tadkil's page

I am disappointed but not surprised. Paizo earned my respect supporting this line. As a consequence I increased my monthly buy to encompass the entire product line in a conscious effort to support the brand. I will be rethinking that investment in light of this decision.

I have felt like this product line was on life support for the last two years. Print publishing is becoming a marginal business and until you can make a digital play, you limit your audience and drive up expense.

Thanks for your hard work. Your work has been excellent.

I'm thinking the culture of redneck midgets.

D20 Modern Ogrekin.

I'd subscribe. I've got a herd of little gamers in my house who would eat this up. Daddy might read them every once in a while too.

What are the plans for 2012? I for one hope the goodness continues.

Here's where the game fails as a simulation. Shields are too heavy to wield effectively and too cumbersome. Shields are also big and easy to hit. Sunder sort of simulates it, but not completely. The Roman pilum was designed to neutralize shields quickly.

Tonfa are awesome btw and I would rather have one of them in my hand than a sword, but they are not shields.

Whether or not you embrace this however is really a question of aesthetics. If your only concern is mechanics, sure you could. If your take on the game requires history and reality as a benchmark, then this feels, well, silly.

So, Mr. Kilgore says, Rules-fu. 5 stars. Realism. 0 stars.

BTW... Edition wars is Boooooooring compared to the geek laden frenzy that is Shield Wars!

Ramarren wrote:

using a suggestion from an earlier thread, I use weather reports for Dresden, Germany from about 10 years ago. I've got a year's worth of weather pre-built, and I know enough about what is coming up that I can integrate it into the game (and into Kingdom building).

That is a brilliant idea. Based on this idea I just pulled a years weather data and will be using that in my game. It allows me to have weather patterns that make sense and are valid... Since they actually happened. :)

This should make things in my campaign just that much better. :)

I, also, like the idea of inflicting a cold on the PCs if they stir during a heavy rain day. :)

Totally stealing this. Great idea.

Do we know when we'll have docs for pfs play. I've got a table of players crazy for this. One of them is my wife, so I'm driven by a dual imperative.

It's also a little disconcerting to see WOTC fail to get any gold ennies. Granted my household is all pathfinder now, but still. I'd expect the caretakers of the first brand to be more competitive.

For the record... This thread mutated quickly and began setting off my detect evil. Smite is now active.

Just want to give a shout out for the Silverberg and Wellman. I love the work you've done here and I can't thank you enough for bringing this work back into print.

We've got a half-dozen of these in various stages of production, and plans for lots more. More and more folks are showing their support by subscribing, and we're getting into more and more stores all the time.

Help us spread the word and pass along your copies to get more folks interested in the line, and we'll keep making them!

Tried to getPlague of Shadows reviewed at my newspaper here in the ATL. No luck with that. Glad the line is doing well. I have enjoyed it immensely.

Noticed we only have 2 more books showing on the horizon in my subscription queue. Hoping the line isn't in trouble and we will see more. Any other titles planned?

The new PDFs look great on my iPad btw. Atomic web makes PDFs iPad compatible.

Both of these genres were single handedly launched by Edgar Rice Burroughs. All of his work is now public domain. If you download kindle reader, or have ran iPad for apple iBooks, you can download and read these for free. Burroughs has his Pellucidar series that pretty much owns the hollow world genre. You may want to dive into Howard, Lovercraft and H. Rider Haggard for a full look into the genesis of modern fantasy and horror. Planet stories does an excellent job of filing in the cracks and gaps in the readily available canon. You should subscribe if you haven't already.

Looking over this conversation all I can think of is The Incredibles (slightly modified for our current topic):

Complaints I can handle. What I *can't* handle is your customers' inexplicable knowledge of the XP system's inner workings! They're experts! EXPERTS, Bob! Exploiting every loophole, dodging every obstacle! They're penetrating the bureaucracy!

ow ow owowowow...

hot earl gray snarf...

very funny comment, btw.

tadkil wrote:

hobbun wrote:

Now is creating a 1st level character considered as 'gaining' a level and therefore you are able to apply the favored class bonus? The way our group has done it, we did not apply the favored class bonus until 2nd level, as we didn't consider creating our characters at 1st level as 'gaining' a level. Is that incorrect? If so, I will let the rest of our group know during our next session.

