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Basara549 wrote:

They're having the customer pay the "worst case scenario" for fees/GST/excise taxes, so that the shipment doesn't get caught up in the "Games Canuck Postal Bureaucrats Play". Because, packages getting hung up in transit, or arriving with humongus COD fees from the Canadian Taxman, tend to produce FAR worse customer ratings and feedback than charging up front and overpaying said taxman to make sure he can't pull that crap.

We're not charging for that *at all*—when there are applicable taxes or import fees, the recipient's postal service collects them from the recipient.

Then that's even worse, because as I noted when Animeigo did its Bubblegum Crisis Blu-ray kickstarter, Canada and many of the EU countries were nastily random in their application of additional fees, sometimes in instances when they weren't supposed to. And, the Palladium instance was with about 3-4 kilo (7-9 lb) package, and while they avoided the EU circus, Canada still bit some people and not others.

Some people just don't seem to understand that Amazon and some other online sellers have ways of "gaming" the system (pun unintended) concerning additional fees, and that even if they pay the high shipping that others have to require, they could still get a double-whammy when it gets there.

Oh, and speaking of that Palladium instance, I had to argue with a couple of idiot aussies who couldn't understand why Palladium shipped (literally) all the AU/NZ kickstarter backers stuff for distribution from a central AU location.

They used Amazon & some eBay sellers as counter-examples, and couldn't grasp that regular shipments not through such places, actually cost more.
I was called a liar, when I went to the shippers' own web pages, and found that the costs for the packages going from MI to Canberra would have been
Through USPS: Starting around $112
Through FedEx: Starting over $200
Through UPS: Starting at over $400

For a package that cost $25 to ship to California, $48 to AK/HI, $75 to Canada. for a $140 product kickstarted before KS was set up to arrange for extra fees for overseas shipping.
Even with shipping overseas (which took a couple weeks to get there) and being sent out by australian post (IIRC) it cost about 1/3 of what it would have cost to mail it directly from the US. And, while that was happening, the harpies tried to use some online stores violating Palladium's request "do not sell US product overseas until the ship gets there with the official release product", as somehow Palladium lying to them about sending to the supporters first (And, of course, the sellers selling at barely above wholesale, and using Amazon to skirt most of the shipping costs). When someone that does that with Wizards or GW stuff, there's hell to pay - but those are the 600 lb. gorillas in the room. Small companies often have to worry about losing commercial buyers, even if the buyer broke the rules.

Sometimes distribution is best handled through a shipment, then local mailing - something that Paizo wasn't set up for, at least not in this instance. Then again, I don't think they anticipated this level of response, either.

It's probably too late for this promotion, but I recommend Paizo update the personalization process to work something like

1. Person selects their downloads from a list, instead of clicking each one. Person clicks "send" to submit the request.
2. Documents and personalization information get sent to the queue on machines that are set up to ONLY do personalization (and the confirmation checks that requires).
3. Files, as they are processed, are saved onto a third set of machines on the network, that only handle the download process and the associated mail confirmation process. As a batch gets done, the link to download the completed personalized files as a unit would be sent to the user.

This would keep personalizations and downloads from slowing down the site itself, and downloads & personalizations from slowing down each other (much - you'd still have some potential lag from the data transfer of personalized files to the download target machines taking bandwidth and processor use from the latter).

Overseas shipping can be a pain, especially since some nations charge custom fees or VAT/GST on both the item AND the postage.

One kickstarter (a gaming product) I know arranged to send their European orders in bulk to a UK distributor to avoid some of the draconian crap that gets applied, plus the shipping was a lot cheaper by doing a container to the UK, then whatever combinations needed of Euro post from there.
Some Canadians got charged 50% or more fees by Canada Post (or whatever it's called) & their customs/tariffs people because postal inspectors ignored rules on what defined a US product (product was made for north american sale, distributed from the Detroit area, but the components were made in China), or otherwise labeled it as falling in a completely different category for import than the one it was supposed to be in.

