Biggus's page

I recently found a pair of dice I bought many years ago, two d6s, one for rolling critical hits and the other critical misses. The crit hit dice is still intact, its faces are max damage/ double damage/ triple damage/ sever limb/ stun/ death.

The crit miss dice has faded into illegibility, however. The only faces clearly visible now are break weapon/ drop weapon. I'm pretty sure two of the others were hit self/ hit ally, but I can't remember what the other two were. I think one *might* have been fall over.

Did anyone else have one of these? If so, do you still have it, or can you recall what it said? Google doesn't seem to know anything about them.

The crit hit dice was brown and the crit miss dice red in case it helps.

Have you guys heard about what happened in Portugal? Essentially, in 2001 they decriminalised possession of all drugs, and since then their use has stabilised or actually decreased. Drug deaths are down, too. Makes it kind of hard to sustain the "prohibition protects people" theory...

link

Gnomes: under Keen Senses they have the Elf entry instead of their own.

Considering Priapus, I'm surprised there isn't a goddess of boobies.

Well, some ancient goddesses were portrayed with dozens of breasts (Artemis was one).

The king of all mammoths (and various other 'animal kings,' like the old Cat Lord from the 1st edition MM2).

The Cat Lord also appeared in the 3E Epic Level Handbook.

Loving this thread BTW

Strength 14
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 12
Dexterity 9
Constitution 15
Charisma 13

Fighter

In my case the question should be what haven't I "borrowed" Character concepts from.

Ditto. My excuse is, I'm a DM with a whole homebrew world to fill. My favourite so far is a group of adventurers based on the A-team.

I'm just glad the (film-uncredited) writer had the chops to say something along the lines of, "My work was a comic book. It was not a 'novel,' and it was certainly not a movie script."

Personally, for some reason I'm starting to find "graphic novel" to be more geek-pretentious than Paul Giamatti's character in Sideways.

To me, loosely speaking it's just the plural of "comic" - individual issues are comics, several bound together in book form are a graphic novel. I've also heard it used to differentiate comic-book stories like Watchmen which have a fixed length and hence a beginning, middle and end like a typical novel from those like Spider-man which continue indefinitely and have more in common structurally with a soap opera.

But the real reason I used "GN" instead of "comic" is that I'm a slow typist and it's shorter ;)

Azhagal, I agree with both you and Eric. To me, the movie shows what I (and many others) suspected all along; that the GN is unfilmable, at least as a single movie. The only way I see it really being done justice is if someone gives Terry Gilliam the money to make it into a big-budget TV series like he wanted to. For example, the scenes with Rorschach and Dr Long need a whole episode to themselves, like they get in the GN.

However, that said, I've seen it twice now and I still think it does an astonishingly good job of translating it considered that it's not just a single movie, it's a single Hollywood movie. From what I've read, Zack Snyder fought tooth and nail to keep as much in as he did.

Apparently, there's going to be a director's cut with 30 minutes of extra footage, and a super-extended-director's-cut with that and the Black Freighter stuff (the actual story, plus the scenes which take you back and forth between that and the main story) as well, which should come out at about three and a half hours. That's the one I'm waiting for.

PS I didn't think the Comedian was that much different to the GN. In fact, I thought after Rorschach he was probably the best of the lot.

Here is the thread with Charles Evans' beta index. If you scroll down a few posts Fray also did a formatted version.

And here is the thread where Vic Wertz confirmed there'd be one in the final book.

I recently saw the follow-up Zeitgeist: Addendum, and I thought it was a lot more impressive than the first one. Got a bit flaky for a bit towards the end when talking about symbiosis (I actually agreed with what they were saying, but thought they could have said it a lot better) but seemed generally well-researched and well thought-out. Love that dude Jacques Fresco!

So, anyone else seen it?

Check a bit more carefully. I know that somewhere in the DMG it specifies that they are commoner/expert/nobel normally. It does say that they can have a PC class isntead, but at lower level than they would otherwise be.

The only place I've seen anything like that is in the Epic Level Handbook, which has a section on "exceptional followers" in the Epic Leadership section, detailing follower level adjustments for adept/aristocrat, PC class and prestige class followers. But of course the ELH is using 3.0 rules on Leadership.

