This may come across as snarky but, perhaps he should GM.
He could create lots of characters. He could homerule things... although I would request a guideline for consistency, so the ground beneath your feet isn't changing all the time. come to think of it, he might be a wild-eyed super-creative dimension-hopping madman as a GM, which might not work for you either.
And your suggestion about having him stay out until you guys get a firmer grasp is probably a good one. You can phrase it nicely like, "dude we're just not advanced enough with the material for you. why don't you come back in a few months when we've caught up with you a little more?"
Yes, Rynjin, all powergamers ARE d**ks, because (for me) its a key piece of the definition.
I've got no problems at all with players that love the strategic portion of the game, and love to come up with new and impressive ways to do things.
My aforementioned party with the powergaming gunslinger, also has an awe-inspiring god-wizard. The difference? The wizard is not a d**k.
The gunslinger stomps all over everyone else's fun with his braggadocio.
The god-wizard supports the other players and wants fun to be a team sport.
The gunslinger gets bored when my ninja uses her high face skills to negotiate or interrogate someone. Sighs, whines, yawns loudly, and finally shoots the interrogation/negotiation subject so we'll be forced to launch into combat-- where (he thinks) it'll be all about him again.
The god-wizard occasionally doesn't obliterate the battlefield, but buffs his party members or controls the battlefield instead, so other players get to have some fun. In-game reason? Leave some survivors to gather information from.
Both powerful. Actually I think the wizard is more so.
But (for me) only the obnoxious, condescending, its-all-about-me-and-my-numbers-and-you-suck-in-comparison is a powergamer.
I have an anecdote that describes, if not defines power gaming for me:
Our gunslinger is, in my opinion, a powergamer.
Been playing a VTT for a year. Our party is 9th level. I'm a Ninja. My character has been on the run from her sensei all this time because he tried to force her into performing an assassination, and she balked.
So late one night a team of red mantis assassins breaks into our inn, and begins trying to, you know, assassinate us.
It turns our one of these assassins is my sensei. It turns out he's also an umbral dragon. I recognize him, but he doesn't recognize me because of
shattered star spoiler:
"The Trap"
.
Our gunslinger was in a separate part of the inn, and handled 3 mooks by himself.
The three spellcasters took on another good number of mooks as well.
My Ninja was dealing with the BBEG, her Sensei. She was dealing quite a large amount of damage with 6 flanking sneak attacks per round. But, you know, its taking awhile. He's a BBEG, with some resistances and defenses. And a skilled assassin! And a dragon!
Here's where the power gaming comes in:
The whole time I'm fighting my old master, that I have been running from for years, changing towns, changing identity, etc...
The gunslinger is bragging about his damage, and ragging on the rest of us for being slow and incompetent. He took on 3 assassins by himself... and I'm so slow and incompetent that I can't even finish off one target.
He goes on and on about his feats and his skill at maximizing damage... on and on and on...
While I'm trying to have "The Big Reveal" moment with My Old Master. I find out he's an umbral dragon, I find out why the red mantises are after us (unrelated to me, it turns out), and the evil monologue of goals. And I reveal who I am, the student returned to best the Master. The student released from her fears, able to reclaim her true identity and never have to run again. The Old Master's eyes widening with surprise as he finally realize who's bested him.
TL;DR: The personal victory culminating after a year's play...
Walked all over by another player who won't shut up about how his damage is awesome, his kill total is awesome, and how much everyone else sucks in comparison.
I don't care that he's optimized and powerful. Everyone in our party is dealing serious whoopass at this point.
I think like Marthkus said, it's the dick factor.
He *had* to be better than everyone else. He *had* to brag incessantly about it. And he couldn't let another player have one freaking second of triumph without pissing on it.
I love telling this story. It pretty much defined who I grew up to be...
I started looking at my dad's AD&D books as soon as I was able to realize what books were. I really wanted to play, but he wanted me to be a "normal" kid and do things like play sports.
He told me that when I had read all of the AD&D manuals, then he would let me play.
So, I learned to read from Gary Gygax's writing. I was around four when Dad sat down with me and played my first adventure (around 1979), but I'd been paging through the books and the old boxed sets since I was two or three, maybe younger.
