Arovyn's page

I have been trying to purchase the Tech Revolution PDF since Saturday, however the Place Your Order button only makes the steps disappear and it just circles a few moments and nothing ever happens. I have attempted this on three different devices with at least three different browsers and three different payment methods with no luck. I have cleared cookies and site specific cookies. I deleted and recreated my payment methods and my billing and shipping address. I emailed the customer service email address, and I'm still in the same boat. What else needs to be done so I can actually purchase the PDF?

Has anyone made a set of background/regional benefits for Golarion for 4E yet (a la PHB 2 or FRPG)? Just curious. I know I haven't been around for quite a long time. Mostly lurking, but it was more about moving residences - twice - in a four month span that did that. Add lack of internet connectivity for quite a while, and some other issues, but I'm back to an extent.

Going back over the Keen Senses for each race, I stumbled upon a couple of very small issues. In particular, they are the ones for the dwarf and for the gnome. I'll just go ahead and say right now, it's a bit of a science thing and a bit of a flavor thing.

Dwarves get taste and touch. Gnomes get smell and touch. One thing I know is that smell and taste are very inter-related. It's creepy that if you hold up a piece of apple to your nose while blindfolded and then take a bite from a potato, the potato tastes like an apple. On that note, I think it may be better to link taste and smell then how it's currently written.

From a flavor point of view (no pun intended here), I think the dwarf should have sound and touch because they live underground where such senses would be a bit more honed. It's a fact we hear more, and hear better, when we're in the dark. Blind people can literally feel how things would look with sight. Dwarves, I think, would be used to identifying sounds and locations based on the echoes just by their nature of their customary living space. At the same time, their sense of touch would be heightened by the darkness they live in. Now, I do know they have darkvision, so they're not really blind, but I still feel the two senses are linked.

Gnomes, on the other hand, should perhaps have a +2 to two linked senses (sight and sound, smell and taste, or sound and touch). Their description states their passions take them in multiple directions, including various professions and hobbies. Given their obsessive nature, it makes more sense for them to have senses that are geared in the same direction as their obsession.

I also want to point out that since halflings have only one keen sense, it should be a +3 instead of a +2. On a general level, I've noticed that the rules tend to give a +2 bonus to two (linked) items and a +3 when it's only a single one. The greater exception being for combat related features which have far more reaching consequences.

I'm not sure I like half-orcs and humans having no keen senses at all. I don't think it breaks the balance to give them a keen sense or two. It adds to the template-like feel I get from the races. I'd give the half-orcs and humans a +3 to one, or +2 to the links I've suggested above.

Arovyn

I have been reading the boards for a while now, and I've finally decided that this is worth posting. I'm tired of seeing, "4th Edition is not Dungeons & Dragons." Fortunately or unfortunately, it is. For those who think it isn't, obviously you don't like the direction it took, but there are some facts you have acknowledge, even if you don't like it.

There is a Dungeons & Dragons logo on it. Inside the books you will find iconic races, classes, and monsters. No, they're not quite the same as you remember them or want them to be, but you can't really change the fact they are in there and you can't change the fact it *is* Dungeons & Dragons. The rules are significantly different than before. But then the rules were just as significantly changed from the red box to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. They were changed in 2nd Edition. They were overhauled for 3rd. And they were overhauled again for 4th.

Yes, Pathfinder, and several other books out there using the SRD, their own rule sets, and the OGL also have iconic races, classes, and monsters. However, no matter how you look at it, there is no logo on them. WotC made 3.0 and 3.5 and no one is currently saying it is not D&D. But they have the rights to the name and the logo, and no matter how much you may dislike it, 4th Edition is Dungeons & Dragons for the foreseeable future.

The biggest complaint I've read is that 4th is a video game on paper. That's not a good assessment. It has the feel of an MMO in some regards, but let's keep something in mind here. The up and coming generation of gamers, and even some old veterans, play games like that. What's a good way to attract a new base? Have something similar. Personally, I think the change is for the better. Everyone has different powers and abilities, but I love the sense of balance I get from the game. Everyone has a fixed number of abilities they can use. So do the monsters. It all plays nice, and you don't have the huge list of abilities that over time simply won't be used.

