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Not sure if this is an old idea or not -

Other sandbox games I've tried, the developer makes the sandbox but then pretty much leaves the players do the rest - hoping they build interesting & needed content, but not doing anything directly to make it happen - so taking the risk that they wont. Theme park games, total opposite, the devloper hires designers to build the content, giving them control to have professional quality content in their game, but at signifigant cost, and the players aren't involved.

The idea here is hybred the two approaches - Developer 'hires' players, via quest rewards, to create specific content.

Example: Developer contacts a guild and tasks them with building a city, specifying the location, structures, and facilities it should have. If they can do it within an allotted timeframe they get an in-game reward. Another example: Developer tasks a guild to build a quest, specifying that it has to involve a dungeon of given specifications, travel to several given locations, and other elements. If they do it, the guild gets and in-game reward.

In the flavor of the game, the developer could interact with the players in the guise of being the gods of Golerion. So, a guild leader might get a message from Gorum "Gorum wishes you to build a city and temple in his honor, [list of requirements], if you can raise it by december first, you will be granted 10 swords of power and an army of oursiders to defend it [or other appropriate in-game reward]"

The advantage for the developer is they can essentially hire design staff for free, granting them flexibilty to take an active hand in making the world more interesting and functional for the players, while giving players incentives to build content rather than focus on PvP.

I was considering trying the old system of using a tape measure rather than a battle grid, or in conjuntion with one, 1" = 5'

How's that worked for anyone that's tried it?

Great that there's a Begginer's Box section in 'my downloads' but the PDF for the Beginner's Box itself doesn't appear there, just the add-on stuff. Would make more sense or the Begginer's Box pdf to appear in the Begginer's Box section, rather than hidden amongst my Pathfinder RPG pdfs, no?

Had me scratching my head, even had me thinking that I paid 9 bucks for the bonus stuff and that was what you get, since I'd forgot I'd previously got those, and only saw those in the section.

Topic's come up again, so thought I'd share an idea I've been noodling around with.

My thought is Ten Commandments. The paladin/anti-paladin codes the Gods supplements gave me the idea. First simply law/chaos/good/evil/neutral into a one line statement each. Create a 10 commandments for each Golarion god. The first is the statement of the God's law/chaos axis. The second is the statement of the God's good/evil axis. The rest are a list of how the god expects you to go about doing 1 and 2.

By doing it this way, you don't have to have just one universal interpretation of the alignments for any given action (which leads to no end of arguments), since some gods might go about it one way, some another, but you still have the one big theme to be able to tell one alignment from another, and since each god has a creed of dos and don'ts, players and GMs can get on the same page on what their character would or wouldn't do.

Trying to distill down the alignments to a core of what they're all about, here's what I came up with:

Law/Chaos:

Law: Follow this creed and make others to do likewise.
Neutral: Follow this creed.
Chaos: If you follow this creed, don't let others make you do otherwise.

Good/Evil:
Good: It's the duty of the strong few to protect the weak many.
Neutral: It's one's duty to protect one's own.
Evil: It's the duty of the weak many to serve the strong few.

So for example the ten commandments of a LG god would be:

1) Follow this creed and make others to do likewise.
2) It's the duty of the strong few to protect the weak many.

Then 3-10 Would be a list of dos and don't that explain how to do 1 & 2, and could be things like not harboring criminals, what's the difference between accepting a reward for completing a quest and extorting protection, etc.

Different lawful good gods would all have the same commandments 1&2, but different 3-10, showing their different priorities in how they expect people to do #1&2. For example, Erastil could have a line about not abandoning your village to fight someone else's battle, while Iomedae might have a line that it's a duty to go on pilgrimage to fight evil wherever it may be. Those both are ways the strong can protect the weak, but different ways of going about it.

This way common problems like what to do with prisoners can be given a clear answer, but the answer could be different between gods of a given alignment, letting the player pick exactly which creed they prefer, while also giving clear guidance on if they're following it or not.

I plan on cribbing commandments from the Gods supplements, especially from the Paladin/anti-paladin creeds of the various gods.

Assuming they have the 5gp, of course. They seem to have no downside, can not be disarmed, and allow one to threaten squares. Even if you're not proficient in them, that just means -4 to hit, where not having them on could mean not being able to attack at all. So why not have them on in addition to whatever other weapons, just to never have to worry about ever being caught unarmed?