My vote is that "Gary Gygax taught me to read" wins the thread!
LOL!
Not to derail the thread, but my grammar school teachers were always wondering where I was coming up with those words they had to look up...
:-D
Yeh, I could spell and use "xenophobic" in a sentence kinda early...
I love telling this story. It pretty much defined who I grew up to be...
I started looking at my dad's AD&D books as soon as I was able to realize what books were. I really wanted to play, but he wanted me to be a "normal" kid and do things like play sports.
He told me that when I had read all of the AD&D manuals, then he would let me play.
So, I learned to read from Gary Gygax's writing. I was around four when Dad sat down with me and played my first adventure (around 1979), but I'd been paging through the books and the old boxed sets since I was two or three, maybe younger.
My vote is that "Gary Gygax taught me to read" wins the thread!
265. Trying to write the great Golarion novel, having writers block and crossing everything out every few lines. Comedic- Its a romance novel.
266. Trying to get into spanks so he can fit into his old armor/robes for the reunion.
267. Looking in a mirror and sucking in his cheeks, and lifting the skin at his temples, trying to preview himself once he's transferred his consciousness into a younger clone.
268. Re-reading the twilight novels.
269. At a BBEG convention, trying to impress the other BBEG's with an exaggerated version of his last encounter with the PC's.
270. Playing quidditch.
271. Being tricked into running off a cliff by a quickly running bird. A piano follows him down. (he uses luck and/or Villain Points and lives)
272. A female villain yelling at the mirror to call her "fair," when the PC's know for a fact she's a cheater.
273. Sing karaoke love songs to his mirror images.
274. At a Tony Robbins seminar, trying to learn how to be liked.
Right, At low levels you barely notice it. Later, as a martial you find yourself slipping behind the power curve. At the same time, you are fumbling more, and the spellcasters aren't fumbling at all.
You can have fun at your own expense, but when you realize you're the only one making the pratfalls but everyone else gets to yuk it up at your expense, things get a little strained.
I'm confused: Why wouldn't you add fumble rules for spellcasting? If your criticism of fumbles is that they only apply to martials...well then go ahead and make them apply to everyone! Make casters roll a fumble if they roll a natural 1 on their ranged touch attack, or if the target gets a natural 20 on its save, or if they roll a natural 1 to overcome SR. If you are going to use fumble rules, make them apply to everyone.
The difficulty with this version of "fairness" is that most spells don't make the spellcaster roll to hit. And even if they do roll to hit-- here's the big part I had to repeat many times before my GM got it-- Spellcasters are not rolling a d20 to hit 5 or 6 times per round!
At level 8, when my TWF Ninja (apologies to those of you who have read this a couple of times already) gained the ability to swing her Wakizashis an average of 6 times a round, that meant her chance of rolling a "1" INCREASED as she GOT BETTER to approximately 30% PER ROUND.
So to have FAIRNESS in fumbling-- the spellcasters would need a 30% chance to FUMBLE (not simply miss) with every spell, whether or not they rolled a d20 to target it.
An intervention to prevent him from making the game fun for his players?
More of a friendly warning about unforeseen consequences.
At low levels I thought the occasional fumble was fun too.
Once I hit median levels and started swinging my blades more frequently and therefore started fumbling more often, I noticed only the spellcasters were laughing it up-- at my expense.
To give him credit, my GM was a good guy, and he hadn't foreseen this consequence either.
So he made a new rule-- only one fumble per night. Everything else is simply a miss.
1. Only martials have to endure the fun of critical fumbles. Mages are never making 5-6 targeting rolls per round.
2. The higher in levels a martial gets, the more d20's he rolls per round. The more d20's he rolls per round, the more likely he is to fumble.
3. This problem is compounded by: spellcasters are starting to peak-- getting better area of effect spells etc-- at the same moment that martials are starting to fumble more and more often.
This does generate lots of laughs and good times...for the spellcasters.
4. I like Stabby's point that if you do this, you should give them a chance to roll a d20 after every 1. Give a fumble an equal chance to be awesome, as you give a critical hit to be humiliating.