If this is in the 3.5 DMG, I can't find it, and I've just re-checked. What page is it on, please?

Yeah, all I see is, "Followers are similar to cohorts, except they’re generally low-level NPCs."

That tells me (a) no PC classes except maybe in very rare cases, and (b) those cases don't seem to be spelled out, making it strictly a DM call.

Although I can see some people might not agree, this seems like the most sensible interpretation to me.

Biggus wrote:

Here's a thread from the WotC archive which lists LOTS of uses for followers.

Thanks for the link! Even after sorting through the illegal and/or absurd stuff (6th level characters with 6th level cohorts, followers with PC classes, halflings who live in backpacks, etc.) there are still some interesting ideas there.

Yeah, there's plenty of absurd stuff in there, but I think there's a fair few useful ones as well.

On "6th level characters with 6th level cohorts", are you referring to the "Russian doll" bit at the end? If so, they're actually talking about 6th-level characters with 6th-level followers, which while certainly against the spirit of the rules is not against the letter of them AFAIK.

Also, are you saying that followers with PC classes are illegal or just absurd? If illegal, where does it say so?

I'm kinda curious because I thought both of these things were illegal myself, but when I checked the DMG I couldn't find anything specifically banning them. I know in 3.0 followers could only be Commoners, Experts or Warriors, but all it seems to say in 3.5 is that "they're generally low level NPCs".

EDIT: just noticed the two posts above. Apparently PC-classed followers are legal in 3.5. Unless you can tell me different...?

Here's a thread from the WotC archive which lists LOTS of uses for followers.

I was home in New Orleans for the weekened and my brother and I saw the flick. I enjoyed it, and thought that Jackie Earle Haley was brilliant as Rorschach. And Malin Ackerman.......Yowza.

** spoiler omitted **

I read somewhere that Alan Moore hates film adaptations of his works and he boycotted the film? It this true?

Yup. The early films based on his work were all terrible (have you seen League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for God's sake?) and after two or three of those he had a major tantrum and declared that (1) he wanted his name taken off all future adaptations (2) he was refusing all money from said adaptations, giving all the royalties to the artists instead.

Which in my opinion is a shame, because the last two (V for Vendetta and Watchmen) have seemed to me a lot truer to the source material than any of the previous ones.

ericthecleric

:-)

My first Warhammer FRP character was Bob the Hobbit.

Riding Tony the Pony.

I've just finished running a solo campaign which was great fun, but it's a lot different from group D&D. Better in some ways I would say, but definitely worse in others.

My personal ideal group size is 3 or 4 players, because I find with any more it gets slow & people's attention starts to wander. Also, with a large group it's hard to give each character a chance to shine. Having said that, I've mostly DM'd for inexperienced players, and to be fair, I'm not exactly a grandmaster DM myself. I could see that with more experience a larger group could work.

I did DM for groups of 6-8 a few times, but it never worked very well. I'd say 5-6 is my preferred upper limit at the moment.

How about "sub-famous", as in "famous within a subculture"? There are lots of people who, if you know anything about the subject in question, you're guaranteed to have heard of, but most people who aren't into it haven't.

People like Gary Gygax actually go further than this and are "sub-legendary" - within their subculture, they are revered almost as a god, but outside it, still not many people have heard of them.

A Druid and his Awakened bear friend walk into a bar. The bear goes up to the bar and says "Two pints of ale and............................................................some pork scratchings please." The barman says "OK, but why the big paws?"

Daniel Moyer wrote:

The ending was the one part of the movie I REALLY liked. I thought it was an exceptional way to present an arch-villain.

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

Well...I got the feeling that it just might be undone, but probably not. After all, there's lots of stuff in the crank file, it's at least November and quite likely December by the time of the final scene, and in #10, Seymour's boss says "Sling it on the crank file. New year, we'll burn that garbage heap and start over.". So there's quite a high chance Rorschach's journal was never discovered.

Two half-Orcs, sat on the ground.

One fell off.

Six Dwarves in a bath, feeling Happy.

So he got out.

A Bodak walks into a bar.