I'm thinking of buying a new hardcopy of the core book to get it with the updated erratta for the 5th printing. The product page doesn't say which printing it is, so if I order now will I get a 5th printing hardcopy?

Idea is; Players vote each other as good/evil lawful/chaotic, the alignments are factions which affects the game experience, so the community polices itself.

--- Players who's PCs act like paladins can live with the paladins, use the lawful good vendors, get the lawful good NPC quests The players who's PCs act like Orcs, they all live with the Orcs, use Orc vendors, can take Orc quests.

--- but MOST Importantly: Players will naturally gravitate to be surrounded by other players who share their own play style.

As the community rates each other's play, their PCs will sort themselves into alignment factions. For example, griefers getting a lot of 'evil' reputation from other players will end up in the "Evil" alignment faction, players with good reputations would become the "Good" alignment faction.

Parts of the world will be 'safe' for some alignments, and adventure content for others. For example, Evil NPCS kill on sight Good PC, but are non-aggro to Evil PCs. Likewise, Good NPCs KOS Evil PCs. What would be a 'dungeon' to the Good faction PC, could be a town to Evil faction.

To be able to tell alignment from a distance, I think it would also be important to have the appearance of gear be affected by alignment - an Evil PC's gear looks evil (black and red with blood and spikes, you get the idea), a good PCs gear looks good (white and blue with a nimbus, etc.). That would mean more gear models, but would make for a much better play experience than just a floaty flag or color coded name font or something.

I feel strongly, there should also be mechanisms to limit higher level players in lower level opposite aligned areas. For example, a raid of 5th level evil PCs into a good PC town can be awesome, but always having one or two high level griefers in the nooby zone gets old fast.

Of course, a lot of work will have to be done to make sure the voting system can't be easily exploited, for example to grief a good player by spamming evil votes on him, but I think things can be done to prevent this. Community rating systems have been around for a while, after all.

Bottom line is, by empowering the players to rate other players play, the community can police itself to encourage a higher quality of play overall.

This is late to the party but just thought of it:

Clarify Perception as a non-action check that happens at the start of your turn, which only has to be rolled if a perception DC changed for the thing(s) to be perceived (and if it's possible to fail). And clarify that the observer is flat footed against an attacker that is not perceived.

This solves the "in plain sight" clause of stealth that causes much of the problems when trying to stealth from one bit of cover/concealment to another, without having to re-write stealth, create a new "hidden" condition, or designating a stealthed thing as invisible (which is recursive since invis grants bonus to stealth).

Since any observer observes on their own turn, not the stealther's, the stealther's movement and attacks from stealth are resolved without their coming into potential view being an issue on their turn.

This means a rogue can move from cover to sneak attack, or move from cover to cover and remain hidden, or with spring attack, move from cover, attack, move to cover and re-roll stealth. The observer would get a chance each turn to perceive.

The glossary has come great advice on Curses but doesn't explain how to rate them as challenges. Same's true for most hazards. The rules might give a CR for specific dangers (like green slime, for example) but, far as I can find, doesn't give a methodology for rating your own home brew threats that aren't traps or haunts.

Thinking I'll apply the same philosophy as the Haunt rules, but not all curses are based on Bestow Curse or other spell effect. For example, how would you go about assigning a CR to the Curse of the Ages?

Thought about it as a result of this thread

But always bugged me a bit that you can't grab hold of someone running by or charge up and tackle someone in Pathfinder. Grapple being a standard action, much of what you'd see in any football game is actually disallowed by the combat rules. You can't grab someone as they run by, you can't charge someone and wrestle them to the ground (even though you can disarm them, which seems a much more complex maneuver).

How this works in real life is you grab them with an open hand. So occurred to me, what if you just gave a hand the ability to grab things, by just adding Grab to humanoids' normal unarmed attack.

So, you'd need a free hand, have to hit with an attack, it would be an unarmed attack, so would provoke an attack of opportunity, but it would be a melee attack so could be employed at the end of a charge or as an Attack of Opportunity (e.g to grab someone as they ran by) if you succeeded you could start a grapple. So, that's how you'd tackle.

