Arnwolf's page

"Hai!"

--Jon Pertwee, Third Doctor: Venusian karate--

He was the only being with less than six arms that learned that style of martial arts.

I am not a fan of cantrips, but I can live with them. I enjoy the simplicity of the game. I am not a fan of the builder culture that has developed in the last few years.

I could happily play an all human campaign with the only classes allowed Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard. Though I love Paladins.

I have nothing against a Pathfinder 2E as long as it is like the difference between AD&D 1E to AD&D 2E and not like going from D&D 3.5 to D&D 4E. I.E. a clean up of the rules with minor changes and not a completely new game unrecognizable from the previous.

Personally I see multiclassing as just ways to min/max, has nothing to do with RP or character development. You should be able to build whatever you like with Class, Skills, and Feats.

Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, Cleric, Wizard, Monk, Bard

I really like a Monk/Wizard Hybrid. I was a big fan of the 3.5 prestige class Enlightened Fist. I really look at somatic component of spells being the caster aligning his Chi to channel the spells he casts.

Human Transmuter Martial Proficiency Great Sword
Human Alchemist Master Chymist
Dwarven Barbarian

I still use 2E rules for firing into melee because I find firing into melee very stupid from personal experience. I allow a sniper feat where the attacker rolls his chance to see if he has a clear shot. If he fails the chance to hit then he knows he doesn't have a clear shot and holds his attacks. Basically it could take multiple rounds to get a clear shot. I like it. I don't like coward PC's sitting at range while the melee people get their ass kicked. It also discouraged wizard PCs from making ranged touch attacks. I just can't overcome the suspension of disbelief for firing into melee. And since most of the people I play with used to be 1E/2E or BECMI players it is generally accepted.

I would not do that to a new player without letting them know about it before the game ever starts. If I do anything that is not by the book I always let everyone know up front.

What is it the Fighter needs to be epic? Because in my opinion if you want to be able to fly, shoot lightning bolts, create walls of stone, leap 3 stories, teleport, catch lightning bolts and laugh at the gods then you don't want to play a fighter.

Back when we played 2E my brother played a Gnome Fighter specialized in a warhammer with a 18/92 strength. Ever since then Gnomes have been badasses in our worlds.

At 20th level a Fighter can slay a dragon all by himself. At 20th level a fighter can take on multiple giants all by himself. That sounds pretty epic to me.

I really love hardcover RPG books. I can't describe to you how much I love them.

In my campaign, which is my taste, the power of the gods are not dependent on their worshippers. However, what makes a person a god is just good PR, he is a god because people think he is god. A human may attain all the powers that one would expect a god to have, but is not a god because people don't worship him or consider him a god.

I should note in my games, there are no mortal ascended gods. Most of my gods have been around since the dawn of time (or before) or are the survivors of a planet that developed intelligence when the Earth was just forming and they either evolved to be real powerful or have technology that makes them real powerful. gods fear great wyrms in my home setting. And gods can be defeated by very powerful high level PCs working together and planning real real real well.

I don't like the summoner because of flavor. They break the rules of summoning, protection from evil does not work on them ( I still like 1E PFE). I would like a summoner more focused on making pacts with the supernatural for their services.

Now, I think the Summoner could be reworked as a Golem Maker very easily flavorwise. But, I generally don't like players that want their pets to do all the work while they sit back in safety, something very evil about that for a heroic character. Summoners are basically lazy and manipulative by nature. They make very good villains in my opinion.

It amazes me that they can create a class with divine spells, combat abilities, but because they don't name it Lawful Neutral Paladin, Chaotic Good Paladin, everyone gets upset that there is no Paladin of other alignments. Personally, I think the Cleric is the Holy Warriors of the other alignments. I just think Lawful Good gets a Paladin in addition to their Clerics because the straight and narrow is a hard path to walk and good is more powerful than evil and Lawful is able to concentrate and develop power more effectively than chaos. Neutral's and Chaos lack the conviction and discipline to do and be what a Paladin is. This is all in my opinion. Now every edition has had champions of various alignments, Plethora of Paladins was a great article in Dragon Magazine. What I liked about Plethora of Paladins is that the other classes were not just clones of the Paladin with a different alignment, but they had their own unique abilities, the LE was the illrigger class and more of a thief than a warrior. All the classes were very different, the True Neutral class was a Paramander and nothing like a Paladin in abilities.