The barman says "why the long face?".

One serious flaw with the new ending.

** spoiler omitted **

Saw it last night. Surprisingly good (I'm a longtime fan of the comic), but I still say the comic is unfilmable. I still think Terry Gilliam's idea to do it as a 12-part TV series is the only way to really do it justice. However, I have to say that ZS's version is a LOT closer to doing that than I expected any Hollywood adaptation would ever be.

As for the quality of the movie as a movie, I think Taliesin hit the nail on the head:

Frame perfect. Awesome work by Snyder. He still has a long way to go as a director. This is his third film. If he can start to get his movies to cohere, rather than be montages of awesome moments, he will be a director of note.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

I dont use Adepts in my game

Fair enough.

And if you look at the 20th level commoner its kinda a joke a Citizen as in Rome the greatest honor was to be one and in Star Ship trooper everyone wanted to be a citizen

I see, that kind of makes sense; in ancient Rome an outsider had to complete 20 years military service to achieve Citizenship. So if you're going to call them anything, I guess it should be that :)

I have to say it picked up in 5 and 6.

Why is BBC doing such short series? Demons was good as well but only 5 hour eps.

They really need to do more eps.

Six episodes is the average length for a British TV series (or it always was, anyway; I haven't watched much TV recently). As Zombieneighbours said, budget is probably part of the reason, but I think it's also because British TV series are usually written by just one or two people, whereas US series are often written by committees and/or by different people each episode. So an individual writer probably writes about the same number of episodes per year on average.

I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions to this, but I think it's generally true.

Well there is the limit that a weapon/ armour/ shield's effective bonus (enhancement bonus plus special ability bonus equivalents) can't exceed +10 (DMG p.217/221, PF Beta p.340/344). Abilities which don't have their price expressed as an enhancement bonus equivalent can be added without limit, AFAIK.

Wow dude, you're not joking about having spent a while on this. I'm going to use some of these myself I think.

I notice you haven't done the Adept. Couldn't you think of any suitable names, or did you deliberately leave it out?

I think that the vast majority of these are very good. I still stand by my comments on the other thread about 5th-level Apprentices and 20th-level Commoners though.

To the OP: could it have been Reckless Offensive? It's a 3.0E feat from Races of Faerun, p.167. It gives +2 attack in exchange for -4AC.

For a craft-based Expert;

1-5 Apprentice X
6-10 Journeyman
11-15 Adept
16-20 Master X

Replace X with 'Tailor' or 'Weaponsmith' or 'Chirurgeon' or 'Chef' or whatever.

I originally started with "Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, Grand Master" but then I realised

Likewise, I started with "Student, Graduate, Professor, Loremaster" for the Scholar-type, then realised that would mean that hardly anyone would ever actually graduate.

However, I do think "Adept" would be a good name for levels 1-5 of the craftsman-Expert.

Some thoughts on NPC classes:

Commoner & Warrior: It doesn't really make sense to me to go right up to level 20 for these two. If they're that good, surely they'd have managed to get levels in a better class before then? I'd probably just call it

Commoner
1-5: Worker
6-10: Foreman

Warrior
1-5: Soldier
6-10: Veteran

Aristocrat: I don't think you can give general titles for Aristocrats, as they'll all have their own titles depending on what type of hierarchy they're part of. Aristocrat can include Barons & Kings (hereditary nobility), Knights & Emperors (non-hereditary nobility), Mayors & Senators (elected officials) and Governors & Chancellors (appointed officals), so I don't see how one set of titles could encompass them all, unless it was something ridiculously general like Minor Leader/ Major Leader/ Great Leader/ Supreme Leader.

Expert: This could work, but I think you'd need two lists, one for scholar-types and one for craftsmen-types. Eg;

1-5: Graduate/ Craftsman
6-10: Scholar/ Artisan
11-15: Authority/ Master Craftsman
16-20: Loremaster/ Grand Master or Paragon

Adept: Not noted for having hierarchies. The best I could do was:

1-5: Medicine Man/ Woman
6-10: Witchdoctor
11-15: Shaman/ Shamanka
16-20: Spirit Master

Although I did find the rather lovely words Isangoma, Mundunugu and Wangateur wihch apparently all mean "Shaman", so possibly you could use those.