Take a look at the first level characters provided with any intro mod or new AP and backward engineer for an answer to this question.

I don't have any mods or APs. The question was not that unreasonable and I was only asking for confirmation.

No, it's a reasonable question.

You can just answer your question yourself by going to the source material. Try this, go download the pregens off of the PFS section. You can look at some examples there also.

I managed to report the same mod twice for a game I ran on Sunday. How do I submit this for revision/correction?

Now is creating a 1st level character considered as 'gaining' a level and therefore you are able to apply the favored class bonus? The way our group has done it, we did not apply the favored class bonus until 2nd level, as we didn't consider creating our characters at 1st level as 'gaining' a level. Is that incorrect? If so, I will let the rest of our group know during our next session.

Take a look at the first level characters provided with any intro mod or new AP and backward engineer for an answer to this question.

Campaign docs are challenging to write and there are always players who view them more as IRS documents to overcome, as opposed to legislation to guide good conduct. I am more than willing to abide by the formal ruling and interpretation of campaign staff. However, there are clear clarity issues here.

I'll keep on eating them and judging for my group, because I enjoy judging a good table. I ran DaB for Dave Arneson for 2 years and literally ate an entire campaign. It would be nice to be able to play with my friends at major cons. I'd like a clear understanding of this rule so I can plan. I've also overseen over 25 table slots at GenCon and DragonCon. Not afraid to judge... Just looking for clarity...

Charlie Bell wrote:

Unfortunately, that's exactly what you're encouraging. This ruling will create 2 classes of PFS players: those who only play and never GM, so they can progress multiple characters; and those who only GM and never play, because they cannot ever progress any characters at all. I respectfully ask you to reconsider.

A GM still gets credit for one of their PCs the first time they run a scenario if they have not yet played it. How does this prevent GMs from advancing characters? This is how it's been since GM rewards were introduced at the beginning of Season 1, so it's not like this is something new I've implemented on the boards today.

Mark,

if eat a scenario for my group, do get a chronicle for my character?

Thanks.

Pathfinder and 4E tied in sales in Q3 2010

I'd be proud if this were my product. Saw this at in the Enworld newsletter And posted the direct link here. Can't speak to the methodology of the data, but very cool and quite an accomplishment if true.

My apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere.

I really think the paper minis are a cheap and very useful addition to the campaign.

Cursed economy! No renter in my rental property for the last 4 months. Time to cut back.

Please leave my Pathfinder Adventure Path, Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and Pathfinder Tales subscription active.

Suspend the rest. For now.

That is a BRILLIANT mini!

Vic,

I wouldn't expect a discount on these. However, I'd be willing to commit to buying them regularly so your company and its partners could effectively forecast base consumption.

I'd be fine with no discount, and some intangible benefit like, "sneak peaks" of the upcoming minis or something like that.

At its core, however, I will commit to purchase these long term if this helps the stabilization of the production schedule.

Tad

Escape From Evil by Ernest Becker

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

So, is a Sorcerer stronger than a Wizard or vice versa? The answer is "cheese".

Word.

Thanks for all the info everyone. I'm really only looking for actual round plastic bases like they use on the plast D&D minis though. Surely someone sells these!

Dig around in your yellow pages or in youyahoo local search. All these are is a plastic extrusion of "x" diameter. You may be able to find a plastics company that fabricates something very similar. Might even be able to get it from scrap.

gnomewizard wrote:

Are there any quality multiclass builds for the summoner now that they APG is out. By quality I mean both Survivable and Fun. I either want to give myself more spells or hit with more dmg.

My thought was Summoner/ Rogue or Summoner/Ranger...Help
or Summoner/ Sorc

Some people multi-class just to 'multi-class' and in general have regrets later on about it.

My suggestion would be to decide what you WANT from your PC, and seek whatever mechanical build achieves it. If your 'summoner' winds up being a druid or a wizard then so be it.

Don't let the mechanics or names of things in the mechanics get in the way.

In general the mechanical summoner class is poorly built and was not designed to play well with others in terms of multiclassing or even with PrCing.