There's a reference in a PFS scenario to using Diplomacy in combat and to "apply the relevant penalties" (the thrust of it is an attempt to get an unfriendly attacker to consider that the PCs aren't who they think they are so should stop attacking and start a parley). Anyone know what this is referring to?

What do people think of this: With multiple armies fighting armies get a initiative bonus same as the base creature, higher initiative check get to select their engagement, only pairs of armies can fight, then the results are determined.

So for example, current rules, say there's a 3 on 1 fight. The three all gang up on one, getting three atacks to that army's one. With this change, only two armies fight that round, the others remain disengaged. The following round one of the other armies can swap in, provided they win initiative over the solo enemy.

Now say there's 3-on-3, current rules, three on one side can gang up on one, and vice vera. With this change they must split up into three 1-on-1 fights, with the ones with higher initiative getting to pick their opponents.

An army with Ranged weapons, they can shoot and then have another army engage the enemy, provided they go first before both, and the ally army can delay to make that happen.

This is a little more complex to explain, but I think would be intuative and make sense in play. I like this because I think it would let you have more and different kinds of armies working in a more interesting way, without there being such an advantage to focus fire. The rational for why they need to pair off is armies would get in each other's way otherwise. To fight as one army they should be one army.

I also like the initiative bonus stat being a factor. "having the initiative" is an important thing in war after all, and some kinds of creatures are balanced to have a high initiative at the cost of other stats.

When did the tradition start with fantasy names to make them as difficult to pronounce as they are to remember? And more importantly, can we stop now?

Is there some legality involved where someone named Ned Stark might sue if his name were used in vain, which George Martin can withstand but others feel they need to dodge via Noede Sktahrcc? Is there a Dris O'Doulhan in Ireland somewhere that'll get seriously pissed if there's some drow with a similar spelling?

All my gaming life, names have been like a speed bump designed to throw a compelling paragraph of great flowing description into a dead stop.

How did this all start anyway? Bilbo Bagging, rolls right off the tongue. Conan the Cimmerian - Hot. Wasn't them. Who did it? Was it that bastard Fafhrd?

Well whoever started it maybe we want to think about stopping it. Weirdly spelled names are hard to read aloud, but it's worse that they're hard to remember. The whole point of a thing's name is that you can remember it. Some pseudo-welsh monstrosity could sound beautiful for those who can wrap their tongue around it, but if you can't, and they end up actually becoming "what's her name, the quest chick" because they can't, what's the point? And why not something memorable and pronounceable, what's wrong with "Catherine, the Red Witch of Westend"?

I came up with a system to run an argument like a combat. I used it in the Serpent Skull/Kingmaker mashup and it needs some tweeking but worked out pretty well. I posted it here

It worked especially well when the players RPed the results of their rolls after rolling them, RPing good arguments for good rolls, bad ones for bad.

I didn't see this commented on before but something I notice about the Oracle class is why don't have much by the way of precognition and prophetic prediction, which is what an Orcale is supposed to be all about.

This would be because you can't predict what PCs will do and you wouldn't want to force a predetermined outcome, so true predestination of destiny and fate of the type Oracles in legends and fiction are famous for woudn't work well for an RPG.

But I got to thinking - that's really not 100% true.

The traditional adventure path IS a kind of predestination. The details are up to the PCs, but the PCs are lead on a path from A to B to C. There's long debates between the 'sandbox' and 'railroad' styles of adventure, yet the whole adventure path format of even the most stand-boxy AP, like Kingmaker, nevertheless assume the adventurers running around in book 1 are inevitably going to face the challenges in book 5. Even in home games, the DM invariably must have some material planned out ahead of time.

I then thought, that's the stuff a mechanic for prophesy can be built on. A prophetic vision could take the form of reading the PCs the descriptive text of an encounter the have no yet faced. For example, reading them the room description for the final boss fight in the third book of an AP, as forshadowing while they're still in the first. Or, reading them the description of a boss or sub-boss, or important NPC. Prophesy in legend and fiction is always ambiguous. The dramatic value of visions of the future in stories is how the heroes might misinterpret the vision, and the DM can replicate that by simply contoling how much description context the PCs get - they may get the description of the room but don't know if it's the final boss fight, some aspect of a side quest, or even the location of an important quest giver. They may get the description of an individual but not if he's an ally or enemy.