For Barbarian, how about:

1-5: Savage
6-10: Bloodrager
11-15: Rampager
16-20: Incandescent (or possibly something like Wrath Avatar)

I tried to do something similar a while back, and I found that for classes like Fighter, Wizard and Cleric which often have established hierarchies it's easy, you have dozens of titles to choose from. But with those like Barbarian and Rogue who don't, you have to get creative :)

Some names I like which you might find useful:

Warriors
Low level: Brother Blade - an old phrase meaning "fellow soldier" (the sailor's equivalent was "Brother Salt")
High level: Nonpareil - an old word meaning "without equal", given as a title of respect to warriors long unbeaten

Religious
You really have an embarrassment of riches here. Some not mentioned so far:
Low level: Novice, Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Subdeacon, Archdeacon
Mid level: Monsignor, Dean, Archpriest, Abbot
High level: Prelate, Primate, Pontiff, Pontifex (Maximus), Archprelate, Archimandrite, Hierarch
and that's just from the Christian churches. Personally, I tend to vary the titles depending on the cultural "feel" of the religion.

Arcane
I often borrow, from the Golden Dawn titles, which are (in ascending order):
Neophyte, Zelator, Theoricus, Practicus, Philosophus, Adeptus Minor, Adeptus Major, Adeptus Exemptus, Magister Templi, Magus, Ipsissimus

Specific suggestions

Knight: Knight Champion or Knight Protector seems more evocative than Master Knight to me.

Marshal: given that (1) Marshal is an explicitly military class (2) it's common for those chosen to command to be given officer rank straight after basic training (3) Marshal is specifically a leadership class, I'd go with something like
1-5: Lieutenant
6-10: Captain
11-15: General
16-20: Field Marshal

OK, that's all for now. Hope this helps!

Sorry, I don't trust Wikipedia because of the fact that it is reader or contributor written. It is not in any way, shape or form a kind of encyclopedia. Besides, I never mentioned the shape of the sword so your first two references are kind of irrelevant.

I have heard of the Jabber-wacky, but I have also seen "Clash of the Titans" to know that they mention and show it's godly sharpness. I also remember reading about it from my youth. The source where I read it is buried in the dusty areas of my memory. I apologize for that.

While I think your mistrust of Wikipedia is somewhat excessive (I think if you look at the evidence, eg independent tests, you'll find it's not much less accurate than "expert-written" encyclopedias) even if it's justified, Vorpal is still clearly Lewis Carroll's invention. I just checked Chambers English Dictionary (print edition) and Webster's New Millenium Dictionary (via Dictionary.com) and they both attribute it to him. It's possible the makers of the film Clash of the Titans borrowed the word.

Anyway, as Mortagon says, the origin doesn't really matter in a D&D context. I'd be happy with any of the following;

1) Allow a save
2) Make it a minor artifact
3) Leave it as it is

However, I would point out that if Paizo is planning to do an epic book, option 3 becomes less attractive. Dual wielding a pair of Vorpal swords and getting 10 or more attacks per round can make those natural 20's come rather regularly. And when that same character gets a Dancing Vorpal sword as well...

Conceptually:

For me, the great thing about epic is options; you can create characters who can do anything, have them go anywhere and face any kind of challenge. Others have mentioned various ways you can take it, like founding kingdoms/religions/guilds etc, plane-hopping adventures, or the path to divine ascension. I'd like to see advice for running all of these and more. In fact, I'd want a substantial section of the book to be ideas and advice on how to actually run an epic game and make it work. Both conceptually and mechanically, epic is bigger and more complex than core, so lots of "tips from the experts" would be invaluable.

Mechanically:

What I want from epic mechanics in a word: consistency. I want epic levels to feel like a natural continuation of core levels, not like a completely different system. This means that I want actual class features rather than just bonus feats, and an epic magic system which bears some resemblance to the normal one (I never did understand the abandoning of spell levels for Spellcraft DCs).

