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Samurai: 1. An adherent of bushido, a Japanese honor system faintly resembling the chivalric codes of Europe. 2. An excuse for a katana. 3. A variant weapon-oriented class noted for the large number of its members who have wandered thousands of miles from their homes, responsibilities, and tea suppliers and teamed up with a bunch of lordless, honorless, discourteous strippers-of-dead-bodies.
Neutral Good: 1. A person who upholds the necessity for kindness, generosity, understanding, and respect for life... while killing people and taking their stuff. 2. The party member who enables the Chaotic Neutral party member's continued crime wave by refusing to allow the Lawful party members to administer a good sound keel-hauling.
Fromper wrote: Ninja: A rogue who lacks the trapfinding abilities of most rogues, and can somehow turn invisible without magic.
One day when I was leaving work, the weather was atrocious. I was prepared though; I had a black scarf worn so that it covered my mouth and nose, a black hoody pulled low, and a big black coat with black gloves (it was cold, alright!).
As I was leaving, the guys on reception said I looked like a ninja! I offered to demonstrate my 'ninja invisibility', and after building the tension I finally turned invisible....by putting a hand over my eyes and repeating 'You can't see me!' over and over.
I'm not sure they believed me.... : /
Ninja: A better (slightly) rogue.
Greataxe: Favorite weapon of halfling barbarians, used primarily to kill 1st level Pathfinder Society characters of new players, thus ensuring they never play again.
Ooze: A semi-sentient gelantenous mass of protoplasm or similar substance that murderhobos hate to fight, generally due to the lack of loot possessed by said ooze. Comes in a variety of colors, sizes, and flavors. Not recommended as a food source, even for murderhobos.
Cavalier: Nigh-Unstoppable Halflings and Gnomes, and Medium creatures who worship Ride-by Attack and Narrow Frame
Chaotic Good: Alignment distinguishable from Chaotic Neutral by its preference for killing evil opponents and taking their stuff. Favored by Clerics who use the Sacred Summons feat to summon particular outsiders.
Dexterity: The ability score most often mistaken for the best one in the game because it does everything. If you sink enough feats into it, it will apply to your AC, reflex save, initiative, to hit and damage, as well as some nice skills. Unfortunately at no point does it allow you to bend reality as Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma do.
Diplomacy: The skill, not to be confused with Longsword Diplomacy or Fireball Diplomacy. If played by RAW this skill is actually magic that works in anti-magic zones that allows you to charm anyone into being Friendly with you, except for the rest of the party who will hate you for making combat, and thus loot and experience, disappear from the game.
Alternatively a DM may decide that using this skill is rollplay and what really matters is the roleplay, in which case you might as well not take ranks because the Cha 5 Orc who is untrained in Diplomacy will end up being more convincing and likeable than your Face Character just because his player is more eloquent in real life.
I have no idea what the actual bolding conventions are!
Petty Alchemy wrote:
I have no idea what the actual bolding conventions are!
GenCon and PaizoCon
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I think bold is being used to represent cross-references to other terms.
Collateral Damage: The name eventually assigned to all unnamed NPCs.
Fallen: The paladin’s natural state, with some help from the GM.
GM Bribe: The only tactic that guarantees character survival, despite all the attention paid to feats, skills, class abilities (see superpowers), and combat strategy.
Penalty: A number subtracted from a player’s dice roll every time the GM is watching and remembers it.
Thieves’ Guild: The nebulous organization that somehow thrives in every city, town, and hamlet, sees and knows all, and requires a percentage of every rogue’s income in exchange for the privilege of not killing them. A prototype of modern government.
Unfair: Any GM decision that applies the rules as written.
Fromper wrote: Petty Alchemy wrote:
I have no idea what the actual bolding conventions are!
GenCon and PaizoCon *rimshot*
Longsword Diplomacy: Conflict resolution though implied, expressed, or realized violence. In modern parlance not requiring killing gentle persuasion or fine tuning (which is to say that you hit it with a hammer).
Spell Component Pouch: In a game that tracks an archer's arrows down to the very last one, the spell component pouch is a 5gp 2lb wonder that contains every possible spell component and spell focus in the game, and never needs to be refilled. However if you try to use anything in the pouch for something besides casting, such as tossing some of the licorice shavings you use for Haste into the dinner pot, the DM will look at you like you are insane
Haste: Widely regarded as a very well designed spell, Haste tricks your foolish companions into charging headlong into battle, while doubling the speed at which you may execute a tactical retreat.