I shy away from Crossbows and Firearms because of their ridiculous rate of fire. I even DM a setting where crossbows were not invented yet because of it. Though I do allow them when I run a PF module or AP. I can't suspend the belief on it. I much preferred 2E rates of fire and the PC's normally took their shot and then pulled out a melee weapon.

How do I convert the saving throws?

The only thing I find immoral about slavery is basing it on race and/or ethnicity. Prisoners are slaves by definition, they lack freedom. The problem is we don't give our prisoners hard labor and an opportunity to prove their worth by doing productive labor, and the chance to earn their freedom. Slavery, yeah, I am very much for it.

I really don't like at will cantrips, but I like BA and the simplicity of the game. I will probably play a lot of D&D Next. I will still play PF as I am starting to get into PFS scenarios. And I really like your AP's and hope to be buying more as long as they stay creative.

You don't necessarily need a rules answer. I'd say that roleplaying this out is probably the best way to get a satisfying resolution. Some of the most interesting Lawful Good characters are ones who have to actively fight against their natural inclination to take the easy but morally grey way.

As a former Paladin maybe there is the realisation that trying to atone, even if it's impossible, is the only way. The Gods love a trier, and conflicted characters can be involving and challenging if done right.

I don't think someone would become a Paladin if they had to struggle with moral issues. Just my point of view.

Why do Brawlers get the ability to bypass damage reduction. Makes no sense, they are not magical or mystical driven characters or have some mystical bloodline. Don't like the class.

Personally I tend to prefer the darker grittier characters...

Mr. Knight in shining armor is just utterly boring and has been played out way to many times. Additionally, Mr. Do-Gooder-for-the-sake-of-goodness is so utterly bland. It is kind of the reason why I hate superman. He is dull. When you are the epitome of boyscout, your character has no character and you are just kinda... a cardboard cut-out...

Amazing, because I feel the opposite. I find good character to be the ones with the great roleplaying challenges and character development. Not the CN greedy guy who wants to kill and then wonder why the village fears him (or doesn't care).

I am still a very pre3.x gamer. So ranged weapons is pretty much something done at the beginning of combat before the enemy closes the distance. And I am fine with that style of play. I also love 1E/2E Featherfall spell that completely makes ranged weapons useless in a specific area.

Arnwolf wrote:

I don't think 10th level spells are needed (nor wanted by me)

I'm not saying there should be: how do you top wish and miracle?

I'm just saying that 19th wizard level breaks a pattern, which says there's probably a reason.

I don't have the psychological need for patterns or symmetry.

I don't think levels beyond 20th are needed. I always looked at 13+ levels as the epic levels. I don't think 10th level spells are needed (nor wanted by me), it is nice to have a few levels to play with the 9th level spells before hitting 20.

I would like a system of rolling ability scores randomly until you reached a 15 point character, or a 20 point character, or whatever. That away everyone has a random character, but the same overall point buy.

There was nothing about 2nd that I didn't enjoy and it all made sense to me. Thing is, some people were just interested in optimizing and wanted to ignore all the flavour, which was actually part of the game. "Fluff and Crunch" were not separate and you had to respect and use both. The class/race restrictions were explained if you read more than the crunch bits. Main reason being, races were not just different flavours of human. They were totally separate species that evolved from/created from totally different things. Therefore, genetic predisposition to certain alignments/personalities were understandable and that would prevent some from being certain classes. For the dwarves wizard thing, their bodies were not designed to be able to handle arcane magic and rather were able to resist it. Blame Moradin for that. I get why people didn't like THAC0 but it took me about half a session to pick it up. I wont call 3E or PF or 4th better or worse though as they are totally different games. WOTC wanted a simple game and TSR wanted a game with a lot of detail and development for immersion. However, the race/class thing did change depending on what plane those races came from. That was in the splat books in 2nd. I don't know where my elves book is but I think spelljammer elves could be paladin or something. You could always write off the race/class thing by saying your character came through planescape.