On another thread I proposed that spellcasters be given the same percentage chance to critically fumble as martials.
My 8th level Ninja swings her Wakizashi's an average of 6 times per round. That's roughly a 30% chance of rolling a 1 per round. (And for a Rogue type the penalty is compounded by losing sneak attacks benefits for the rest of the current combat. Its not simply the blade missing... its all the fun and excitement of revealing yourself, losing surprise, chasing a weapon, provoking attacks of opportunity, and spending another 2 rounds trying to get back into that primo flanking position. Oh the laughs.)And there's a 30% chance of this happening every round.
I proposed that the spellcasters be given a 30% chance of spell failure with every round. Either the spells blow up in their face, or have the opposite of the intended affect. Suddenly the spellcasters' chortling died off.
I realize that you are talking about a different statistical probability (20 then 1). But I hope you'll consider the point that critical fumbles are already unfairly weighted against martial characters. And it gets worse and worse as the spellcasters are getting better.
39. GM's Girlfriend was playing an 18 cha bard, I was playing a 24 Cha enchantress. Guess which one of us got a marriage proposal from the Duke? Guess which one of us got chased out of town by an angry mob after a 58 Diplomacy check?
40. GM's girlfriend ran all the primary encounters as her personal solo campaigns. During scheduled game times the other 5 of us crafted magic items, primarily for use by the GM's girlfriend for her (unknown to us) future solo campaigns.
41. I complained about all the girlfriend's solo campaigns, so finally the GM offered to run a solo side adventure for me.(This is all VTT) Didn't really want to go solo, wanted to bring one or two of the other party members (that I actually like). GM said "Come on, I've got time to play right now, I've got something cool set up...let's go!" I relented. I insisted on getting a hireling. He said "Ok, my friend Bob is available, he'll play your hireling."
You can probably see where this is going. Yup. "Friend Bob with a broken headset so can only type" was actually the GM's girlfriend, who ditched my sorceress the moment the Witchhunting Inquisitor showed up to assassinate her. My sorceress was on the ground, crushed and powerless and about to receive a death blow, when the GM's girlfriend's Bard appears and saves the day with exactly the right weapons for the job. There were no perception checks to notice she had been following me for 3 weeks in game.
As I ragetableflipped (as best as you can with a laptop and headset) the last words I hear from the girlfriend are... "but I *saved* you! Aren't you going to thank me?"
You kids are so spoiled today! Back in my day we didn't have feats. Not one! You know what we had? We had THAC0 and combat/non-combat skills. We had to walk a thousand miles up a mountain of thick, cloying snow only to get instantly killed at the dungeon entrance by a sphere of annihilation hiding in the apparent key hole. No save. No chance to avoid. Stick your hand in the hole and you died. And with virtually no chance of resurrection! Get over yourself you young whippersnapper. You got it easy. Have some respect for us old timers who had it much, MUCH harder than you! (Also, we had to use paper and pencil, for real, none of this electronic hoodads from Star Trek to track our stats.)
*Firmly tongue in cheek.*
-smacks toothless gums, and cackles-
I remember having a first level wizard with one actual hitpoint. And one magic missile per day. Yes, we got to roll for our stats, but we actually had to roll for our first level hitpoints too. Wizards on a d4. And it took six months of weekly game play to go up a level. Bah! You think this is hard?
Per 6 | HP 19 | Init +5 | AC15 (19), T14, FF11 | F2, R6, W4 | DR A5, C5, E5 Aasimar Sorcerer 2/ Bard 1
Since 3 of the dogs are fascinated, Brizza won't attack them on Round 1. She'll continue singing and trying to move thru the room while avoiding the unfascinated dog. Perhaps, you can deal with that one Sarion?
And just a reminder, Brizzas been letting Fung and Shel overhear conversations via message.
For fascinating the dogs, they'll hear
Soft puppy,
Warm puppy,
Little ball of fur.
Happy puppy,
Sleepy puppy,
Grr, Grr, Grr...