Unfair (2): Any DM decision I did not ask him to make.
Core Races: A coalition of species that maintains military might enough to kill all oothers while maintaining high enough population counts to cover the planet in their writhing young.
Goblins: A race of small greenskins that makes constant attempts to prove they deserve to be a Core Race because they are the best at sex and have a casual propensity towards violence and cruelty. Stopping their attempts to be considered a Core Race is often the first test of Adventurers.
OOC Jokes/References: This is what players engage in between combats, neglecting any and all potential for roleplay. A DM is to be grateful if this banter does not include Monty Python.
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Spell Focus: A relatively random, gen. portable object, ordinarily useless to an adventurer, which must be dragged around because a particular spell requires its use as a sort of cosmic secret handshake before allowing you to put reality over your knee and spank it.
Monty Python: British comedy troupe prominent in the 1970s and still holders of the Worst Female Impersonation Team World Cup; notorious for suddenly losing interest in a scene and cutting right to -
Charge: A dirty little trick written into the rules to persuade the martial-class players that rushing headlong into a crowd of enemies is 'better' than remaining on high ground, behind cover, and out of area of effects.
Evil: A terrible moral force that pervades the Pathfinder cosmos, encouraging selfishness, decadence, violence, hatred and vile crimes of all possible description. It is speculated that the gods built Evil into the universe when their original beta-testing revealed that without it, resurrection and healing magic would cause the entire multiverse to become hideously overpopulated within a few decades.
Kender: (archaic) A Small race of subconsciously kleptomaniac humanoids; part of a joke that most people thought was funny for about ten minutes back in 1984, and that a few people think is funny as long as it's a playable race and they never encounter an NPC one. Special note: Kender are not officially part of Pathfinder, and God willing never will be. If you suspect that you have encountered a kender, friendly or otherwise, show no mercy. Hack your way through your own allies if you must; the kender has priority even over enemy enchanters and healers. The only excuse for allowing a kender to leave the encounter alive is if you plan to track it to its nest and wipe them all out. Be thorough.
Calybos1 wrote: Good ones! There's still a few classes and alignments missing, too: Magus A wielder of sword and spell, who takes 4 times as many rolls (and 10 times as many arguments) to do slightly less damage than a Barbarian
Barbarian: HULK SMASH!!!!
Trap Feats: Worse than actual in-game traps, these feats do nothing 99% of the time (and when they do something it is insignificant) or they actively make the character worse. Some designers will claim that these are necessary to reward System Mastery, which is similar to a Rogue's Trapfinding only in real-life.
Anyone want to do a more complete definition of System Mastery?
99%: 100% unless it is beneficial for the player, in which case the Dice Gods will make it certain failure.
Greater Beast Totem: A pronounced disposition towards apparent worship of the beasts of the world. Some say it is taken due to their savage nature that is in tune with the natural world. Other say it’s because it gives a full attack on a charge. All we know is we call him AM BARBARIAN.
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Hellknight: 1. Member of a chivalrous order dedicated to the advance of Law and of its own political and social influence throughout Golarion. 2. Grim, hardcore vigilante-types so cool that players willingly take the Lawful Neutral alignment "as long as I don't have to give up any loot."
Spells: Array of magical abilities that render physical combat, travel, exertion, skill, and even awareness unnecessary. Logically, the existence of spells should result in an end to all types of labor, industry, agriculture, medicine, and scholarship, thereby destroying civilization. The fact that this has not occurred in the GAME WORLD is attributed to the will of the GODS (see FIAT, VERISIMILITUDE).
Spellcasting: The awesome process of conjuring unseen, eldritch forces of the infinite beyond to rain hellfire down upon your foes, recall the dead from beyond the grave, or speed up your walking pace to a brisk jog. Favored by those who never seem to do any jogging themselves, to judge from their CONSTITUTION and HIT POINTS.
Rules Debate: The primary form of enjoyment PLAYERS gain from role-playing games. See STRAW MAN ARGUMENT.
Straw Man Argument: The only type of argument ever offered by someone you disagree with in a RULES DEBATE.
Petty Alchemy wrote: Spell Component Pouch: In a game that tracks an archer's arrows down to the very last one, the spell component pouch is a 5gp 2lb wonder that contains every possible spell component and spell focus in the game, and never needs to be refilled. However if you try to use anything in the pouch for something besides casting, such as tossing some of the licorice shavings you use for Haste into the dinner pot, the DM will look at you like you are insane
Well, it is right next to the bat guano...