Another KS for a blu-ray shipped directly from the US, and on top of the extra postage, many of the people got charged 20-80% in fees by their government. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/madoverlord/bubblegum-crisis-ultimate- edition-blu-ray-set/posts/1116416

It's not my circus or monkeys (being in the US), but hopefully Paizo might want to look into alternatives before having such a physical bonus to an online promotion. It might be cheaper to arrange one mass shipping of the bonus items to Europe and have someone distribute from there, and try to find some way of getting Canadian supporters' items across the border before mailing them.

I don't know what alternate universe you have been getting your shipments from, but those kinds of charges are typical from ANYONE in the US to Canada for the kinds of materials in question. The rare exception is if the company doing the shipping has Canadian distribution - which is what Amazon does, in bulk, to circumvent most (but not all) of it. So do most wholesalers.

The blame is squarely on YOUR GOVERNMENT. They have extremely odd, often Byzantine, rules as to what taxes/fees/etc. to apply to stuff mailed/shipped into Canada.

The Canadian government is INFAMOUS in its games it plays with shipments across the border. One of the infamous instances goes back 20-30 years where they wanted to charge $5,10, or more PER ITEM for sending home videos on VHS, or even BLANK CD/DVDs across the border, supposedly to fight video piracy.

Another game company, Palladium (based in suburban Detroit), had a kickstarter a couple years ago, where the standard item was $140.
The TYPICAL shipping for the item in the contiguous (lower 48) US
was $10-25, based on distance. Alaska and Hawaii was about $48

CANADA, on the other and, STARTED at higher than the Alaska numbers, even if only being sent to Windsor, less than an hour from Palladium. For that matter, Palladium couldn't even drive the stuff to Windsor and mail it, without having to pay the outrageous fees.
Beyond that, depending on the postal inspector, other fees could be charged.
Some of the kickstarter backers had no further charges.
Some of the backers were charged up to $80 US, payable on delivery, to the Canadian Government.
-THIS WAS FOR THE EXACT SAME PRODUCT.

IT all depended on what category the INDIVIDUAL INSPECTOR decided EACH ITEM fit (and when all the flames flew back then, there apparently were 2 or 3 different categories, and at least one inspector that treated it as a CHINESE import for determining import fees, despite the company being in the US and shipping from the US, simply because the product was made under contract in China - which is NOT how the system is supposed to work).

If you wanted to appeal the unfair charges, you had to send your unopened package to be reinspected (paying the shipping for that yourself), and were out those shipping fees even if you won your appeal.

Similar issues occurred with another kickstarter I supported, for a Blu-ray version of an anime from the late-80s/early-90s. ($50 base price) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/madoverlord/bubblegum-crisis-ultimate- edition-blu-ray-set/posts/1116416

The reason why there's a $45 charge from Paizo for that shipping across the border - They're having the customer pay the "worst case scenario" for fees/GST/excise taxes, so that the shipment doesn't get caught up in the "Games Canuck Postal Bureaucrats Play". Because, packages getting hung up in transit, or arriving with humongus COD fees from the Canadian Taxman, tend to produce FAR worse customer ratings and feedback than charging up front and overpaying said taxman to make sure he can't pull that crap.

Yeah, the link to the Humble Bundle promotion got pushed around to a lot of the gaming sites.

I'd been waiting 20-30 minutes for "personalizing" to clear, with no luck. It's likely that the HB load is too much for the system to bear.

Then again, that's the cost of DRM that imprints the purchaser information on every page, as it's effectively editing EVERY INDIVIDUAL PAGE.

Perhaps it is time for setting up an alternate download system for bulk purchases, where you click once to place your download order, the system runs in the background personalizing everything for you, then you get sent a link in an email or message in "My Account" for downloading your order after it's all done and compiled.