I have been GMing for about 12 years now and my wife hates it. I am at the point that I don't know what to do. She used to tolerate it and now more and more she mocks me about it or will have an argument about it. Our group gets together for aboit 6-8 hours every 2-3 weeks. A good portion of the game we are just socializing and chit chatting, but my wife just thinks we are acting like kids who don't want to grow up. I am 27 and we have one kid. Does anyone have any advise on what I could do? I feel like we argue about something that I have done for a long time and love doing.
This part I bolded makes me thing it might have something to do with shouldering the responsibilities (and burdens) that an adult person (or even adult man) is supposed to.
Maybe your wife is worried about something else and feels that you are not doing enough to take care of this other situation (whether about the kid's education, your career, your couple's financial status or some such).
If that is the case, you can have a serious talk with her about what makes her feel like that.
Way I see it, your wife has some issues with your current life as a family and she cannot express them directly. Find a way to help her voice those concerns so that you can both agree on what is happening and then find a solution that works for both of you.
Note that expressing concerns in a couple is one of the most difficult things to do, which is why outside help might be useful.
I suspect THIS.
Don't know for sure in your situation. But women with young children often feel exhausted, wrung out, unsexy, and unappreciated. Motherhood is a 24-7 job with very little sleep and very little "me" time.
(Fatherhood too, but typical gender roles have the woman cooking, cleaning, shopping, driving, docs appointments, comforting in the middle of the night-- continously without relief, for 18 years.)
If this is the case in your situation-- then watching you have fun with your buds when she's exhausted, is infuriating.
Some possible remedies: have a date night every couple of weeks. Hire a babysitter. Let her pick where you go. Let her know that she's still beautiful and fun to be with. (Guys-- you have no idea how many demons this vanquishes in a woman's heart.)
And-- offer to babysit so she can have a girl's night out every couple of weeks.
I suspect the issue isn't that *you're* having fun. I think it's that she doesn't have fun, *ever.*
I guess can someone provide me an example of what they think is a rule in Pathfinder that is holding them back from having a more narrative game? Because I am wondering if perhaps we are meaning two different things.
I can't speak for the OP here, only my own experience. I played AD&D, and 2nd edition beginning in the 80's, and we had a blast. Very creative, spur of the moment GM and players. -smacks her gums in preparation for storytellin' to the young 'uns-
There were no attacks of opportunity.
There were no codified combat maneuvers.
There were no move/standard/swift/full actions.
Basically, it was either your turn or it wasn't.
There were no feats.
There were no skills. (rogues and only rogues had a skillset for things like detecting traps or listening at doors. we called em thieves back in my day.)
When you wanted to do something like hoodwink a guard or an elaborate acrobatic manuever--
the answer was always the GM saying... it's difficult but possible. "What do you say?" (not make a diplomacy role) or "The walls are smooth so it'll be tough to run up and flip down behind him, You'll have to roll better than an 85 on the percentile dice" (We used percentile dice a lot in those days).
The answer wasn't-- you can't because you don't have the improved awesomeness feat, or you have a standard action but not two moves left, or, 30 mins of calculating positions on a grid and if you can get there thru unthreatened spaces, or show me that rule in a book...
For me the bonuses were... combat moved. There were never lulls of looking up rules, or getting out a sliderule to calculate diagonal movement.
And... it encouraged creativity. Players could and did try anything. We still had to *roll,* but the GM had a lot more leeway for deciding what that roll would have to be. And we still talk about some of our most epic successes and *fails* all these years later.
And... because the action was moving, and because you could try hairbrained schemes, everyone was engaged, everyone was riveted. Nobody was on their smartphone or ipad (ok, we didn't have those yet, fair point). Everybody was in the game.
A given for this type of game play, tho-- is there has to be a real trust of the GM's fairness. His decisions may not have been swiss precision from game to game, but they were reasonable odds, and they were fair. And he was just as eager to see what we'd pull out of our butts as we were.
~~~
Fast forward 30 years. I don't mind the tactical aspects of Pathfinder. But its a different game. Combats are long to calculate and rule check. And there's a lot less room for zany antics. (My class doesn't have that skill/feat/ability so don't even bother. -yawn- I fire another magic missile.)
