Akjosch's page

With the standard rules for Free Archetype, they don't get much choice anyway. We agreed to play pirates, so everyone gets Pirate archetype for free. Done. You don't have to use those feats if you don't care.

The 0.02% probability at +6 is 1 out of 5000. The 0.07% probability at -5 is 1 out of 1428. Generating 238 NPCs would require 1428 ability scores, but very few GMs want to generate over 200 NPC stat blocks.

I actually do that. For all the settlements that the PCs spend more than a night in, I have a table with all the NPCs and their stat blocks, to use when I need someone or a crowd truly randomly picked.

Why wouldn't I, when generating even the whole population of Absalom takes mere seconds for a modern computer?

And then finding out how many people are actually good enough to make it as a city guard (STR +4 or more, DEX +2, CON +2, INT +0, WIS +2, CHA -1) is a simple and quick filter on the table data away.

Akjosch wrote:

Jacob Jett wrote:

If you think of it as a Gaussian distribution ...

But that would be silly, wouldn't it? The Gaussian distribution is a continuous distribution defined on the whole real number line. The "amount of children" distribution is clearly discrete, and also defined on a half-open interval (no such thing as negative children) - basically on all natural numbers including zero. There's a bunch of distribution that you could fit the data to here, with Poisson being the most well-known. Gaussian isn't one of them.

We mathematicians routinely convert the continuous Gaussian distribution into a discrete distribution by dividing it into intervals. Given a Gaussian distribution such as f(x) = (1/sqrt(2pi))e^{x^2/2), we could turn it into a discrete distribution over integers by F(n) = the area under f(x) between n-0.5 and n+0.5. Thus, Jacob Jett made no error in calling a discrete distribution Gaussian.

This was in the context of the "amount of children" distribution, which has a finite lower bound (of exactly zero). Using a discrete quantitation of the Gaussian distribution won't get rid of the problem. You'd need to use a log-normal distribution if you insist on using Gaussian "underneath".

If you think of it as a Gaussian distribution ...

But that would be silly, wouldn't it? The Gaussian distribution is a continuous distribution defined on the whole real number line. The "amount of children" distribution is clearly discrete, and also defined on a half-open interval (no such thing as negative children) - basically on all natural numbers including zero. There's a bunch of distribution that you could fit the data to here, with Poisson being the most well-known. Gaussian isn't one of them.

Speaking of discrete distributions: As a GM, I just tend to give normal NPCs I don't care about (which is more than 90% of them) a stat block of "six modifiers of 3d3-6 each, roll in order, add ancestry and heritage modifiers, pick the free ones randomly without duplicates". It's not like it matters much for any of their other stats.

Akjosch wrote:

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

Akjosch wrote:

I really have but a simple wish: Ancestry, heritage and class design rules. Not guidelines, rules. Under which all the currently released and future official ones are rules-legal.

Please no, then the entire potential for inventive new material would be constrained entirely to what that book outlined as possible.

I don't see the issue. The whole life on Earth is constrained by the - comparatively simple - rules for how atoms may assemble and interact with each other. Yet both the variety of real life and the potential for it is staggering.

If budget, time and all the other things that go into a book would allow for this kind of complexity, then you would have had a point. But as I don't think Paizo have developed godlike powers yet, that is the mother of all non-arguments.

Let's compare it to a game then, in fact one rather old by now: BattleTech. It has precise rules for building units. This naturally limits what kind of units can be build. In fact, when looking at the Master Unit List, I see at the moment "only" 3959 different official Mech units built using these rules.

Would a rule set - note that I neither asked for a simple nor easy one, just an official one - which limits Paizo to only ever releasing a few thousand ancestries, heritages and classes before they run out of possibilities or have to amend them be all that limiting, really?

Akjosch wrote:

I really have but a simple wish: Ancestry, heritage and class design rules. Not guidelines, rules. Under which all the currently released and future official ones are rules-legal.

Please no, then the entire potential for inventive new material would be constrained entirely to what that book outlined as possible.

I don't see the issue. The whole life on Earth is constrained by the - comparatively simple - rules for how atoms may assemble and interact with each other. Yet both the variety of real life and the potential for it is staggering.

I really have but a simple wish: Ancestry, heritage and class design rules. Not guidelines, rules. Under which all the currently released and future official ones are rules-legal.

I wasn't sure how freely you could use Paizo's graphical design elements for actions, reaction and so on; and I like designing stuff like this anyway ... so I made my own. The TTF font is using the same ligature system as the font from Paizo, only with different ligatures (:a: for one action, :aa: for two, :aaa: for three, :r: for a reaction symbol and :f: for a free action one). There's also a matching "dot" symbol I use for bulleted lists. You can load the files back in icomoon.io to change it if you like.

Preview
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Software used: Inkscape and icomoon.io. Licensed under the CC0; not that I care what you do with those, really.