The other area where I want consistency is with the deific rules (if Paizo plans to redo those too; here's hoping...). Doing the ELH and D&DGs as seperate systems made no sense to me. Why would you need rules for deities anyway except for epic-level characters to interact with? Also, the seperate rules made the deity stats in D&DGs a joke - eg Boccob, supreme god of magic, can't cast epic spells...

The problem as I see it is that WotC tried to do an unlimited-levels system, and so since obviously they couldn't create infinite epic spells or class features they had to use a toolkit approach to character and spell building. I'd rather have limited levels and interesting new stuff that's reasonably balanced, personally. I particularly like the idea of a "soft cap" on levels suggested on another thread where you give specific class features up to a certain level, and then guidelines for advancement thereafter.

As to what the level cap should be, I think that would depend on whether Paizo were doing deity stats or not. If not, probably 40 or 50 should be high enough, as AFAIK very few people play past this level. If so, it'd probably need to go up to about level 70-80 to accomodate the greater gods.

I've just read version 1.10.

Good: The explanatory text is definitely clearer now.

Bad(?): The additional class costs don't seem to correspond to the total class costs in the table, or to the example in the prestige classes section.

I'm not sure about the level spread, but 18/19/20 seems about right to me.

Thanks Roman, good work as usual! I'm slightly confused as to how it work, however...do you add up the general level points you've got up to that level, then compare it to your class-specific level points requirement to see if you go up a level?

If so, it seems to me that the Rogue would only be level 18 when the Fighter was level 20 (36 more level points required for level 20, -5 from level 1 is 31 more points, and level 20 requires 30 level points, so they'd be 1 short. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?).

As to what classes should go in which categories, I'd probably swap Barbarian and Bard, but leave the others as they are. This thread from the old WotC site seems to generally agree with your power ratings, as least as far as 3.5 is concerned.

A few years ago (before I moved out here to Seattle), I was celebrating New Year's by party hopping (No, this isn't a drunk driving story).

Each new party brought a new group of friends and another round of drinking, so by the fourth or fifth party (I'd lost count) at about 2am, I had already drank myself well past any reasonable stopping point. I was very drunk.

At this party I was chatting with an acquaintance whom I knew as a pill-popper and a frequent drug user. I am not. In any fashion. Even in my wild youth, I limited myself almost completely to alcohol. I am not judgmental toward those who indulge in the past time, but it isn't something I ever got into.

So I still, to this very day, have no idea what I was thinking when this guy pulled a small white pill out of his pocket, offered it to me, and I just took it. Just popped into my mouth, swallowed and continued with my conversation.

No idea what it was (although I have a couple of theories). I also am not clear on how I made it home that night. But I did. My memories of the night go from shortly after the pill to waking up at home, in bed, fully dressed. Many items in my room were moved around, so I know that I was ambulatory, but the time is simply deleted from my memory. I have never blacked out from drinking before or since.

I am so very lucky that I woke up that morning. So lucky. That is, without a doubt, the single stupidest thing I have ever done. I am SO lucky to be alive.

Uh, I'm not saying it was a good idea, but...you do know that alcohol is at least 100 times more likely to kill you than the vast majority of commonly-used illegal drugs, don't you?

NB I am not advocating illegal drug use. I am simply pointing out that some legal drugs are far more dangerous than most illegal ones.

Related gripe:

-People who "vote" for rules change suggestions, as if this game will be designed by a democratic vote, with rules text decided by simple majority.

-Matt

I don't think anyone thinks it will be "decided by simple majority".

However, I do think that if a clear majority prefer one rule over the other, that will influence the game designers' choices. Not determine, but influence.

If you don't think that, why bother posting here at all?

I agree that it doesn't make sense for generalist Wizards to outshine specialists in their chosen schools. However, I would question the +2DC bonus on a more fundamental level; is it a good idea to give 20th-level Wizards a boost to their save DCs at all? PF has nerfed the save-or-die spells, but there are still a few high-level save-or-suck spells out there (Dominate Person and Insanity come to mind). A Wizard can already get his save DCs for 9th-level spells up to 31 by level 20 without inherent bonuses, or 34 with inherent bonuses. The +2 brings that up to 33 or 36. Anyone who doesn't have the relevant good save (or a very high ability score) doesn't have much chance.