On topic: Played a long-running drow game, with mostly white male players. It was fun for a woman to be domineering and condescending to the guys. We also came up with a lot of racial slurs for pale elves. Everyone seem to enjoy the inside-out universe.
Off topic:
Lawyer or no, Adamantine Dragon is right when he says the Colorado case is a landmark case, cuz it is. It will set precedents that future cases will base their arguments on.
Re: Little People with Penises in Little People with Vaginas' bathrooms.
This is only a bee in the bonnet of adults. Most little girls are not so fragile. Most little girls have brothers they've walked in on, or male dogs, or have changed a boy's diapers. Seeing a penis is no big whoop. Unless lunatic adults try to make it one.
What I, as a woman, want in a bathroom, is not the absence of penises. What I want is safety. As a matter of fact I want that at home, in my workplace, and as I travel too. I don't think a repressed-never-look-or-even-think-of-penises-until-you're-married worldview adds to my safety. In fact I think repression over time tends to lead to the opposite of safety.
After safety in a bathroom, cleanliness is a really, really close second.
Re: Girls want separate bathrooms:
Hopefully amusing anecdotes of a girls adventures into mens bathrooms:
I've travelled quite a bit, so I've experienced many bathroom scenarios. The woods of course. A unisex hole in the ground. Using snow to wipe on a Himilayan peak (snow is *nice*). Heated bidets in Rome. Ooooh. Men's bathrooms at ball games, concerts, and theater events-- cuz the men's line is always shorter. Holding it for 17 hours when a bus full of the most maliciously staring Kashmiri men let me know I would be gang-raped if I stepped off the crowded bus for a nanosecond. Staying as an overnight guest on Riker's Island, when I was visiting a friend-- and there was a lockdown. No one was allowed to leave. The only "accomodation" they could offer with a door that locked--was the bathroom.
But my all time favorite, was when I was in theater in college. I hung out with some of the most beautiful gay men you'd ever want to meet. I also became den mother to a handful of gay teen runaways. Southern Indiana in the 80's was not a good place to come out to your parents. A group of us usually hit the gay bar on weekends. And they dressed me up fine. I never looked so good before or since. Slutty. But good. I started off going to the women's restroom, because, you know, parts. And then one night a huge gay woman caught me alone, and beat the crap out of me for rejecting her. Called me a tease. I can kinda see her point, cuz, you know, gay bar. Still, I started using the men's bathroom cuz that's where all my friends were. And, as I said, safety. Much safer there. (I have many fabulous lesbian friends. But that particular lesbian was drunk, and strong, and mean.)
Anyway, one night, I found a sweet little thing crying in the men's room. He'd done a great drag show for a beginner and I told him so. I thought maybe he thought his performance hadn't gone well. But that wasn't it. He was crying because (stop here if you're squemish, I don't know how to double-spoiler) instead of taping down his man-bits in the front, as is customary, he'd taped his man-bits backwards...to himself... with duct tape. And now he couldn't get himself free. I smothered my laughter, and made compassionate noises. Then I went and got the poor underaged thing some scotch. Then I told him to bite down while I... ripped. That poor kid. So that's probably my most striking "woman afraid to see man parts in a bathroom" story.
A corollary is that the only arrest on my record is as a male prostitute. Not really, but almost. I was designated driver on Halloween for my friends and the gay bar. I decided to dress as a man. I did careful prosthetics with a mustache and razor stubble-- the works. I was pretty homely as a dude. Anyhoo the police in Southern Indiana didn't like gay men. Beat them up frequently.
They were waiting when the bar closed and started arresting them. I started screaming that they didn't have cause. So they turned their empty gazes towards me. They told me I was under arrest. And all my friends ran squealing away, many of them in *my* shoes. I asked what I was under arrest *for*. They said, "drunk driving." I said, "I'm the designated driver, I haven't had a drink all night. Besides I'm not even *in* the car." They didn't like my whole train of reasonable reasoning, so they said, "You'll take drunk driving, or you'll take prostitution." They were writing me up and asked for ID. I showed them my drivers' license. They had written me up as a man, and accused me of using a fake id, and threw my in jail overnight. In the morning I met with the judge. I said my ID wasn't fake. That girl was me. He asked me to prove it. I couldn't think of anything else so I opened my shirt and showed them my bo----- na fides. And that's the story of how I have an arrest record as a man.