If there is already a PC in the Ruler Role, then Counselor being Invested has no mechanical effect.

It is, however, the perfect opportunity to have some role-playing scenes dealing with people stepping onto each other's toes when dealing with their respective areas of responsibility (here: Culture).

While you're looking at these rules, I'd think of how they interact with warfare. Specifically: How enemy armies can be used to block a kingdom's food and taxes production just by being in the way, and how you can reduce an army's consumption by ordering it to pillage whatever area they are in (damaging or destroying the infrastructure in the process).

Here's something that grinds my gears in general in regards to Slavic-inspired cultures: If you're already borrowing from the culture, the last names should, especially when they end in "-ski/-ska", "-sky/-ska", "-cki/-cka", "-cky/-cka", "-av/-ava" or "-ov/-ova", vary depending on the gender of the one carrying them. It's the same family name, just inflected for gender. So it should be King Noleski Surtov, while his sister still goes by Natala Surtova Same goes for some other family names; here would be examples I'd include:

Orlovsky - Orlovska
Kamiński (really, you're keeping the "ń"?) - Kamińska
Wustlav - Wustlava
Romanowsky - Romanowska
Kobliski - Kobliska
Kowalski - Kowalska
Miroslav - Miroslava
Volkov - Volkova
Darlovsky - Darlovska
Sekelsky - Sekelska
Zedkhov - Zedkhova
Kozlov - Kozlova

Of course, you can go full Czech and slap -ová for the feminine gender version of every family name, too. But that would be kinda silly.

Another funny detail: Are you aware that "Nemitz" means, literally, "The German" and "Horvat" means "The Croat"? Not that either is impossible, given that we already had an official Golarion-Earth crossover AP.

I actually totally missed the "Clear Hex" part, because "clearing" is kinda the opposite of what you want to do when you're doing a scorched earth campaign and breaking up infrastructure.

Which brings another issue: since "improvement" isn't a game-mechanical term, if the road counts as one for the purpose of "Clear Hex" is a matter of interpretation, not rules. That's in contrast to the Bridge, which the rules lists along other terrain features (again, not a clearly defined game-mechanical term) as being able to be removed with Clear Hex.

While adding new Leadership Activities is the obvious way to get more options we were really trying to streamline our changes and not homebrew a whole lot. In the end we decided to create 2 new Leadership Activities.

But you do need to add a lot.

You can Establish Settlement, but you can't Raze Settlement; not even your own.

You can Establish Trade Agreement, but neither you, nor anyone else, can Sabotage Trade Agreement.

You can Quell Unrest, but you can't Incite Unrest, or really do much beyond direct warfare to weaken other kingdoms.

You can Build Roads (and a bridge along the way), but you can't Demolish Roads (or even destroy that pesky bridge).

The list goes on and on ...

Inspired by this post, I asked Stable Diffusion to generate me a bunch of "hide armor" concept images. Maybe something in the results will be to your taste, or inspire you?

As usual with AI art: Don't look too closely at things like hands or faces - they're not the focus in this case.

A mentally strong, physically weak "martial" without any magical abilities who sucks at making strikes, never has a weapon equipped but is still a useful party member just through their great wisdom, charisma and intelligence and excells at resourceless buffs and debuffs. A true nonmagical supporter who fills the same role in a party as bard. The alchemist kinda fits this description but is way too narrow thematically, too martial in general and just IMO not fun to play.

I wanted to name Bilbo Baggins, but I see you already beat me to it. So, yeah.

Akjosch wrote:

For example, Cheliax Lore could have a feat which allows you to navigate the law system with ease, using (and abusing) it to your advantage.

I mean isn't that just what you'd use Cheliax Lore for normally?

Does it? Because "normally" (as in, according to the rules), you use lores only for Recall Knowledge and Earn Income; unless it's explicitly specified (like Cooking Lore for the meal recipes). What I'm envisioning here is a feat which would for example allow you to use Cheliax Lore to Coerce (instead of Intimidation) or Create Forgery (instead of Society), with a suitable bonus to both.

And sure - many such feats would be highly campaign-specific. But then, there are many campaigns which are bound to a region anyway, so those would fit in them nicely. For example, looking through Kingmaker (2e), specific feats for Cooking, Warfare, Politics, River Kingdoms, Brevoy and Pitax lores would fit in there nicely.

I'd like more feats for specific lores. For example, for region/society lores (Cheliax Lore, Katapesh Lore, and so on...), some feats which allow you access to actions and knowledge specific to that region would be nice. For example, Cheliax Lore could have a feat which allows you to navigate the law system with ease, using (and abusing) it to your advantage.

Some of the more generally useful or common lores - terrain, engineering, warfare, cooking, academia, herbalism, politics, underworld, sailing and so on - could use feats specific to them too.