Everything is individually wrapped, of course. Or imagine the mess on a warm day.
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CR - A made up number to hide how really awesome an author's new monster is.
EL - A number supposedly derived from the CR's present and totally ignores author created conditions that hose the PCs but the CR's are immune to.
Half-Orc - The most awesome race in the game.
Elf - The most conceited race in the game.
Dwarf - The most stubborn race in the game.
Halfling - The most underfoot race in the game.
Gnome - The most exasperating race in the game.
Human - The most aggrogant race in the game.
Half-Elf - See Elf, See Human, shake don't stir.
Orc 3.0 - A Creature deemed a challenge for a 1st level character whose Great Axe with 1.5 str mod, would kill most 1st level characters 15-35% of the time on a hit.
Orc 3.5 - A revision to Orc 3.0 to reduce its lethality to 1st level characters, whose falchion with 1.5 str mod & improved crit range dramatically increased the kill rate on 1st level characters over the earlier model.
Sneak Attack - an action by certain classes to blantantly move around a fully aware opponent in an obvisious attempt to increase damage output.
Fireball - a powerful burst of flame that somehow seems to always do 1/2 X [your level] x d6 to the BBEG, while the BBEG's does 1 X [your level + 4] x d6 x 1/2 to you.
Magic Missle - A sure striking spell that does little effect.
Sleep - A spell of ultimate power at 1st level, and completely worthless there-after.
Evasion - A class feature guaranteeing that a 'one' roll will result will result when you really really need this to work.
"Meat"ing your saves - Always succeeding at your absolute worst save, while always failing your best.
Petty Alchemy: There's no hard rule for bolding, I was just using it to indicate other words that would likely show up in this dictionary. For example, one is likely to wonder "what is Sneak Attack?" during a Pathfinder game. One is less likely to wonder "what is a chair?"
Think of it as inherently suggesting other terms to define.
Beneath the box where you type your post, there are words that say "How to format your text" with a button next to it that says "Show". Press the button.
Thanks Ciaran Barnes!
I'll take a stab at System Mastery
System Mastery: Argument used to explain why your build is better than another build, or why your interpretation of the rules is better than RAW and/or RAI.
Stabhands: A game pioneered by Hellknights and used by intimidaters the d20 system over. Consists of as many participants as required stabbing themselves in the hand as many times as possible before passing out. Every 5 points of damage you do grants a +2 competence bonus to your intimidate check.
Roleplaying:An excuse to harass and annoy other players on the basis that "it's what my character would do!"
Not-RoleplayingAn activity performed by people who would prefer to play videogames over Pathfinder
Videogames: A vague concept which is generally considered inferior to Table-top games, but which any concept in Pathfinder which someone does not like will be compared to.
Errata: a list of errors and their corrections published online by Paizo that may only be used to the benefit of the murderhobos.
Wealth-by-Level: (abbr. WBL, also Wealth-Buy-Level) A number representing the minimum amount of loot a murderhobo should have been allowed to acquire before advancing to a particular experience level. If a murderhobo is not allowed to acquire this much loot the murderhobo is deemed to be incapable of performing the simplest act and there is much wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments about how the game is now completely unbalanced.
WBL 2. The taxation system implemented by a gm in order to compensate for previous episodes of being far too generous with the Loot
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Paladin Trap: 1. 1st edition encounter designed to deal with a Paladin who makes a habit of walking through dungeons with a drawn Holy Aventer. In 1st ed. a Paladin with a drawn Holy Avenger constantly dispelled magic in an area effect, so the DM placed an ooze above a dispellable effect above the corridor, causing the ooze to drop onto the Paladin. 2. Any thread discussing Paladins.
Lich: A monster which commonly serves as a primary antagonist which requires you to make sure, and I mean REALLY sure, that it's dead, as it can come back to life. This is not a strength shared by it's DemiLich cousin.
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Charm: A form of mind-affecting spell which causes the subject to develop an immediate, deep, and sometimes rather awkward and embarrassing friendship with the spellcaster. The GM often has to put up with PCs using these spells without ever having NPCs retaliate with the same methods, since charm effects are sometimes a source of ragequit among those whose enthusiasm for optimization did not account for Will saving throws. The effects that charm spells, and paranoia about charm spells, would have in fields such as finance, politics and professional blackmail are rarely addressed in the game world or by the alignment system.