So, I'm not quite clear on the moral of the story, except that I live in a malleable reality, where gender and body parts, and sexual preference are kinda like hair color to me; only superficially descriptive of who a person really is.
I think that's one of the reasons I enjoy the malleable realities of role-playing. I like a varied, and changing universe.
Lots of people here are putting up extreme straw-men to go at with their favorite rants.
These have little or nothing to do with the OP's situation.
1. He was not dead weight. His monk/oracle contributed to combat and contributed to skill checks.
2. It sounds as tho his compatriots at the table were afraid he *might* be dead weight, and treated him accordingly.
3. They were real Richards about it.
4. Is anyone really saying that if a new guy comes to a PFS table and doesn't create a perfectly optimized character, they should be excommunicated?
5. The OP never said "love my character or bite me." He came here looking for advice and was open to suggestions.
6. If the guys at his tables at been at all decent human beings, *they* would have offered to help him build the character he wants-- in a more optimized way.
7. Instead they were Richards and gave a very bad impression of PFS.
Instead of the tired old Rollplay vs. Roleplay ravings, could we return to how to make new players like the OP feel welcome, have fun, AND be effective?
I have to say this discussion explains a lot of the outlandish behavior I have read about here. Clearly proper manners is no longer as important as when I was raised. I know this is the Internet so everyone here is an atheist and this won't mean anything to any of you but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Dude, that post was the very definition of RUDE. You don't know me. You don't know anything about my personal or spiritual life. And telling me I'm headed to hell because I disagree with your definition of rudeness? That was waynastyrude. Rather then quote some obscure French Bishop from the 1100's,
How about a quote directly from the Big J:
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." (Matthew 7:1-5)
And now back to the OP. Yeah, I hung up on a VTT game. Not my finest hour. There is another player and I who don't get along. She is a beloved friend of the GM. And she will snark at my incompetence and then go off to solve the mission solo-- nearly every gaming session. I complained that this was not fun for the rest of the players and I. So their solution was to run the keystone adventures mid-week when no one else was around. The next time I was hanging on the line whilst she solo'd-- I hung up. I don't think they really noticed.
As martial characters get "better," they fumble more often.
Because they swing their swords more often.
The percentage chance of incapacitating themselves and taking themselves out of combat in each round is..
if they swing once a round 5%,
twice = 10%
three x = 15%
four x = 20%
etc...
As they get better and better their chances of incapacitating themselves gets higher and higher.
There is no save, no skillcheck, no concentration check to buffer this straight percentage.
Some popular counter-arguments are..
Popular counterargument 1: Yeah, but they get more critical hits too.
Reply: The bonus damage of a critical hit (+1d6 or bleed etc) is nowhere near the equivalent of the nastiness of a fumble.
I play a ninja. Fumbling, dropping weapon, losing surprise-- takes me the rest of combat to recover weapons, position, etc. Once I fumble I'm out. That is not an even trade for a little extra bleed damage to an opponent.
Popular counterargument 2: Spellcasters can fumble too.
Reply 1: Most DMs who use fumbles only apply fumbles to spells that have an attack roll, like a ray.
Reply 2: The percentage chance of fumbling does not increase every round for a spellcaster. Because they are not casting 3 or 4 or 5 spells every round.
And what does a fumble of charm person look like? Easy. It becomes antagonize. They automatically loathe you.
Fireball? Implodes. Affects only caster. Remember to burn gear.
Polymorph Self? A transporter accident gone wrong. You're an ooze. Can't fix it for 24 hours.
Any spell fumble... the opposite of intended effect.
And chance of fumbling goes up 5% every 2 levels.
To get an idea of what a level playing field would look like...
At 9th level a spellcaster would have to have a 25% chance of fumbling every round.
No saves
No concentration check
No feats that help.
Straight up 25% chance to fumble -EVERY ROUND-
That's what a melee character has to suffer as he improves in skill.
The Witch from Into the Woods... "I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right."
~~~
On a more realistic note, I see high wisdom/low charisma a slight bit differently than others here.