Tying all this back into the Oracle class - this type of thing is what should be the signature ability of that class. Right now I'm imagining it as a Spell which only Oracles get (where per RAW Oracles use the Cleric spell list, this would be an Oracle only spell). It would be low level so most if not all Oracles have access to it, but with a spell craft check for a successful vision, with the DC keyed off of the CR value of the encoutner or individual, so the ability can scale, which at the same time giving the PCs and the dice some control over the value of the information.

What do you think?

I started a Kingmaker/Serpent Skull mashup, with the thread in the SS forum, but thought to post the link here to cover this side of it.

I'm working on a Serpent Kull/Kingmaker mashup for my primary SS group. We are just about to the point where the players will get to make the call whether to go for it or not, and if they decide to do the mashup I'll post ideas and updates here as it goes.

Several reasons why I like the idea. The AP seems build for it. Smuggler's Shiv becomes ripe for colonisation by the end of first first book. The second book invloves re-opening a trade route. The third book involves finding and claiming a lost city. So, giving the PCs a real steak in the storyline by actually giving them an ownership interest in the wilderness places they explore and conquer seems a natural. The books after that are about defending civilisation against an acient threat - Even more compelling by having the lands they're defending be their own.

Right now, I'm working on converting the isle of Smuddler Shiv into Kingmaker terms. It'd be a one hex kingdom, but with several resources, caves, two ruined temples (or one complete temple, if they keep the Zura temple intact, which they may since they're a evil party). While there's no place to expand out from the Shiv, it can be developed into a major port city. I anticipate the deed to the mine in book two being the basis for an initial hex for a second kingdom, which they can buld off of along the trade route. Then winning credit for discovering Saveth-Yi would be the basis for a third kingdom holding.

Several things got me thinking about this. First off, I'm an old AD&D guy, and back in 1st edition treasure did earn XP. It wasn't a swap, but the two were related. Next, recently I was listening to recent 3.5 Private sanctuary podcast discussion about the problems associated with gear being such an integral part of a PCs stat build. Next, was another of their podcasts that got me thinking about the problem of paying upkeep - how it's realistic, but potentially unfair since it sucks gear money.

All this got me thinking it could be good to have a mechanic to convert GP in XP. This would allow a PC to swap the stat benefits of Gear for the stat benefits of Levels. For players that don't like the role magic gear plays in the game, this could allow them an option to maintain power balance without having to fill every slot with magic gear.

It also occurred to me that this could be used to balance the effect of upkeep, and reconcile it mechanically with it's usefulness in storytelling, by using the upkeep concept as the means by which this trade off of GP to XP is done.

The Idea is this: Heroes may advance themselves by 'living the life' of whatever character concept the player imagines. For example, a PC who's character is the iconic hard partying adventurer spends X coin eating the best food, drinking the best wine, in true spendthrift style - but mechanically, the money isn't just wasted: What he looses in gear value he gains in an XP Story Award. Likewise a PC who's the iconic Paladin vowed to poverty spends X coin to benefit the poor NPCs of the world - what he looses in gear, he gains in XP.

The details can be up however the players want to role play it out, mechanically it's always just a swap of GP for an XP story award, representing the PC giving something up in order to express their character's nature.

Now - The mechanical problems are to implementing such a system are 1) figuring out how to estimate the effective level of an under-geared, but higher level, PC - This is necessary to make sure encounters are still appropriately balanced given their unorthodox build - And 2) figuring out just how much an XP is worth in GP.

Luckily, the core rules gives some guidance on this in the context of NPCs, in the section "NPC Gear Adjustments" in Designing Encounters on P.398:

"a classed NPC that ... has gear equivalent to that of a PC (as listed on Table: Character Wealth by Level) has a CR of 1 higher than his actual CR"

That basically means an NPC with a PC's gear can be assumed to be one level higher. Or, in other words, the difference in value between an NPC's usual gear and a PCs usual gear is worth a Level in relative power.