-James

Word

The Adventurer's Armory is loaded with interesting things that are not campaign specific. I'd load it into your pile as a useful supplement.

bump

Tanglefoot bags never get old.

WORD!

Last year when I ran Jeopardy for United way, the final question was for the subject, Geekery and the answer was, "THACO."

The winning team, (newsroom people) responded with "What is, "To Hit Armor Class Zero. We're still pretending Third edition did not happen."

I have two chairs open for a new bi-weekly home game with Kingmaker as a base but using the slow advancement path.

Current party mix is 1 female, 2 males, all GenX.

Currently have 1 newb, a 20 year veteran and a 5 year veteran at the table.

All are welcome.

bump

My players love these; I just started running a Rise of the Runelords game, and I'm really hoping that you produce the rest of the sets, and that they'll come out before my group gets to each module.

I already bought this one and Burnt Offerings, as well as the Ogres monster set for use in #3.

Keep up the good work!

You need the goblins too!

tadkil wrote:

Krazz the Wanderer wrote:

I was just curious. When you play Pathfinder do you actually call it Pathfinder or do you call it D&D?

So when gathering your friends for a game; do you say "can you make it on Sunday to play Pathfinder?" or do you say "can you make it on Sunday to play D&D?"

I'll start first. My group still calls it D&D.

I had a thread on this over in the 4E forums but it got locked down. Civility collapsed...

Can I get a link to that? My name is wraithstrike over there also if you just want to PM me.

It was here on Paizo's forums, not WOTC's. I think I titled the thread Bodes Ill...

I have two chairs open for a new bi-weekly home game with Kingmaker as a base but using the slow advancement path.

Current party mix is 1 female, 2 males, all GenX.

Currently have 1 newb, a 20 year veteran and a 5 year veteran at the table.

All are welcome.

I was just curious. When you play Pathfinder do you actually call it Pathfinder or do you call it D&D?

So when gathering your friends for a game; do you say "can you make it on Sunday to play Pathfinder?" or do you say "can you make it on Sunday to play D&D?"

I'll start first. My group still calls it D&D.

I had a thread on this over in the 4E forums but it got locked down. Civility collapsed...

My sons, who I have been DMing for about 2 1/2 years came to me at the beginning of the summer and lobbied me to start GMing PFRPG for them as opposed to D&D. I had been playing both. I quote, "We don't want to play D&D. If we want to play cards we'll play Pokémon. We want Pathfinder."

We've been differentiating between the two because we had been playing both. Have to tell you though; I haven't played 4e in about 3 months now. DMing and playing PFRPG exclusively now.

I'd encourage everyone to call it Pathfinder though. D&D is Hasbro's brand. Pathfinder is Paizo's. Paizo needs increased brand recognition and that comes for using the proper name of their product line.

Yes I manage sales budgets. Yes I do marketing.

This thread is a perfect example of why I love these boards.

Gracious informative responses, developed collaboratively and with a sincere desire to help the poster.

Great stuff as always.

This all has to do with campaign flavor. At terminal velocity, the difference between hitting concrete and hitting water is minimal. Never done the math on this, just quoting a firend of mine who is a SEAL.

I'd say structure the damage to the campaign that you have.

If your campaign is more Black Company, than Discworld, then the damage should be more severe.

If you are looking for a more "swashbucklery feel" then make water into a big old flufferly feather matress...

If you want hardcore realism, well, falling is bad! The rules land somehwere in between.

More.

More!

Very insightfuly KaeYoss, Kolokotroni, Yes indeed you cannot predict everything.

This is why I dont base 100% on the EL. I base an encounter on its genuine authenticity in its demographics. Playing the modules are nice as long as they are well done, and make sense and flows with our goals of even being there in the first place, and for our Level of Expertise.

Like everyone has posted, everyone will have a different play style and ours is one that "anything can happen at any time"

We were once campaigning of staking out some land for a base of operations and our encounter here was a very large Military Clergy. While our recon was going on of the small town, they are attacked by a Large Adult Red Dragon, and invaded by Orcs-goblins-Worgs-and 4 Ogre...

We were asking ourselves what the Hell are we doing here? I'm not sure what the DM was expecting us to do, or not do... he basically emplied after the battle when we were questioning survivors that the townsfolk were actively hunting the Orc.. I guess there was a border dispute you could say.... more to it but thats the short version.