Minotaur: 1. The monstrous child of the Cretan queen Pasiphae, later incarcerated in a labyrinth by Minos of Crete - possibly the very first 'dungeon with a dragon'; also one of the first recorded 'abusive neglect' cases. 2. Large bull-headed monster whose spastic rage, brutish strength, love of charge attacks, and distinctive odor often make it so similar to the party barbarian that close inspection may be necessary and friendly fire is understandable (although rarely forgiven.)
Paranoia: 1. Rational response to a game world administrated by the sort of person you know the GM to be. 2. Side-effect of being an adventurer in a world where implausibly camouflaged creatures exist that are visually indistinguishable from walls, chests, pools of water, discarded garments, corpses, stalactites, statues, mushrooms, fellow adventurers, and in fact virtually any object that can be encountered in an underground setting (although monsters camouflaged as lamp oil, rope, or iron rations have not yet been recorded.)
Constitution: Sliding-scale measurement of one’s systemic resemblance to feldspar.
Corner Case: An obscure, one-in-a-million situation beloved by programmers, statisticians, and players whose entire build revolves around encountering a half-dragon, half-plant undead shapeshifter underground near water while mounted during an eclipse, at which point they get a +4 to hit. A lack of such encounters will commonly be decried as unfair.
Free Will: The appeal to a higher concept to justify the PCs’ refusal to be bound by such trivial considerations as characterization, consistency, established plot, or oaths sworn thirty seconds ago. Stage Two of all disputes about railroading. Not to be mistaken for "Free Willy."
Game Balance: The ultimate, sacred ideal and rationale behind all rules decisions, equivalent to Freedom, Liberty, and Mom’s Apple Pie. Interestingly, it can be invoked to justify any position or its opposite.
Intelligence: Every player's primary claimed attribute, thus demonstrating their skill at fantasy roleplaying.
Psionics: A form of superpowers that drags an SF theme into a fantasy setting for the purpose of adding new and system-incompatible types of spells that don’t involve spellcasting.
Rules, Rulebooks: A hefty compilation of minutely detailed, comprehensive laws and principles to follow in every conceivable situation and circumstance, most of which contradict each other as you move from older to newer content. Apart from this, mostly unrelated to the Bible. (See Rules Debate, House Rule)
Splatbook: Any of a thousand unofficial, quasi-official, and outright bootlegged ‘sourcebooks’ for a game system churned out by opportunistic third-party publishers of dubious reputation and reliability, all of whom were driven out of business by the conversion from 3.5’s OGL to 4.0. Despite being banned by every GM who encounters them, splatbooks are still combed over by min/maxers in an endless quest to build the ultimate, unstoppable murderhobo.
Stupid Good: Innocent; naïve; doomed. The character who overcompensates for the paladin’s Lawful Stupid murder sprees by insisting that “You don’t know the demons can’t change their ways until you ask them!”
Anyone got a good definition for House Rule?
Surprise: 1. An unexpected event or object. 2. Free additional actions that the party receives at the start of combat when it encounters monsters that failed a Perception check, often because they are busy tearing apart the party member who was scouting. 3. Free additional actions that the monsters receive at the start of combat when the party stops in the middle of the dungeon to bicker. 4. Emotional reaction of the players when a newly introduced house rule turns out to enhance the game, or at least not to result in their characters' sudden poverty, disfigurement, or reduction to Three-Stooges-level combat effectiveness (see fumble).
Scouting: 1. (military) Provision of tactical intelligence gathered through stealth and observation. 2. A concept that makes sense in theory, but which in practice comes up against the necessity of rolling an opposed check against multiple monsters, almost all of whom have Perception as a class skill at maximum ranks, and many of whom receive a racial bonus to boot. Slightly less impractical if the GM remembers distance penalties to Perception, but somehow they never do.
Paladin: A class. All other facts about this subject are too controversial for inclusion into a lexicon.
Chest: The most common loot containment unit: also among the most common locations for traps. Chests are often sealed with marvelously complex and anachronistic locks, none of which are effective, because a determined toddler with a greataxe can eventually open one, while a barbarian can usually open one in three tries by crushing it like a robin's egg between his thighs.
House Rule:
1)A way of relocating blame for the poor intrpretation or rewriting of a rule onto an inanimate object instead of the poor judgement of the person makeing the interpretation or rewrite (Hey, its not my rule... Its the HOUSE rule.. If you dont like it... Blame the house! stupid house...