Doing the personalizing DURING the download, in a download-heavy period, goes wrong for very much the same reason as you really don't want to be downloading the latest WoW expansion the first few hours after the download becomes available...

Some good examples of the modern Plano systems for carrying the boxes. you can look at them at planomolding.com but I don't believe they do direct sales through the site.

4673-00, 3700-size Tackle bag; comes with 5 of the 3700 boxes inside, and has 4 external pockets, external elastic tie-downs and another pocket inside on the lid. Looks little different from a fancier gym bag, and you can carry books inside the bag instead of some of the 3700 boxes. 4663-00 is the 3600-box version of this. 4674-00 has 2 3700 & 2 3600.

The 4477-00 has 2 3750 boxes, a lot of internal and external pockets, but is a lumbar strap-on system (think dire fanny pack on steroids). 4475 and 4476 are similar packs for 3500 & 3600 boxes respectively. Not something you'd want for weekly gaming, unless you walk or bike to games, but would be useful for someone who runs at cons a lot (allowing you to carry other stuff in your hands)

Plano Stow-Away boxes are popular with miniature & counter based games with good reason.
3700-series are the big ones, though can come in standard, deep (About double the size) and shallow (abit over half the size) in depth.
3600-series are the next size down.
3500-series are great for dice and other item (pencils, markers, etc.) storage.
There are smaller series boxes as well, that are generally made for specific larger containers, or meant to be totally stand-alone.
Boxes of near-identical sizes are also made by Flambeau (ArtBox) and Rubbermaid.

Due to silly excise taxes on "tackle boxes" you'll want to get the (identical in all but labeling) versions that are labeled for crafting storage (available at places like Jo-ann Fabric, Michaels, etc. Tend to be the Flambeau versions), Home Improvement places (Lowes, Home Depot, etc. but can be in odd places in the aisles that don't make sense) or in the Household tool section of Wal-Mart (where I found the Rubbermaid boxes).

The Planos have a few row-division options the others don't, and can be a bit more versatile. For example, the 3750 variant of the 3700 box has 2 normal rows as the back half the box, with the front half using double-size dividers that would allow you to create space for the huge pawns.

The Rubbermaid and Plano boxes tend to have the standard amount of dividers you need to make all partitions; The Flambeau boxes tend to shaft you, especially if they have their Ze-rust(?) anti-oxidation dividers (10 out of 30 or so dividers needed). The dividers MAY be compatible between types on an individual basis, but it can vary. I had a bunch of OLD Plano 3600-series dividers that some worked in a Rubbermaid, and none in a Flambeau of the same size, yet the Rubbermaid ones mostly worked in the Flambeau, and could use some of the Plano ones that would fall loose in the Flambeau. It might have been the age of the divider tabs, though. Typically, you can't find spare tabs for sale (2 companies ship you 1 per slot to start with, while Flambeau wants you to pay $10 for 8-10 extra anti-rust tabs, PLUS shipping, which is twice what you paid for the box, and still will leave you short)

Now, to organize it all, you'll probably have to pay that extra money in the Sporting Goods area, as it's hard to find the Stow-Away compatible carrying boxes/bags as anything other than fishing support.

The comtainers that hold multiple boxes are typically called "Tackle SYSTEMS" (as to differentiate from "tackle boxes" with permanent trays). Often, this will be 2-4 3600-series or 3700-series Plano boxes (or their equivalents from the other companies), and come with all or most of those boxes already inside. A few types even have combinations of smaller boxes and one of the other two sizes. A lot of these are soft-sided/cloth/vinyl these days, but some are more rigid plastic, or even rubber. And, there are a number of the bags that only use PART of their storage for the boxes, leaving you with ample space for Books, snacks, etc.) Examples, if you go to the Plano site would be the 44xx-00, 46xx-00, and 767-000 787-010 series. The "fun" part, once you find one you like, will then be tracking down a local store carrying the one you want so you don't have to pay shipping from an online store (these things are big and bulky). Then again, there are a couple of big online fishing retailers known to have good sales when you can catch them.