Our party at the Time was:
x2 Wizards 7th level
x1 Cleric 6th level
x1 Fighter 6th level
x1 Ranger 6th level
x1 Rogue 6th level

We did not interfere with the battle, but fled.

Enemy opposition was:
HUGE Red Dragon.. could not tell how old.
40 Orcs
20 Goblins with With 5 Worg riders
4 Ogre

Townsfolk:
8 Clerics lvls 1-7 (2 at 5th)
10 Milita 1st level
Smithy, Leatherworker, Alchemist, All professionals level 4 I believe.
*Professional Local Soldiers posted in town by Local Baron.
x10 Cavalry lvl 2
x15 footmen lvl 1
x1 Srgnt. Lvl 3 with mount.

So do you think our DM was insane.... or just creating a dynamic regional event....

I think the locals needed your help, and there was a chance for you to sweep the field and be heroes. However, I really don't know what sort of encounters you are used to and what your GM builds for you regularly.

Encounter design is intimate when it is done right and anticipates the party's reaction. The process should also be built around the motivations of your characters. There has to be some trust built in there too.

I've run tables where the players were all LG Knights of Do the Right Thing, and they would have charged and encounter like this even if they were all first level newbs wearing scale mail. I've also run a table of halfling... Tallfellas (no racial profiling please), where they would have kicked back on lounge chairs and waited to bushwhack the winner and take everybody's stuff. Design has to be wired to player psychology too.

As for whether or not the design is balanced according to the rules... might be. What is interesting to me is that you don't trust your GM to give you a good design. You assumed that it was too lethal and that it was bad, and you all split as a result. That's the larger issue to me and it has quite a bit to say about the style of play you are in.

Is your DM "out to get you?" Is you DM just trying to tell you a story and give you solid challenges that engage you? I hope its option 2, and it is probably worthwhile for you and your group to have that conversation with him or her. Sometimes the game is also about trust.

My 2 copper eels.

Is Paizo going to be able to print the rest of Cook's work? I'm really enjoying this book, and would purchase the rest of them.

BUMP!

More.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Your Larpers probably did not have 100+ hours of RPing under their belts while Tadkills core kids probably do.

Actually, since we played 4-6 hr. a day, 5 days a week, some of them very quickly boosted their playtime. Kids, just like adults, have their own interests, but my overall generalization is that kids don't necessarily want to do math during the game. Of course, we were LARPing, so it is different than sitting down at a tabletop.

Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

Usually their powers are pretty simple [in 4e].

They are until they stack. I doubt most kids would want to do the math of +2 for flanking, -2 for this condition, +1 from this power, etc. all for one attack. Of course, this gets worse the higher the level. That is to me the main drawback for 4e's appeal to kids.

I guess my main point, for any edition, is that I would focus on flavor more than rules. If the kids read, "Close burst 3; targets are knocked prone," I don't think most will care. However, if they are told that they have stomped the ground hard enough to cause the entire room to shake and the nearby giants to fall down, they are more likely to get excited. If I played Pathfinder and the kids wanted to grapple, I'd just tell them what to roll, rather than look it up in the book. Same with spells and so on - I'd focus more on the flavorful effect than the specifics of this or that rule.

To me, it is not until they are 14 or so that they start to get interested in the specific mechanics. Once again, I'm generalizing, but the majority of kids are not going to grow up to be roleplayers; imagination and the heroic persona is more important to the younger kids than how the rules are stated.

You've described my narrative style.

These kids are engaging the rules in the way you describe, but at 12, instead of 14. They are, however, more concerned with being told/making a good story than anything else.

I'm not sure if 4e is geared toward kids, so much as "young adults." 14-18 might be the ideal introductory age for 4e.

4E was a great platform to teach tehse kids RPGs. The cards that they disparage now, were an effective and simple ways for them o learn and understand the mechanics.

I'd had a much harder time with them with 3.5.

Although I do have to say when my 7 year old said, "I power attack for full. Bring it Daddy!" that may have been one of the best moments of my life.

The issue they reject now, were central to their introduction to the hobby.