But the biggest point I can make about it is this: It is not the rules or their presentation that make a game fun. The players and the DMs are what make the game fun. The feel of a game is only partially in the rules. The rest is what you choose to make of it. You don't need a specific set of rules to make a game fun, nor do you need a logo. Stop saying that 4th Edition is not Dungeons & Dragons. But by all means, don't let me stop you from saying, "4th Edition doesn't feel like the Dungeons & Dragons I want to play."

Arovyn

In general, I really like the basic racial template of +2/+2, I'm not a real big fan of a minus anything. The reason I say that is because I'm really very strongly in favor of a level playing field. Giving a penalty to an attribute really discourages players from taking a class when that class features that attribute as one of its keys. I encourage my players to play whatever they want to, but I do get some teeth gnashing when they can't quite make the class work for them because of the racial penalty. I think we can afford to remove it.

I like a lot of what I see in how races are put together, but I also see some things that I'm not a real fan of, and I'll be happy to explain why. I'm not a big fan of racial abilities are based around the concept of external forces or sources. I've never seen a good reason to keep certain racial abilities because they've always been a trope. I'll be more specific.

Defensive Training, Greed, Hatred, [Race] Magic, and Stonecunning racial abilities are all written on a certain assumption. Somehow every single member of a race, regardless of where they live, how they were raised, and their chosen profession in life, must have somehow acquired some pretty specialized training. On top of that, even if they've never met or seen a specific (monster) race, they truly hate and despise them with such a burning raging passion that they will always be really good fighting against them. Racial magic really smacks of following a trope because it's always been that way, and I don't like that much either. Why should a race *always* be that magical, and why can't other races have their own form of racial magic? All of these traits (a lot shared between races) really come across to me more as racial feats more than racial traits. Just because I want to play a dwarf, for example, why should that mean I have to be good with working with stone? What if I wasn't raised in a mountain fast? Even the description of dwarves in Golarion implies they are losing their cultural identity, so why should they have some of these? Why can't there be Dwarven Magic?

Elven Immunites kinda bug me too. I can understand being immune to sleep when a race simply does not sleep. But why are they also resistant to enchantment? I haven't seen a good written justification for it. It feels like it's being carried over for the sake of being carried over than for any real specific reason. I know the idea is to be backwards compatible, but I think a justification is in order for an ability like that. And again, I can see it more as a feat than an ability. And when it comes to half-elves, there is that implied elven blood being so strong that it carried it over to them, but does that mean that half-elves also don't sleep?

I really do like the template feel to the races. Each race has a good feel by description. But I don't think they need certain abilities to be applied to every single member. I think each race should have three or four abilities at most that have a good "genetic" feel. I know that tossing in that concept is a bit of flamebait, but you get the idea. I think that if you make the listed problem abilities into feats and it leaves a race lacking, it shouldn't be too hard to add an ability or a thematically similar ability in its place.

Arovyn

When it comes to ability scores, I was a fan of rolling them up for years. Of course, for years, that was about the only way to do it. I've seen plenty of ideas and suggestions and optional rules for rolling up characters that were virtually guaranteed to give players the ability to play their chosen class(es) really well. But then when point buy showed up, my whole opinion changed radically. Over the past year or so, the only method I allow anymore is point buy.

It isn't that I have any substantial issues with any of the methods in Pathfinder, I think the average score for a standard game should be at least 13, and that no starting score should ever really start lower than 8. Player characters are heroes in the world, and they stand out more from the average person in it. Overall, I think that the ability modifiers should add up to +8, but no higher than +10. That allows characters to really stand out, but monsters and important NPCs (villains) do have a tendency of standing out as well.

My suggestions are to boost up the starting scores a bit with the Purchase method, and to allow a mulligan if the overall rolled results don't fall between a certain threshold, and a definte forced re-rolling if they go above it. Another thing I'd really like to see (and have found to be incredibly helpful) is a list of potential arrays for each level of the Purchase method. Yes, I'm aware 4E does this, but I'm not suggesting it just because 4E did it. It really is incredibly handy for players to be able to look at an array and use it rather than figure it out by hand every time.

Arovyn