My personal box, dating from the late 90s, is a hard plastic Plano combination; they don't make anything quite like it anymore. The front opens downward to hold 3 3700-series in slots (and I think came with 1 or 2), while the top opens like a more conventional tackle box to reveal an area that has slots for 6 3500-series boxes (came with 1 or 2), and another area to the side of the slots that had removable partitions for hanging spinner baits. After removing the partitions, there was enough room for several decks of paying-card-size (critical, fumble, and other pathfinder decks), and 4-5 CCG decks. Or, you can just use the storage for things like magnifiers, writing tools, staplers, tape measures, tape dispensers and other oversized crap that won't fit in one of the tray-style boxes. Originally, this was used for hauling stuff to Classic Battletech games in the 3 large (3700) box slots, but I've repurposed it for Pathfinder.

While still using minis instead of pawns currently (plan on purchasing the Bestiary sets once a family crisis pasts), when I do get the pawns, I'll have 1 or 2 3700 boxes for each set, divided roughly in alphabetical order. This will be for storage. On game day,I will pull all the potentially needed tokens/minis from the different sets and load them into one of my spares, so I don't have to take them all to the game site.

I hope this gives you a few ideas about what can be done.

As the player of a single class divine caster that has (in two different campaigns) been the first person to toss a fireball downrange (Fire Domain), I've seen multiple sides of this argument with the same character.

There are many times, more common with some GMs than others, where even with mid-range characters, you aren't in a position to spend your first few rounds buffing. If you're able to do this consistently, your Game Master is being WAY too nice to you. When you're not the one ambushing, or at least initiating combat, equally matched fights should RARELY be in a position where the PC side isn't taking as much as they're giving in the early rounds.

If you're the one being ambushed, or if everyone (including the bad guys) blows their Perception rolls and you walk right into a fight where the damage dealing starts right away (and a few big hits result), you might have to start healing/Channeling in Round 2 or even Round 1, just to keep the party from having to consider retreat by round 4.

Damage output is nice, but don't forget just how dangerous focusing in on it might be. Sure, your warrior types might be able to do copious amounts of damage, and even better when buffed - but how does that help when the party gets ambushed by creatures with nearly +30 in stealth, sneak attack, AND a half-dozen DRs & immunities, like a Babau Demon? (happened in our game yesterday).

The Ranger/Rogue couldn't do more than 3-4 points of damage without a critical or sneak attack against them, The Paladin was having to pull ways of aligning his/others attacks out of his posterior (try casting bless weapon in melee, after being sneak attacked, and the attacker able to hit you on a natural 7 for the first attack, 12s for the subsequent 3 more - concentration checks are a b&@*%), and the only one who was doing any serious damage was the cleric, and only because the cleric took alignment channel to hurt evil outsiders 6 levels ago (after the party got massacred repeatedly at early levels from fiendish & infernal vermin). The choice was,
a. channel to heal (on average) about the same damage per round (or less than) the warriors were taking
b. Cast more buffs after the first round's prayer, which would only increase the chance to hit and the damage slightly (and it's not like I could cast a bless weapon on their weapons while they were swinging them, and where I'd have to be well within the demon's 10 foot reach for their AoO, that they got multiples of from their own feats)
or c. Continue to offensively channel, and make the bad guys take more damage each than the two persons tanking were doing, and hopefully the tankers would stay up.

The final result was the demons finally working their way past the tankers to go after the cleric at about round 6, who ironically had the best armor class due to a combination of items that the warriors couldn't or wouldn't wear. The cleric continued to not fight, just defend, finally able to channel to heal every other attack so that the other two could flank the last two demons. Still, the death shot for 4 of the 5 demons was not from a weapon, but a channel, and that feat spent on "extra channel" that the rest of the party moaned about as wasteful when I created the character at level 1, was very appreciated by them at level 9 - as I had one channel left when the last demon fell, and everyone was below 20 HP.