So, I did some math to see if there was any equivalence in the charts between those GP values and the XP values of that extra Level, to see if I could derive a rough exchange rate between GP and XP. What I found was indeed there was. Comparing the difference with an NPCs standard gear per level, and the XP needed to become a level higher, for levels 5, 10 and 15. There was a rough but very close equivalence. I found that:

--- One GP is about equivalent to one XP

The numbers even seem to err in the right direction. A 1:1 is a slight overpayment of GP to buy XP but this served to account for how gear is hypothetically something you can loose more easily then you can lose levels & level based stats.

That's good for question 2, but likewise for question 1: If an NPC with a PC's value of gear is equivalent to the NPC being one level higher, then the inverse may also be true:

--- A PC with an NPC's gear value can be considered effectively one level lower than the listed level, when considering CR

Now, if that holds up in play I think that's awesome.

What it means is, when you use the cost of living rules from p.405 you can award the PCs XP for those lost GPs on a 1:1 basis without worrying about unbalancing your game. Players would probably really appreciate that. You can also give your players story award XP for donating to churches or drinking thousand GP bottles of wine, or buying wardrobes of clothes, on a 1GP for 1XP basis freeing them to RP without it always conflicting with the need for gear or feeling like they're stupidly throwing money away. You can also please the character who wants to be like a Conan-type hero, relying on personal ability and wanting to minimize the games need for gear. While on the DM side, you only have to worry about adjusting APL and CR if the PCs decide to get so under-geared that they're at NPC levels (making them practically gear free).

So, thoughts?

Building off the previous How to Make a Club

You can use profession skills to create the raw materials needed to make craft items with a value. Here's how:

Per RAW, trade goods (like iron, wheat, etc.) are money equivalents. Profession skills allow you to earn half your skill check in a week in GP. By taking your earnings in the appropriate trade good rather than gold, RAW gives you the mechanic for scrounging up in the wild the materials needed to craft items of value.

For example. Say you're stuck in the wild and want a bow. A shortbow costs 30gp, so you would need (at least) 10gp in materials to craft (by inference this would be high quality wood, something higher quality than what you'd need for a club or quarterstaff, which can be made for free). A Profession(woodcutter)check of 20 would net 10gp in one week. Taken in the equivelent value of trade good(high quality wood), that would provide the materials to begin crafting.

RAW doesn't provide situational modifiers for professional skills, but it'd make sense for the DM to grant bonuses or penalties to the check as would be reasonable for the circumstances (Collecting wood in a desert vs. a forest, etc.). Also, there should be the usual bonuses and penalties for the kinds of tools used.

The crafting rules require you to divide by zero if you have to craft an item with no cost (like a club, quarterstaff or sling). You can work around this by using the price of a comparable item.

For example - The party is up against skeletons, but none of them have blunt weapons, so they get the idea to rummage around the woods and make themselves some clubs and quarterstaffs. While clubs and such have no listed cost, implying they are free, a random tree branch is nevertheless still an improvised weapon. A quaterstaff, or sling, or even a club (think baseball bat) is a crafted thing, so they'll to do some crafting. Time is a factor so you need to know how long it will take. These are simple weapons so you know the DC is 12, but per RAW the time (if less than a week) is determined by dividing the week by(result x DC)/cost. If you use the listed cost - zero - they'd make the clubs at the speed of light open up a wormhole and implode.

Now, you could just hand-wave it, and let them have their clubs, but I find a roll of the dice with a risk of success or failure based on a sensible mechanic is always more interesting and fun than DM fiat. So, if you don't want to hand-wave it - here's what you do:

Since the purpose of the 'cost' here is really just an abstraction to measure the relative complexity and difficulty of making the item, find an item that's of comperable conplexity and dificulty - i.e. and item of similar stats - and use it's cost instead. A club is comparable to a short spear (same damage, if worse range increment), which costs 1gp. A quarterstaff is likewise comparable to a regular spear (2gp). A sling is about the same as a dart (5sp).

Plugging those numbers into the RAW, we find that if a crafter hits the minimum for success (DC 12) the foragers would make a quarterstaff in about a day's work, and a club in half that, or sling proportionately faster. If they failed the check, they won't lose money, but they will lose the time - by RAW craft checks can be made by the day or week, so on a fail, they've tried all day to make a decent weapon, but just ended up with a pile of firewood (not a bad scene for a bit of comic relief). You could likewise find if they got a great result, they got the hang of it and churned out several like an assembly line.