So I don't think it should be given to anybody unless PF intends to

1) Nerf the save-or-suck spells, or at least the higher-level ones

and/or

2) Provide additional ways for characters to boost their saves (such as adding/ improving feats).

If the bonus is to be given, I think it should be reduced to +1 save DCs, +2 caster level vs SR, and that the specialists should get the same for their chosen schools.

Yeah, Groundhog Day was 1993. As for my most-watched 80s movie;

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

It wasn't until the Peter Jackson LotR came out it got overtaken as my most-watched ever...

I don't think it's been mentioned yet, so Bubba Ho-Tep! Oh my god is this movie good. my second favorite after Blazing Saddles. My family finally got me the special edition last year for my birthday and it comes in the elvis jacket slipcase and everything. and what is there not to love about a retired elderly Elvis (played by Bruce Campbell!!! awesome!) teaming up with a black John F. Kennedy to take out a cowboy mummy? nothing is not to love about that, that's what!

Also, I managed to watch Pi, Primer, eXistenZ and death to smoochy over the weekend and can honestly say it was a weekend of awesome movies. they are also listed there in order of how awesome i found them.

And I was going to mention Buckaroo Banzai, but it appears someone managed to do that before me. anyone who hasn't watched this should.

Oh my god, I'd forgotten all about Bubba Ho-Tep. Kessukoofah is right, it's amazing, if you haven't seen it, do so immediately!

Pi is excellent too.

Michael Gear:

I'm a big RAW fan (as you might guess from the complete lack of certainty in my previous post...) and it was actually from him I first got the idea that hostile control of the money supply is a standard conspiracy motif. Have you read any of his other stuff?

What actually prompted me to write my original comments was several of my friends seeing Zeitgeist and seeming to accept it fairly uncritically. When I saw it, it seemed pretty convincing at first, but when they got to the "one world government" conclusion, it made me think of Illuminatus, and that made me wonder "how much of this stuff is true?". As I said in my first post, I did a little internet digging, and sure enough there were several websites (such as this one) which claimed, with apparent academic credibility and many references, that the history and current practices of the Federal Reserve are very different to those presented in Zeitgeist.

So since you Paizo guys seem like a pretty clued-up bunch, I thought I'd ask what you thought. And it appears I've struck gold! You actually checked out all the historical references? What did you find? I'm particularly intrigued about the North American Union already existing (and to what degree it actually merges the USA with Mexico and Canada), and whether the Federal Reserve makes interest off the dollar or whether it's virtually all rebated as professor Flaherty says.

Shelbrune88:

I too was somewhat put off by the tone, which seemed to me more like a propaganda film than a documentary.

Just want to add a real saying at doesn't make sense: Cheap at half the price.

[rant]Of course it would be cheap at half the price! I mean, it's half price. Compared to full price, that would be cheap. The only way this would be sensible is if the original value is way over the top, which is not how the saying is used. And even then, it would only be 'reasonable at half the price'. Now, 'cheap at TWICE the price' would make sense but...[/rant]

Ok. I'm calm now. And QC is a non-sequiter quote dreamfest.

(laughs) The only person I've ever heard say "cheap at half the price" was my grandad, I always thought he made it up (he was full of silly stuff like that, I still miss it). After years of hearing him say it, I saw an old TV advert (1920s - 1940s era IIRC) which advertised something as "cheap at twice the price", so I guess people reversed it to take the p!$$.

EDIT: A quick Googling has turned up that some people do use it to mean "expensive", which I think is what my grandad meant by it (if he meant anything and wasn't just being daft for the fun of it). Do the people who you know use it to mean "cheap"?

Suzaku wrote:

I think evil cleric should be added to +1d6 per two paladin levels as they register just as evil as outsiders and even more evil then undead.

This gave me an idea. What if the bonus smite damage applied to any creature that was based on the strength of the evil using the detect evil guidelines? So, faint or less evil, 1 damage/paladin level, for moderate evil, +1d6 damage/2 paladin levels, and for strong or overwhelming evil, +1d6 damage/paladin level. (or alternatively, 1 dam/paladin level for faint, 2 dam/paladin level for moderate, and 4 dam/paladin level for strong or more).