Thank You for this post.

I kind of look at pathfinder and 2E as checkers and rummy. Two different games that I enjoy for different reasons.

One of the best ways to reduce min/maxing is to just use the Core Rule book, and allow no multi-classing. Or better yet, just allow Fighter, Mage, Rogue, and Cleric as the only allowable classes.

I am not sure that I find the skill point system any better. With nonweapon proficiencies you pretty much had a chance of success. With the skill point system you pretty much need maxed out ranks in a skill, a real high ability score, and feats to reach the DC to be successful with a skill. That's my opinion anyway.

Grey Lensman wrote:

Spell resistance was a flat roll, meaning a 20th level archmage had the exact same chance to blast that drow as the 1rst level apprentice.

Assuming that it didn't change from 1st edition, that actually wasn't true. The Magic Resistance % listed in the Stat Block was what you used vs an 11th level caster -- you were supposed to adjust it up (or down) by 5% for every caster level below (or above) 11th Level.

Of course, the *only* place that rule was listed was in the front of the Monster Manual, where it explained what all the numbers meant. So lots of people missed that.

1E Magic Resistance was mechanically similar to 3.x except the percentage magic resistance was based on an 11th level caster, magic resistance increased by 5% for every level below 11th and decreased by 5% for every level above 11th level.

2E was just a flat rate. I really prefer to this day 2E magic resistance, because I feel in 3.x and PF that magic resistance does not mean much, especially with all the ways to bypass it.

I would like 2E magic resistance, with fewer monsters having it, so that the ones that do have it are kind of special. This is an aesthetic choice for my taste. Drow were truly frightful with their high MR in 2E. These days a drow is disappointing. And spell resistance just seems to be a feature given out with a number that is designed for a level appropriate wizard (especially elven) to bypass with relative ease.

My team never played Skills and Options or used kits. We borrowed a couple rules from RC for disarming and wrestling. We allowed 1E classes, but rarely used them. We rarely played any race except human. We typically balanced the thief with better magic items. We had a rule way before Use Magic Devices that allowed thieves to operate magic items with a F/R traps percentile roll. I really liked 2E psionics handbook, I liked how the class worked, but my team was pretty much against psionics, but we would not object to someone wanting to play one. But we did not look at house rules as a bad thing, we looked at it as customizing your setting. I would like to see some rule to balance thieves (er... Rogues) by giving them better WBL and gear, they are thieves they should have the best gear and items in the game.

Liking older editions has nothing nothing nothing to do with Nostalgia. It is nice to play systems that do not take hours for character building. I play 1E/2E and BECMI when I want character driven adventures and not wargame driven players who are obsessed with the build of their character.

Every edition has bad GM's. I don't think PF or 4E all of a sudden produced good GM's. And their are still lots of people playing 1E, 2E, and BECMI. Probaly as much as plays PF.

I am actually worried about pathfinders inability to allow women to express their sexuality. I think pathfinder should adopt a policy to stop repressing women and to allow them to wear more revealing clothes as an expression of their femininity. We need to stop masculinizing women.

The worst decision ever made (I am being dramatic) in the 3.x games and onward was allowing Liches that could not cast 9th level spells. They should all be pretty much 20th level. A 17th level lich would be a prodigy among liches. Sigh.

Daenar wrote:

Level 7-9 spells and a semi clever player can trivualize encounters if you aren't prepared. Sometimes even if you ARE prepared.

"Big bad ogre appears, demanding you pay a toll, he's flanked by two orc buddies"

*yawn*

Wizard; I cast charm person, I command the Ogre to kill his friends.

Okay, he fails his Will save (if not just cast the spell again), opposed charisma's, oh look he rolls with a negative, yep you order him to do it.