Intelligence- is cleverness, observation, quick-wittedness, invention. Holmes and House and Howard Hughes. (HH would be a fantastic example of high-int/low cha, at least in later life.)
Wisdom- to me, seems more like; seeing the big picture, how it all fits together, the law of unintended consequences, cause and effect to the 7th generation.
A real-life example might be someone like Ralph Nader who crusaded for seatbelts and against tobacco and for the environment and for election freedom. His opponents invested millions on digging up dirt on him, and they couldn't find a single immoral thing he'd ever done. In the long term (from my perspective) he was always *right,* but he had difficulty conveying his ideas in a way that other people could understand and appreciate. He also never, ever compromised on his values, even when "holding strong" helped his opponents more than his allies.
Please, I don't wanna start a flame thing about agreeing or disagreeing with Ralph. I'm just using him as an example of someone who has vision about deep and wide and far-reaching consequences, and is personally true to his ethics (consequences be damned), but is not generally liked.
If its not too late already, I would put the choice in the girls hands. "This is going to be a tough, high-level campaign. Anyone who doesn't know the rules is going to slow the game down, and make it less fun for everybody. If you would like to play, you are welcome, but you must show your understanding of basic rules by creating your own character. If you are willing to do that, you are more than welcome to join us."
A vein on Plugg's smooth head begins to pulse.
You think yer smart, huh? You think yer smarter than me? Well, we'll see how much you smart after a taste of the cat. He signals to some of the boys to lash Sidhon to the mast, and tear open his shirt (robe?). Then he lands a solid swipe with the cat-o-nine-tails.
1d4 ⇒ 1 (nonlethal damage)
Got anything smart to say now?
Next he'll go to Zorg and Gilraen, and storm at them each in turn, What about you, can you cook?
Excellent ideas Adam! It might even work to dual him as bard/sorcerer-- since they're both cha dependent. We don't really need him as party face since we've got an Aasimar Oracle Cha 20 for that. I see her as the shining diplomat, and him as the affable, absentminded one that everyones fond of, in spite of wanting to kick him overboard sometimes.
And I like the magnifying glass/wand idea if we go the wizard direction. Brilliant.
Although, now my mind is filling with ideas of a longsuffering Kato-like familiar too.
Great feat, bloodline and school suggestions. Thanks!
"Law" = Actions should be based on what benefits society.
"Chaos"= Actions should be based on what benefits each individual.
In the vast majority of cases slavery benenfits society, not the slave.
"Good" = Every sentient being is valuable. Whether thru Lawful or Chaotic means, the goal is to increase well-being for as many beings as possible
"Evil" = By heritage or position or simple selfishness, some beings believe themselves to have more value than others. Others' suffering is irrelevent, or even enjoyable.
The very definition of slave is a being which is "lesser" than yourself. It must be evil.
Of course there are rare exceptions when slaves are treated well and valued. But they are nonetheless... considered to be *less than* their owners. Their free will is irrelevent.
Throughout history, otherwise "good" people often performed evil acts, especially if it was a social norm. It doesn't make it less evil, and many of them seemed to know it, even while indulging.
In game play a Neutral Good Cleric may overlook a slave, depending on the "social norm" of the milieau, and how their god feels about it. Still it will probably make them uneasy.
Uncomfortable info about slavery:
I have a mentor at the UN who's life work is trying to get rid of the child sex trade. Slavery is alive and well and worse than ever. Millions of children in impoverished countries are sold into sex slavery every year. Sold by their parents who can't afford to raise them. The optimal age for a child sex slave is 5 or 6. Their virginity is greatly prized. After a decade of constant rape they rarely live past their teens. Can you think of any way to define that as anything but evil?
I would like to get the old band back together, a particularly funny and imaginative rpg group from college. The trouble is we have moved all over the place.
I know Tech exists for us to rpg online together, but I'm not sure where to look. PbP is a possibility, but I'd really like to find a way for us to interact in real time. Did I mention these folks are very funny?
Oh great sages and geeks, can you give a girl a hand?
Oh and... my proficiency is above "I know how to Skype" and way below hacking the pentagon.