I too think this is a good idea.

To me it makes perfect sense to me that Liches and Demons, the very exemplars of evil, should be affected more by Smiting than, say, a common bandit.

Respectfully, YOU have chosen these to be the exemplars of evil. I have not. Is an imp or a skeleton really more evil than an ancient red dragon or a human who wants to destroy the entire world? Please don't pre-set what kind of evil I can be good at fighting.

As for demons (& other evil outsiders), I'd have to disagee. I didn't choose them as the exemplars of evil, it's the standard assumption of the D&D game (and of pretty much every fantasy story I've ever read or watched which features them). So to me it makes sense that smiting does more damage against them. Of course, if you're playing in a setting where there are no evil outsiders, or where a different creature type represents ultimate evil, you could always houserule a change to the type.

However, I can see undead are a lot more arguable, given that there are lots of other extremely evil creatures in the D&D game. Having read a lot of people commenting on this thread, I can also see from a gameplay point of view it's a bit of a bummer if your DM doesn't send many undead or outsiders against you.

So as a compromise, I'd suggest Smiting doing extra damage against evil outsiders and one other (evil) creature type, chosen by the player at first level.

Other stuff:

How about giving the Paladin Smite 2/day at first level? A lot of the complaints about Smite Evil seem to centre around it not having enough uses at lower levels, and this wouldn't make a big difference at high levels (increasing from 7/day to 8/day at level 19-20).

Making caster level = class level -3; I like this idea a lot. It seems about the right power level, and it makes sense both with Turning level being class level -3 and with spellcasting starting at level 4.

Just seen this, interested but not entirely convinced. Part 1 (about the origins of Christianity) I've read a fair bit about, and I think its conclusions are probably correct, although I think they make it appear more definite than it really is in places.

My feeling is that part 2 is probably at least partly correct (as the evidence that the Bush administration has lied repeatedly about the events of and following 9/11 is pretty overwhelming) but some of the specifics are a bit shaky.

Part 3 however I know a lot less about, and after an hour or two of internet research have predictably found lots of apparently intelligent and well-read people arguing both for and against it. I have to say, I'm a bit dubious. The "hostile interests control the money supply" and "one world government" things are classic conspiracy-theory motifs, with only the identity of the Secret Masters changing between versions. Which is not necessarily to say they aren't true, of course.

Anyone else seen it/ got any opinions?

In general, I think this is a definite improvement. As for specifics:

Rather than the 1d6 per two levels, how about just increasing then bonus damage from 1hp per level to 2hp per level? This should keep the game moving along faster.

I prefer this version, it's simpler and 1d6/ 2 levels seems a bit OTT to me. Also, as The Wraith points out, the extra damage dice wouldn't be multiplied on a critical hit, where a flat bonus would. I'd prefer a lower base damage which is multiplied on a crit than higher damage which isn't.

3. If smite is going to stay, PLEASE don't make it only truly effective against fiends and undead. It's tantamount to dictating what the paladin has to do with his career. Don't continue to trap paladins in the ghetto of demons and vampires. There are so many, many other iniquities in the world! I would much rather see something like a +1/+1 every four levels vs. evil.

I disagree with this. To me it makes perfect sense to me that Liches and Demons, the very exemplars of evil, should be affected more by Smiting than, say, a common bandit. However...

And as far as another posters concerns about limiting the enhanced smite to undead and evil outsiders, it would be simplicity itself to create a "Dragon Slayer" feat, for example, that uses the enhanced version of the smite against dragons to create specialized paladins. Which is actually pretty cool.

I do like this idea.

Smite: Good change mechanically, but I would get rid of the offensive bonus, since smite ought to be offensive thematically.

I assume Roman means "get rid of the defensive bonus" here. If so, I agree. To me Smite Evil should be an offensive power.

Other than that, I think the Paladin's caster level still needs addressing. Rather than a blanket increase, it could just be increased to class level against dispelling, as suggested by Selgard on this thread. At least that way their buffs wouldn't be a complete waste of time at higher levels.

Overall, I like the changes, especially to Smite Evil and Detect Evil.

It could be worse President Dan Quayle

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