Andarion's page

My problem is not that the FAQ has gone this long without being addressed, that is frustrating and disappointing but not a HUGE issue, my problem is that they keep adding to a "broken" feature.

If no one knows how exactly it operates then you should stop making it until it is solved.

It is a massive perception issue. Your company only comes off as incompetent when you keep doing this.

You have a problem, you acknowledge the problem., you say since there are so many masterpieces that work differently it is a complicated problem, and you continue to put out new masterpieces before addressing the problem. The only thing your customer sees is incompetence at best and great at worst.

It's almost like making a car that uses and engine that has a 95% failure rate within 10 miles of use. When it is brought to the attention of the company they acknowledge the problem, say they will address the problem and continue to make more cars using the same engine.

People buy the new cars thinking that the problem has been solved only to discover that no, no it has not. The customers then bring the issue up again with the company, and the company again responds with an acknowledgement of the problem and promise of a fix. They also say that since they have more cars on the road now then when the problem was first brought to their attention, the fix will be more complex.

The customers accept it, but then see the company continue to make and sell more cars with the same problem.

It just does not help your image.

*Edit* I love playing Bards. I want to look at using the masterpieces, but until this gets answered, I am not going to even bother touching them.

A big reason for this problem is how we calculate HP and Damage during game play.

Almost everyone I meet, myself included, look at it this way:

34/34 HP

Take 4 HP Damage so we subtract 4 from the first 34 to get

30/34 HP

Max Hp Reduced by 5 so we subtract 5 from the second 34 which brings us to

30/29 HP

Well we took 4 points of damage earlier so we have to recalculate current HP and get

25/29

This is very convoluted and actually goes against how the system was written (I think)

The better way to do this is this:

We have 34 HP max

We take 4 points of damage so we record 4 on the sheet, we don't subtract from out max, we have a pool called damage it totals 4 so we get

4/34

Out HP is reduced by five so we subtract 5 from 34 giving us an end result of

4/29

So with using two pools, one for Hit Points and one for Damage we simplify the math to two steps.

Maybe explaining it to them that way will make it more clear.

It is considered a trap option because it does not scale well at all.

From levels 1-5 it works well because you only have one attack.
From levels 6-8 it works decently because the second attack is unreliable, but you are not doing enough damage to each creature targeted by Cleave and them being adjacent becomes less common.

After this it becomes useless for the below reasons:

Higher CR monsters rarely bunch up because they have Reach, multiple movement options, spells and SLAs
Your extra attacks become more reliable and do more damage

MOST IMPORTANTLY- A monster with 1 hp fights just as well as a monster with 10,000 hp.

This CANNOT be reinforced enough, concentrate on one target. This is a game of statistics. If you have five monsters with 2 attacks that have a 25% chance to hit you, with a 5% chance to crit, you do not want to continue to allow your DM to roll tons of dice, it will NOT go in your favor.

Take out monster systematically. My own group is terrible at this, our wizards always go evocation because they like fireball and lightning bolt. Don't get me wrong, they are helpful when faced with a large number of weaker monsters, but a martial that takes out 1.5 monsters per turn is more efficient than a fireball that wounds 8.

Can we get an official order of operations for rules interactions?

Hear me out. I know that general is overridden by specific. Simple enough in theory, but some rules debates make you wonder.

But what about when specific contradicts specific?

In the Smash from the air and disintegrate thread we see an example of this. Now it is not a great example, but it works for my purposes. Disintegrate says it effects the first object/being it touches and Smash From the Air allows you to deflect spells using an object.

I am not going into the debate here, that is what that thread is for, but if we had an official order of operations for rules interactions, we could nip these things in the bud quick fast and in a hurry...in theory because this is the internet.

So what exactly am I talking about by order of operations?

So instead of the very vague specific trumps general I am looking for something like this:

1. General Rules (ie. Environment, Combat, Magic (not spells just Magic), Equipment, and anything else I forgot
2. Spells
3. Classes
4. Feats

*Please do not debate the priority levels of each, this is just for explanation purposes.

So we start at level 1 and it is overridden by anything from level 2-4, and level 2 is overridden by anything from level 3-4.

With this, if we ever have a rules contradiction we can just look at what section the two contradicting/interacting rules come from and if they are from different priority levels, whichever is higher wins. End of discussion, again in theory.

Now I know this is not something that we can have thrown together in a day or two since the design philosophy of 3e to Pathfinder probably did not have this, but it would help immensely.

Society would run smoother by table because you could have an issue arise that would be solved very quickly. Let's use the SFtA and Disintegrate topic with the above priority listing.

