accent/speech pattern.
She sounds halfway dwarven/halfway teenager.

I would like to see a list of magice items the team is planning on selling, just to try to link them to battles.

You are not eligible to get natural spellcasting at level 5 since the saurian shaman does not get wildshape til level 6. (there's a faq)

Also, I found wild speech very useful- with a limited number of uses of wildshape and with planar wildshape costing 2 uses, I was reluctant to drop dino form to talk to the party.
Being able to talk to folks as a dino fixed that for me.

Quick wild shape also helped.
If I wasn't already in dino form, it meant 3 rnds before I got in the battle.
1 to shape, 1 to buff, and then enter in.
Quick shape meant a lesser form, but getting stuck in quicker.

The polymorph rules says all constant effect except armor bonuses still work in altered form.
The wild enchantment allows you to keep all of your armor bonuses.
My GM let the bracers of defense count in wild shape even though they give an armor bonus.

A rod of extend will increase the duration of greater magic fang, barkskin, and longatrider. Use these every day.

When you get wild shape at 6th, you already count as 8th level for dino forms, so you already have all the beast shapes you will ever get.
This can feel a bit behind after a few levels as new forms do not open up.

New ones up.

Also, check out the back corner of the first panel.

on the topic of action economy:

From Mythic:
Natural Spell Feat (Mythic)

You can speak and use some magic items when you use wild shape.

Prerequisite: Natural Spell.

Benefit: When you're using wild shape, you can use spell completion and spell trigger magic items that were on your person when you changed form. You don't need to physically manipulate the items when you use them while using wild shape. Furthermore, you can speak normally when using wild shape.

Now I can use some items without drawing them or even using hands.
And tell you how cool i am while doing it.

Things I noticed:

In my opinion, a 7 strength is always a bad idea.
Look at carrying capacity for what she can have- at 24 pounds, she is at medium encumberance.
A sickle, a sling and bullets, leather armor, and a small shield weigh
27 pounds. A spell component pouch weighs 2 lbs.

A third level druid has 4 cantrips, 2 1st level, and 1 second level spell.
Her stat of 20 gives her 2 additional 1st and an additional 2nd level spell.
She does not have 3rd level spell until she is 5th level.

With a charisma of 8, her bonus to UMD and Handle Animal is 0 and 3.

You have spell focus(conjuration) and your only conjuration spell is summon swarm. Which doesn't have a save.
Of course, she can change spells every day, but conjuration spells don't usually give a save.
Spell focus (conjuration) is the preq. for augment summoning- which buffs her summoned creatures and she doesn't want to focus on summoning.

Have you read the guides found stickied in this forum?
It might give you, and her, some ideas.

In 1st and 2nd edition, we carried spikes and would spike the door shut behind us.
Picture a wedge driven inbetween the door and the frame jamming it.
Or a spike driven into the floor in front of the closed door.

It counted as a locked door to break open, or rather, there was an open doors line on the strength chart.

Don Juan de Cornelius

Are we related?

fulcrum

lever

or some translation there of

as in, give me a large enough lever and a fulcrum and I can move the (second) world

For a minor boost in AC, consider the masterwork mithril buckler.

No penalty for use without proficiency as its armor check penalty is zero.
Made out of mithril, so there is no arcane spell failure chance.
Get it enchanted to improve its bonus to AC.

Also, remember that you can enchant your ring with a second effect at a cost of +50%.
It seems you have the cash and you have the arcane bond so you can enchant it yourself.
It would be an investment in time and money.

Another thought would be to take a level in monk, for the wisdom bonus to AC.

It's hard to beat a quickened mirror image, though.
Also, wind spells usually defeat archers and don't break invisibility.

One of the abilities a ghost can have is:

Malevolence (Su): The ghost's jealousy of the living is particularly potent. Once per round, the ghost can merge its body with a creature on the Material Plane. This ability is similar to a magic jar spell (caster level 10th or the ghost's Hit Dice, whichever is higher), except that it does not require a receptacle. To use this ability, the ghost must be adjacent to the target. The target can resist the attack with a successful Will save. A creature that successfully saves is immune to that same ghost's malevolence for 24 hours.

Now i could see casting freedom of movement.

If she links her brother and the dead PC together, perhaps seeing the PC returned to life will bring her brother back as well.
(at least in her mind)
Making her believe her brother has come back for her, hearing his voice and catching glimpses of him out of the corner of her eye.
Whether he's back to make up for his abandoning or to take her with him is up to you.

Buy a Dollar Store shower curtain. Hand it to him, smack him, and tell him to STFU.

Fixed that for ya'll.