Simply, Healing has its place, Buffing has its place, and a properly run game shouldn't have one or the other dominating unless circumstances of the encounters dictate. A wisely played cleric has to weigh the following....

* If you're initiating the fight, you should never have to buff DURING combat, except for special circumstances (like a necromancer pulling a non-corporeal undead out on you midway through the fight, and having to fire off a ghostbane dirge so that someone can engage it).
* If your opponent attacks first but you know they're coming, you have that sticky situation where you don't want to buff too soon and waste the buffs, or too late and not get them off (and, likely, make the casters an obvious target - after all, if you have line of sight to the party for buffs, and the party LOS to the enemy, most times the enemy can see you too). You'll probably start as the sides close, but then have to weigh benefits vs. drawbacks once the sides start doing damage to each other.
* If you're attacked by a weaker force without time to prepare, that's when you're probably going to buff during combat. Healing won't matter.
* Being attacked by a stronger force without prep time, that's when healing might take priority - as buffs mean nothing without being conscious to use them.
* Lastly, sometimes the nature of the enemy forces your hand. Undead, outsiders, and other creatures with resistances might neutralize your conventional melee/missile/spell damage output, and you are left with channel for damage as your party's best hope for survival, even if it means that the rest of the party has to forgo healing AND buffs. And, if you know you're going to definitely run into this situation, you might want to consider bringing along a second divine spellcaster so that one of you can channel for damage, one channel for healing, and cut any buff times in half by each of you casting a different buff as you go in.

Other than the 2nd level spell that acts as a bless, then a cure light when it is ended, and the 5th level spell that heals 5D8 and can bring someone back from the dead that died the round before, I can't remember the last time I used a regular or spontaneously-cast heal-for-HP-only spell in combat as a cleric. Healing other than channels end up being post-combat use only (unlike the days of the TSR games and memorized cures for clerics).

Here's a question that's been bothering me for quite some time....

The Scimitar has been, back to the days of Pathfinder's 1970s ancestors, one of the more popular weapons.

The Scimitar is the Favored Weapon for the religion of Sarenrae, which is one of the most common religions (at least in terms of play, if not canon) in the Pathfinder settings.

It is similarly one of the most popular weapons for Druids.

So, WHY isn't it on the random weapon determination table of the UEG? Even the table errata below (from earlier in this thread) skips it...

66 sai
67 sap
68-69 scythe
70-73 shortbow
74-75 shortspear
76-80 shortsword
81 shuriken
82 sickle
83–84 sling

Seriously? Sai, saps, and shuriken are more common than a Scimitar? It should be at least as common as the sling, if not one of the 3 "short" weapons. ESPECIALLY on a table meant for generating magical treasure - or do druids and the Church of Sarenrae eschew the use of magical weapons?

I know you can stick it in with the result of "other" items, but most GMs I know tend to "feed the warrior types" with that kind of result, leaving the divine spellcasters out to dry.

(Rant mode off)

Well, the module (World's largest Dungeon) is chock full of "Unholy" as an ARMOR property. All of the undead were wearing it, and there's a lot more of it as loot in section C. As an Armor property, it would be pretty much useless unless accidentally donned by a good person, unless you had a Good monk punching/kicking/grappling the armor, and ruled they were taking the 2D6 from touching it on successful attacks. I'd rather have it as something more than simply a "you can't wear that" window dressing property. By some chance was Unholy a 3.0 property that got made into weapon only in 3.5?

In all, the real problem is dealing with the source material - after all, that adventure actually has a full page encouraging the GM to _cheat_ (and listed almost 20 ways) to make life harder on the PCs. It was also poorly edited (room numbers and descriptions off, a 1E/2E only item in a 3E module, etc.). I'm almost having to put as much energy into converting it as I would to have just taken the maps and fleshed it out with new stuff from scratch.