Disintegrate says it effects the first object/being it touches and Smash From the Air allows you to deflect spells using an object. Player 1 argues that the object used to deflect the spell is damaged since it is an object, and Player 2 says it does not since the feat says the attack is deflected.

If we look at the priority levels, Spells are level 2, but Feats are level 4. Therefore, feat overrides spells, and player 2 is correct.

Is it a perfect system? No. But it would help.

Here's my question: how should I should depict CG paladins, what role they have in their religions, and how they might work in Kintargo? And what opportunities, missions, and quests can I offer to such paladins in the Hell's Rebels campaign?

So I wrote a huge response to discuss paladin alignments and realized it was a total thread derailment, which I started, apologies.

Anyways, to answer your direct; it's going to be tricky. You may have a CG Paladin who gets up in front of the people publicly and stirs them to action, you may have a CG Paladin that remains in the shadows stealthily taking out the cancer that infects his home, or you could have a CG Paladin that encourages calm and civility in the people since he realizes that directly opposing the Empire of Cheliax in open as a single city is madness that will end in the death of lots of people. At the end of the day, ANY paladin will be dedicated to doing good.

Really, it is wide open how to depict them. A Paladin of Cayden Cailean could provide a place for people to relax and forget the worries of the world for a time, a Desnan Paladin could take it upon themselves to ensure that people traveling within the city are safe and protected, and a Milani Paladin could be leading open revolt.

The churches of each of these gods would react differently to each individual paladin, and each individual priest of these religions would react differently to each paladin.

So specific examples:

John Gerald owns and operates a tavern known as The Lucky Beggar, as a paladin of Cayden Cailean, he ensures that the drink and company are the best in town. He allows the local Cult of Milani to meet in his basement, and if any Thrune agents try to work his establishment or harass his patrons; he reminds them that The Drunken God was a soldier.

Rachelle Benedicci is a Paladin of Milani and leads one of the cells within Kintargo. She and her supporters meet in The Lucky Beggar that is owned by her friend John. In her meetings she actively encourages actions against the Thrune and plans and takes part in some of the more daring raids. She understands that John is sticking his neck out for her and tries to be a secretive about her relationship as possible.

Tilitha, is a paladin of Desna and was brought to Kintargo by a dream sent by her goddess. As she is an outsider, she does not know much about Kintargo but can see the corruption and oppression. She has taken it upon herself to patrol the city streets at night and stop any Thrune agents from harassing those that walk the streets.

Each is different, each is motivated by a different reason, but at the end of the day, each one is trying to do the best good they can.

Hope it helps somewhat.

As a fan of Paladins, and someone who fought for releasing them from the ridiculous shackles of LG since beta, this is actually super SUPER easy to do.

I would just say the Paladins just have to be good. That's right ANY good alignment. However, they must be completely dedicated to doing good.

The Law/Chaos alignment plane is so messed up that it contradicts itself all over the place. Example, Monks must be lawful since they dedicate them selves to their training, but Wizards can be any alignment although the dedicate themselves to the study of magic...whut???

Where i see CG paladins differing from LG paladins is planning. I see CG paladins being more, help the person in need in front of me right now ignoring future consequences while a LG will help if it does not interfere with the big picture. Again though, the Law/Chaos plane is vague.

There is an anime for that, called "Gate: The JDSF Fought There" (or something VERY similar, I get name of anime, manga, and light novel confused).

IT is not so much that magic and monsters swarm the earth, so much as a fantasy world Romanesque Empire creates a gate and invades Japan with monsters and dragons etc... it does not end well for them. The rest of the series is about the Japanese going to the other side.

Not a perfect example but pretty close to what you are talking about.

I enjoyed the show immensely.

Can we please, please, PLEASE, stop bringing super heroes of any variety into this discussion!?

The problem with super heroes in an alignment discussion is that they are NOT logically based, and I do not mean that they are obviously fake.

What I mean is that the code of honor was designed in reverse.

Batman doesn't kill Joker because he CAN'T. Not from a logical choice, but because Joker sells comics.

If Joker dies, sales drop. If sales drop people lose their jobs.

Comics heroes are driven by profit, NOT morality.

Back on topic, people need to remember that this particular situation is an two option only scenario. It is fake, and it was created to breed discussion. There is no true situation where there is only two options. Sometimes we may only see two, but there is always at least one more.

The OP even said that this was a conversation between two characters around a campfire type deal.

Andarion: Good would never doom everyone. Certain evil people would kill both groups, because they like killing. Some neutral wouldn't care, but some (LN mostly would find it within their responsibility.

First to respond to Captain Collateral; I never said a good PERSON would doom everyone, I said killing the innocent to save other innocents is not a good ACT. It is a very important difference.