2)A rule that ha been interpreted or rewritten in such a way such that disagreement with it results in a physical change in locatio for the one who disagree's with it. (If you dont like it.. go HOME!)
Perception: Avoiding surprise attacks, detecting pickpockets, reducing the advantages of invisibility, detecting plot-related clues, and locating traps far more effectively through the expenditure of a skill point. Note that a feat or class feature that provided such benefits would almost certainly be considered overpowered.
Fear: An effect - sometimes a spell - which causes a character to run away while his or her [/b]player[/b] goes off to the kitchen to raid the fridge. To make the player afraid, an entirely different set of conditions should be imposed (see dominated, paralyzed, and losing equipment.)
Hook: An effort by the GM to interest the players in some sort of plot (as opposed to simply wandering around stabbing creatures and stealing objects). A hook usually only succeeds if it blatantly and obviously offers the players a chance for their characters to... you guessed it... wander around, stab creatures and steal objects.
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Cure Light Wounds: An astoundingly popular spell which renews hit points lost over the course of the usual, 15-minute adventuring day. Unusually, cure light wounds doesn't cure "light" wounds until the character has about 80 hit points, at which point the average 9.5 damage healed by the spell could justly be classified as "light" damage; until that point the spell would more justly be called save my bacon.
Facing: A concept unfamiliar to Pathfinder, which – for the sake of simplicity - assumes that all combatants are spinning in place at high speeds. Even the gelatinous cubes.
Reach: 1. A common monster ability that allows the GM to distribute a fair share of pain to cowardly PCs who thought they were safe from the mayhem. 2. A quality certain weapons give to a PC, allowing him or her to argue about flanking, cover and other modifiers at a range where his fellow characters would just save time by shooting or casting a spell.
Alignment Violation: An excuse to take time out from arguing about math, physics and/or strategy in order to have an argument about philosophy.
Miniatures: 1. A simple ploy by gaming companies to ensure that gamers do not make the hobby look bad by becoming drug addicts - through the simple expedient of making sure they have no spare money with which to buy drugs. 2. (archaic) Tiny, painstakingly-painted metal figurines. 3. Small, imperfectly colored and often deformed plastic figurines. 4. Inert lumps of matter that refuse to move about in a simulation of true combat, thus leading to claims that tumbling or firing through a group of people engaged in a close-range life-or-death struggle 'should be simple.'
Flame Strike An offensive spell available to Clerics and Druids. Your party will get upset if you cast this spell instead of a healing or buff spell (see Area of Effect, Collateral Damage, and Friendly Fire).
Character Knowledge What the character knows, which might be less than what the player knows. Often ignored during combat (and out of combat).
Player Knowledge What the player knows that the character does not. Often ignored during combat (and out of combat).
Blast Radius: Knowledge of the exact area of damage that each area of effect spell fills, mystically known by every (surviving-see Darwin) player character, even if the character doesnt actually know what spell has been cast. Example, 'I stand just outside the blast radius, DM!
Beta-Testing: 1. Testing product quality by supplying it to a select group that will employ it in the intended manner, then using their feedback to improve the product before full commercial release. 2. D&D 3.5.
Chaos: 1. An inherent cosmic force that encourages instability, change and the destruction of the status quo; gen. opposed to Law, although by its very nature it sometimes opposes other forces, including itself. Variants include Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, 'real' Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil and the 'Monkey Swarm' monster. 2. Statistically probable result of a random table, artifact or certain kinds of house rule appearing in a campaign. 3. Anything that is hysterically amusing to the players and either confusing or utterly terrifying for the characters.
4E: A marketing decision that turned table against table, brother against brother, nerd against nerd; possibly the most schism-generating event in gamer history since the 'remastered' version of Star Wars in which Greedo shot first.
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Playable Race: A species that is sentient, but so weak in comparison to giants, dragons, genies, and hundreds of other sentient powerhouses that under ordinary circumstances they would be enslaved, slaughtered and/or eaten in about three weeks. The playable races avoid this doom by allowing a small handful of unbalanced personalities with class abilities and unusually high attributes to roam about plundering and slaughtering at random. Despite the considerable collateral damage of this approach, these well-armed mental deviants generally go after the better loot held by the more powerful creatures out there, thus resulting in a high death rate among both the adventurers and the powerful species: the result is a net gain for the playable race. See also core race.
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