The original encounter was for 4 CR3, but I'd raised it to 6 monsters because of their track record. What I didn't take into account was the synergy of ALL the environmental conditions/bonuses/penalties listed, until we were into it.

The party in the past has treated 4 CR3s as a cakewalk (in fact, 4 of them had killed a random encounter with 4 dire wolves in 5 rounds an hour earlier, before the 5th level fighter even showed up), from their rather adept skills at min-maxing (one player even has a barbarian1/monk4, from my co-GM allowing him to take the Urban Barbarian & Martial Artist archtypes to bypass the alignment restrictions). And to beat it all, the closest thing to an arcane spellcaster in the lot would either be a 3rd level bard, or the cleric's Fire domain spells (that he never even got a chance to use from line of sight and the fact that the monsters focused on the cleric once they saw there was a cleric (the cleric was stuck doing channels for healing most of the fight, and never had LOS to channel for damage against more than two at a time - one of which was in the cleric's face doing full attacks.
HALF the party even took down an EL 10 once (and when no one was above level 5), by a combination of luck, skill, and ignorance (their attack should have ended in defeat, and I was fully prepared to have to replace half the party the next game session - but they got really lucky).

I'm currently running a World's Largest Dungeon campaign in Pathfinder, making the necessary adaptations along the way from D20.

I've ran into a few issues (considering the bugs in the module, it's not unexpected - they even managed to even put an item from 2E that didn't make it into 3E into the module):

1. There's a lot of armor showing up with "Unholy" as a property. What should I convert it to?
Dastard? Does damage if touched like an unholy weapon? OR, something else?

Now, the hard part. Are there any guidelines for adjusting the effective CR for an encounter due to environmental conditions and other modifiers?

Here's the issue where this came up.

Party is 4 level 5s (2 5s, a 1/4 and a 2/3) of melee types, and a level 7 cleric.

Foes are CR 3; 6 Ghouls with 2 levels of Antipaladin, created by a curse, so they aren't standard ghouls per se, but aren't quite ghasts either.

But, they have the following innate:
All normal Ghoul properties (including turn/channel resistance), PLUS can effect Elves as ghasts would.
Spell Resistance 14
Feats: Multiattack (so they can 5-foot and use sword/claw/bite routine), Weapon Focus (LS)
Each has an Unholy Longsword +1 (plus the undefined "unholy" chainmail +1), meaning that the typical hit on a good party member will take them down 30-50% of their hit points.
Additional natural armor bonuses to raise their AC to 23, and flat-footed AC to 20.
Skills and stats give them a stealth +9.
While still 4 HD, the original creatures were written up as 4D12 HP.

In addition, the ROOM they are in has the following modifiers
* Area inflicts a -5 penalty to all PC Will saves
* Area has a base DC 14 Fear check when entered, or be Shaken for 1D4+1 rounds - that effectively becomes DC 19, with the will save penalty above.
* Two separate, cumulative, modifiers that give them an additional +10 channel resistance, and a 3rd that prevents use of Turning. Even the 7th level cleric with a +2 Feat bonus to Channel DC only does full damage from a channel if the creature rolls a 3 or less on its save.
* Additional bonuses to Stealth that give the monsters effectively +17 to stealth even with their armor penalties
* Terrain prevents characters (but not the monsters) from using 5-foot step, and requiring a DC 16 dex check to move more than half movement.
* Characters are at -10 to Perception checks
* Characters treat all ranged attacks as if target is Concealed
* Characters take 1 point of negative energy damage every 10 rounds

After the party BARELY survived this encounter, I'm now at a loss to determine the XP value of the encounter, because of all the buffs the module writer gave them - CR 3 is definitely too low.

In my days as a 1E & 2E AD&D DM, I could have used the tables from those books to modify the XP values, but for the later incarnations of D&D and PF, I haven't been able to find any equivalent.

So, what would you suggest I raise the CR to - or what kind of blanket XP bonus would you suggest?