If the DM says he won't because it's harmful (which is fun to argue) you just make him stand still until the fight is over and then kill him.

No one needs level 7 spells to ruin trivialize encounters.

Charm Person does not work like that. It will not make creatures attack their allies, they will only take everything you say in the most favorable way. Shame people forget that.

There are no loop holes, only the law as written. There is no fine print only the law as written. I kind of get tired of people saying a business or person is taking advantage of a loop hole like they are dishonest. Now there are unintended consequences of laws, that does happen. And sometimes the unintended law was not unintended.

I ban everything except Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, Bard, Cleric, Wizard, and Sorcerer with Dragon, Celestial, Infernal, Genie, or Abyssal Bloodlines.

The only races I allow are Humans.

Well, in one of my campaigns.

Arnwolf wrote:

That's a very good point. But people can make decisions on how and who will take care of them in case of an emergency when they can't make decisions.

No, they can't. Like many of your postings, this is absolutely counterfactual to the point of being ludicrous. As a medical professional, in any civilized country in the world, I have the absolute right -- and indeed, in many jurisdictions, duty -- to perform any sort of medical treatment I see fit in an emergency, and furthermore, I'm not liable for my actions. In the real world, e.g. not Libertopia, this is balanced by the fact that need to be licensed and trained for this to apply, that I have to be performing this act within my training, and within accepted medical practice.

But specifically is your consent not required, but I don't even have to check to see whether or not you've made appropriate arrangements, because I don't have time for legal arglebargle in a medical emergency.

Quote:

Giving up freedom in the name of safety seems to be a slippery slope that has been causing lots of problems in the civilized world.

Giving up safety in the name of freedom, however, is not a slippery slope. It's a cliff. People die very quickly. I'm delighted to know that you are so willing to sacrifice other people's lives for your freedom.

That's because we are all used to governments making decisions for us instead of families and individuals taking the time to prepare and make informed decisions for themselves. And Yes, I said this was an extreme case, one that I would not fight for, even though I would like to have less government control in society. People do have a right to make unsafe and unhealthy decisions. People have a right to determine who is qualified to work for them.

Arnwolf wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

thejeff wrote:

It would be a little odd to see libertarians jumping on the bandwagon if I actually believed libertarianism was actually a coherent system. After all, if the government can't regulate business and you can't turn to the courts when they screw up ...

Actually, libertarianism is a very coherent system. It's all about avoidance of consequences.

As a libertarian surgeon, I am free to practice medicine without any training, as no one has the authority to say i actually need to know anatomy. I can set my prices how I like because no one has the authority to set aside an unconscionable contract. I can choose my patients how I like because no one has the authority to hold me to any sort of professional ethical standard.

In the event that I screw up, malpractice is not a tort, so the courts have no authority to order me to make redress or to discipline me in any way.

However, when the families of the people that I have killed on the operating table realize that there is no way under Libertopian law of dealing with me, the goverment is obliged to step in to prevent them from "using force" against me. So I can do as I please, knowing that I am absolutely immune to any consequences.

The fact that this also makes me a clinical sociopath is not relevant. It's simply a common characteristic of libertarians.

If the person or family agree to the surgery knowing the surgeons lack of credentials and knowledge. I would not blame the surgeon. As long as the people agreeing to the surgery had all the facts to make the decision. It would be their choice, albeit a stupid one.

Does this apply when your brought in on a crash cart in cardiac arrest? Or been pulled from a car wreck and flown in to the hospital? Can you really always do your due diligence on checking the doctor's credentials and record?

That's a very good point. But people can make decisions on how and who will take care of them in case of an emergency when they can't make decisions. This is an extreme example. But if it was made clear to all society that they had to have such arrangements made, it might be a better alternative than what is going on in England and Canada right now. Might, I am very skeptical of this. Giving up freedom in the name of safety seems to be a slippery slope that has been causing lots of problems in the civilized world.