Secondly let's address the elephant in the room; the conversation itself.

This conversation is the end result of an unstated previous conversation centuries before. This particular one evolved something like this:

Is it good to kill someone?
No

Is it evil to kill someone?
Yes

Is it evil to willingly let someone innocent die that you could have saved?
Yes

So you are saying it is Evil to kill an innocent and it is evil to willingly allow a saveable innocent to die?
Yes

So is it evil to kill one innocent person to save another innocent person?
Um, maybe?

What about killing one innocent to save two?
Not really, I don't think.

What bout if you had to kill 5 innocent people to save 2000, and if you didn't, they would all die?

The problem with this is we have gone from a 'What is good/evil action debate' to a 'Which of these two evils is more acceptable' conversation.

The OP's example exists within a vacuum, and in this vacuum we are given an evil choice and a more exaggerated evil choice that makes the first one look like a good choice (good in reference to alignment).

This is an 'I hate paladins so I will make this one fall' type scenario.

So to the OP, if you are still reading this, there is no reason to have distrusted the other character. He was given a choice between two great evils and chose the lesser. Not his fault, it was a trap conversation.

To everyone else, I am with Dastis and his break down above.

I think the main problem here is a basic misunderstanding of order of operations, and design philosophy of the CRB layout.

To address the CRB layout issue, it appears to be designed with an emphasis on character creation. It makes the book easier to pick up and go, but leads to issues like this.

If we emphasized rules understanding over character creation it would probably be designed in a pattern similar to this layout, we will call it The Rules First Core Rule Book (RFCRB):

Combat->Environment/Adventuring->Magic->Skills->Feats->Class es->Races

In this way the general rules are introduced FIRST then the specifics.

Now the order of operations on Knowledge checks is to set the DC then make the roll.

Do note that here is where the common order of operations issue comes up. MOST GMs do not let players know the check DC or even if it is above 10. So often anyone can roll, but those without the 1 rank fail automatically. This is incorrect by the rules. If they do not have at least 1 rank they cannot even MAKE (meaning no roll or taking 10/20, also read as: sit there and shut up) the check. So a GM must know/ask the players if they are trained in the skill, somewhat tipping their hand and giving the players some idea of what the DC is. Out of character knowledge in many opinions, and thus they let all players roll.

So with the two issues above in mind we can extrapolate how this is supposed to work.

GM needs a DC for a KNOW(Local) check, sets it at 15
GM refers to Skills Chapter in RFCRB (again, now listed BEFORE the Class Chapter) and sees the only those with 1 rank in KNOW(Local) can ATTEMPT the check
GM calls for rolls for check but reminds players of DC limit
Wizard (who is trained in KNOW(Local)) and Bard (who is not, Bard fail btw) characters make the roll
GM asks why Bard rolled and Bard Player points to Bardic Knowledge (BK) ability
GM goes to RFCRB and goes to Class Chapter where the SPECIFIC rules for how classes interact with the GENERAL rules written in previous section are and sees that BK ability allows for a Bard to make ALL Knowledge skill checks untrained
GM allows the skill check by the Bard
Bard succeeds and is given the information

So we see a problem that is caused by an order of operations error due to how Knowledge checks work compared to other skills, and an error because the CRB layout is designed in a specific rules section being listed BEFORE the general rules section format.

Also, I know that how things operated in 3.5 does not really matter much with Pathfinder rules, but we all need to remember how Bardic Knowledge worked back then. The untrained limit existed back then (I think, it has been awhile) and Bardic Knowledge ability basically gave the bard a second DC pool to check against.

So a bard could be either untrained in a skill and not be able to attempt the Knowledge check at all, and use Bardic Knowledge to try at a separate DC, or could have been trained in the skill, failed, and could then roll a Bardic Knowledge check to gain a second attempt.

It was weird and clunky and kind of made little sense.

TL;DR: DC above 10, only trained characters can attempt at all; Bardic Knowledge specifically overrides that.

Guybrush Threepwood, and I'm a Mighty Pirate!

If you thought I was doing a Princess Bride Character, you are not a film philistine, congratulations.

Anyways, I am looking at possibly making a character based off Guybrush Threepwood, of Monkey Island fame, for this campaign. I am looking for suggested classes/archetypes and builds for this idea.

Simple rules really:
Viable but not min/maxed (1 negative stat with a max of -1)
20 pt buy
Half Elf, Human or possibly some other Human-esque race (no Half Orcs)
2 non campaign traits

I am looking at Bard Arcane Duelist maybe sprinkle in Rogue/Ninja for Improved Feint (Insult Sword Fighting) but i am undecided.

Any help or ideas would be much appreciatted.