Huh?

You are looking for rules that would encourage in-character sex so you can give a player character a wasting std?

Why?

I suggest you turn in your GM card.

Kajehase wrote:

Treppa wrote:
Nekkid cosplay? What's the point?
Must be a Heinlein character.
Rofl. Briiliant

Late Heinlein only. In early books, he was more calm and kid friendly.

And on another note: I take a weeks vacation and come back to more tham 2500 posts?? No way in hell I'm reading all that.

Character Class Declaration Of Equality

We hold these truths to be self-evident (and the only way to stop these arguments), that all classes will be considered equal, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of experience points. That to secure these rights, rules systems are considered to give balance to classes, with the understanding that it is the player, not the character, that makes them unequal, and that individual games will weigh the worth of individual classes differently.

So say we all.

All my friends are getting married and having kids. And where the f*#$ am I? Stinking drunk in my student rent apartment.

I remember thinking something similar 20-25 years ago.

Life isn't a competition to reach "happy" or some other goal first.
It's usually better to get something that lasts than something quick.

"Ask not the wise man how to live- he cannot tell you.
Ask not the fool how to live- he does not know.
Ask not how to live- instead proceed to do so."
I'm not admitting where that quote comes from.

Steal the permanent animated object rules from pathfinder's ultimate magic 9available under the PRD).

The rules allow using craft construct to make a permanent animated object that can be built as you wish it, so you could make a Doc Oc style vest/harness with multiple arms.

Other construct rules allow you to make them as armor.

Improve them when you upgrade the enchantment.

Cornielius wrote:

Aberzombie wrote:
takes note of Niel's new nickname of "fruitcakes" and Solnes' new nickname of "muffin"
Could be worse.

My first year of college I was called Illegitimate George ('cause I wasn't a real George).
So, why the plural, Fruitcakes?

If I ever get TOP you'll know :{)

Mornin' muffin :)

In My Hamper of Onions

Animate Object

Because I want a walker-chair or a horseless carriage or a walking skeleton (to confuse the clerics) or a perpetual motion machine or an engine for my ship or a mill for my estate or etc, etc, etc.

The variations are endless.

"Pardon me, but do you have any Gray Poupon?"

[Squawk] "Know I do swords, but times come you must lead with Boom-Stick." [/Squawk]

"Ninety-nine spear wielding kolbolds on the wall, Ninety-nine kobolds to start.
Axe one now and grind it down, Ninety-eight koblods to go!"

"You boys sure know how to show a girl a good time!"

Mairkurion {tm} wrote:

Umm...
Nope, uh uh, not a ma'am. Needs to find a diff way to be respectful.

[jerrylewis]Hey, Lady![/jerrylewis]

I pefer it when dwarves fight using spiked armour and a weighted beer stien.

But you can get hand-made tamales.

Can you get a feature for the Nook that makes it smell like dusty paper?
That would make me happier about getting one.

Also, Happy Holidays Patrick.

I'm in! I'm in!!

After three days of moving - I have my bed in the house so I'm home now.

We opened a 20 year old bottle of GLENFIDDICH I've been carrying around for 25 years waiting for a great occasion. (I would have opened it for my wedding but I was distracted by her dress.)

Merry Christmas to all in FAWTLy land- I'm off to start unpacking.

2335 new!?!?!

I guess I've been busy lately.

My wife and I got ourselves a Christmas present.

We signed the papers to close on the new townhouse.
Final inspection was the day before and we started moving boxes yesterday afternoon.

I should be in by tomorrow night.

I'll be living 2 miles from Yorktown Battlefield, in a developement backing up on the Colonial Parkway.

Most importantly- Deb gets a new kitchen with a gas stove and I get a seperate room to be a library!!

Now I just have to move all the books.

Netflix has all the great old classic horror films. Yet does not have the classic Hammer series of films???

Cornielius gloats, knowing that, while he doesn't have netflix, he does have the Complete Hammer Collection on dvd, as well as the girls of Hammer Films photo book. Oddly enough, both belong to his wife.

Side note: His wife took vacation this week to stay at home, watching horror films.

Cornielius wrote:

Oh, Hell no!

1,936 new posts.

Guess I haven't logged in for awhile.

Everyone still above ground?

So far so good. Long time no see.

I admit I have been lurking occasionaly, but this is the first time I've logged in a while. ( picked up the Races freebie.)

And Happy Birthday, Jude!!

I wish our CEO would double my paid vacation time.

Easily done.

Wait- didn't you get the memo?
All paid vacation time was reduced to zero.
And zero doubled is what you have.

I wish I could throw my cold away like an apple core.