I got the feeling that the skill system was inspired by thAC0. Love the setting but the mechanics could have been more intuitive.

thejeff wrote:

It would be a little odd to see libertarians jumping on the bandwagon if I actually believed libertarianism was actually a coherent system. After all, if the government can't regulate business and you can't turn to the courts when they screw up ...

Actually, libertarianism is a very coherent system. It's all about avoidance of consequences.

As a libertarian surgeon, I am free to practice medicine without any training, as no one has the authority to say i actually need to know anatomy. I can set my prices how I like because no one has the authority to set aside an unconscionable contract. I can choose my patients how I like because no one has the authority to hold me to any sort of professional ethical standard.

In the event that I screw up, malpractice is not a tort, so the courts have no authority to order me to make redress or to discipline me in any way.

However, when the families of the people that I have killed on the operating table realize that there is no way under Libertopian law of dealing with me, the goverment is obliged to step in to prevent them from "using force" against me. So I can do as I please, knowing that I am absolutely immune to any consequences.

The fact that this also makes me a clinical sociopath is not relevant. It's simply a common characteristic of libertarians.

If the person or family agree to the surgery knowing the surgeons lack of credentials and knowledge. I would not blame the surgeon. As long as the people agreeing to the surgery had all the facts to make the decision. It would be their choice, albeit a stupid one.

Arnwolf wrote:

The problem with government is that is very easy to take and waste money that other people earn.

Yes, yes. Taxation is theft, sweat of your brow, so on and so forth.

Here's the thing...the problems associated with having NO GOVERNMENT are much, much worse.

I think many of the problems could go away if they would just tax everyone the same. A flat income tax and/or sales tax and get away from invisible taxes the consumer does not see. I also thing government subsidies of the private sector should go away too. Government subsidies is just government favoritism as are taxes that apply to one industry or product and not another.

Arnwolf wrote:

This is one of my favorite on how people come to believe global warming

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00042.1?af=R

Hey look, a study about public opinion on climate change.

Has nothing to do with the hard science of it.
Stop dissembling.

Correct assessment. But why people believe what they believe is just interesting to me.

This is one of my favorite on how people come to believe global warming

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00042.1?af=R

Arnwolf wrote:

Scott Betts wrote:

Arnwolf wrote:

It has been making me very successful.

Then maybe stick to that instead of pretending to know the first thing about climate change.

Is the American Meteorological Society also a bunch of right wing fanatics?

Will you accept them as a source?

From the AMS website

Quote:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth’s lower atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; sea level is rising; and snow cover, mountain glaciers, and Arctic sea ice are shrinking. The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities. This scientific finding is based on a large and persuasive body of research. The observed warming will be irreversible for many years into the future, and even larger temperature increases will occur as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere. Avoiding this future warming will require a large and rapid reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. The ongoing warming will increase risks and stresses to human societies, economies, ecosystems, and wildlife through the 21st century and beyond, making it imperative that society respond to a changing climate. To inform decisions on adaptation and mitigation, it is critical that we improve our understanding of the global climate system and our ability to project future climate through continued and improved monitoring and research. This is especially true for smaller (seasonal and regional) scales and weather and climate extremes, and for important hydroclimatic variables such as precipitation and water availability.

There's more detail. Go read it. It essentially matches the scientific consensus we've been talking about.

How about this one?

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1

During the Roman Period Britain was so warm that it had the great wine vineyards that are now in France. As the Ice melts in Greenland we find the farms and villages of the Vikings. Climates naturally change and shift over time.

Arnwolf wrote:

It has been making me very successful.

Then maybe stick to that instead of pretending to know the first thing about climate change.

Is the American Meteorological Society also a bunch of right wing fanatics?

Arnwolf wrote:

There is no scientific consensus on Global Warming.

Yes, there is.

You don't want there to be.

But there is.

No one here believes anything you say.

Everyone here knows better.

Quote:

I've studied advanced mathematics, chemistry, geophysics, mechanical systems, ecological development and formations for years

Oh god I hope you didn't pay actual money.

It has been making me very successful. But not by working 40 hours a week in an office.