My sons have been watching us play D&D since before they could read. My wife is a hard core gamer too, so they've had a balanced education!

Aubrey the Malformed wrote:

I would suggest that 4e is better for DMs (prep time) whereas PF is probably better for players (due to the steeper power curve you get cooler quicker). If the kids haven't experienced both games from both sides of the screen they may not appreciate that aspect.

Aubury makes a good point. In an environment where the Kids could be comparing their 12th level characters with Pathfinder characters of 12th level the Pathfinder Characters are going to be way more awesome.

4E Character - "I can teleport anywhere I can see."
3.P Character - "Me and all my friends can teleport to anywhere in the world we have ever seen."

4E Character "I can fly for two full rounds"
3.P Character "I can leap into the air and fly up to the Dragon and wrestle it back to the ground."

Etc.

Certainly if one is appealing to 12 year olds on the basis of what cool s~@@ ones character can do - well 3.P characters, by 12th can do a lot more impressive cool s~@@ then 4E characters, they are simply far more powerful.

These kids are not into it for UBER powers. One of their complaints is the 4E books are "blowing up the game like a balloon." A bunch of their arguments are about the classes being more differentiated in PFRPG and they are interested in morew broadly differentiated classes.

Part of me doubts that this is less a reflection of kids as a whole and more a representation of how they make decisions to not be associated with things they have outgrown or are not cool. I would say that it could have been easily them saying no to Pathfinder with other "talking points" like, "it's a poor revision to a poor system," and "if I play D&D, I will play D&D. Not some a version stolen by another company."

I believe that while they could, as a group, decide not to play 4e and, just as easily, another group of kids could all get drawn into the game. Even if it even, I think that it would still be in the favor of the game in the long run because years down the road, these opinions might have changed and all of them will still have a stronger awareness of D&D than if they had never played at all.

While it could be some sort of cyclical evolution and reflect a developemental rejection of the status quo, I am more inclined to take them at their words. They have reasons for what they think and ask for.

If anything, they may have felt they needed to make a formal case to me about switching systems because they know my prep time increases in PFRPG. Scott has made it so dang easy to pirate his conversion blogs for material that my prep is really easy for 4E. Great work scott and thanks!

Bodes ill is a really poor choice for this thread though. This really bodes well for the hobby. These kids care about RPGs and make informed decisions about what they want to play and why.

Well-reasoned decisions are not made collectively by children, nor do they include "logic" such as "If we want to play cards, we'll play Pokemon."

I did them a disservice by quoting this out of context.

These kids consume ALOT of media be that fiction, movies, video games, MMORPGs or TV. They know what they like.

They want to be transformed and lose themselves in the experience. They really get down on each other when they get too focused on mechanics. To them, the power cards distract from their favorite part of the game, the human interaction of it. They can only get that from RPGs. All their other media are less personal and less human.

As my oldest puts it, "It rocks to be heroes and it is boner to do it together."

translation
From Boomer into Millenial
Boner = B!%~*in'
from Boner into GenX/Y
Boner = Narley

I'm really tempted to say that this is very much a direct effect of their exposure to the back and forth the rest of your local community has had over the issue; I'm skeptical that some of these claims (especially those about PFRPG) are ones that they actually know to be true; rather, I suspect that they are simply talking points they've latched onto from the other side, which they've taken for some other reason. In short, I don't think this says anything about 4e of PFRPG, but is a reflection about how kids make decisions about what is cool and what is not.

Regardless, you should treat this like any other group of gamers; run what they want to play unless it's not what you want to run, and if the latter is the case then try to work on a compromise. If they end up playing PFRPG, maybe they'll like it, or maybe they'll go back to 4e.

4e is really, really doing fine, especially among this younger demographic.

No they are intelligent kids, all honor students and capable of making their own decisions about their likes and aethetics. They have been exposed to some banter about the merits of the systems, but these three guys are the DMs of their group. This is a studied decisions based on what they value in the game.

As to it doing fine with the younger demo, who knows? I don't have the market research and neither do you. I imagine it is, but this group of kids gave it a thumbs down. In the grand scheme of things this is more focus group than market survey. All I know is they have rejected D&D in favor of another system. This is just one brand among many to them.