Bill Faulkner's page

Anyone?

It's really very easy.

Grand total: 3400, for a +1 Adaptive Comp Longbow.

1) it isn't really clear, channel energy talks about creatures, selective channeling talks about targets. Its a GM call, but if channel energy heals them, the selective channeling could exclude them.

2) This is a big area of confusion, but its really pretty simple, if you target a square, you only EVER deal splash damage. To deal full damage, one must target the creature (in this case the swarm) and you deal full damage ONLY if you hit them (using their touch AC). Any miss, will scatter and deal only splash damage. If you do manage to hit a swarm with a splash weapon, the swarm does take 50% additional damage, but no extra damage for splash. Only other creatures adjacent to the target square of the swam take splash damage. The other squares the swarm occupies are considered part of the same "creature", hence no additional splash damage.

Now for my personal rant versus swarms, their touch AC is generally equal to their regular AC in most cases, and it can be relatively high, primarily due to the adjustment in AC due to size. But if I'm throwing a grenade-like weapons, into a large mass, they shouldn't get their size adjustment to AC. But that isn't RAW and it's why you see so many variations about how GMs handle swarms.

If a PC is stuck and can't make either challenge, be creative and allow them to try something different after spinning their wheels for a turn. The game is pointless if the players walk away from the table frustrated and feeling cheated.

What Doug said is very important. When I played Midnight Mauler (GM'd by Doug, BTW), I was rather fustrated by the lack of progress my Dwarven Cleric could make. -2 for being slow, plus armor check penalty, plus cleric skills don't make for good chase numbers. I know that the PFS requires rather rigid rules following (and justifyably so), but having just 2 possible checks per card is too limiting for many characters. It requires a GM willing to try and make it fun for all.

No one has mentioned the Pathfinder changes to incorperal creatures. No longer, when attacking with magic weapons, is there a 50% miss chance, rather, the incorperal creature takes half damage. Bet most people don't know that.

And one I just found, if one does use a Ghost Touch weapon (which negates the half damage), you CAN crit / sneak attack an incorperal creature.

We are currently playing Kingmaker and we all have mounts (all war trained now). And they help with the exploration and such, but there are times when mounts come at a disadvantage. Want to hide, what are you doing with your horse. Want to ride down bandits, well horses have a base AC of 11, so easy pickings.

BTW, our last combat encounter was against 12 bandits and it started out at nearly 1000 feet (180 squares to be precise). We were losing essentially a mount a round once we got within about 500 feet. Now, granted they weren't hurting us, but it took time and resources to not loose our mounts.

It is a bit of a different experience than the standard city adventure / dungeon crawl though.

A few hints - there is very little advantage (and with most of the disadvantages) if there is only one or two mounted PCs. For best effect, mount everyone up. Two, get war trained mounts ASAP - otherwise the horses just scatter during combat. Three go through the mounted combat rules and then read WOTCs Rules of the Game that explain Mounted Combat for 3.5 (which is virtually identical to Pathfinder, so they should apply). Four, not everyone needs to have Mounted feats or even the Ride skill - they can help one to be much more effective in mounted combat, but not everyone needs that. Finally, invest in some barding and heavy war horses when you can and don't get too attached to your mounts - they will take damage and can easily die.

If you read the magic section about rays, it talks about how these are aimed as if you were using a ranged weapon. So, since you attack with these spells as if they were ranged weapons, you get benefits of using ranged weapon feats. You can also get Weapon Focus (Ray) as well.

For the most part, I like the new download organization, BUT ... it really doesn't work well with the iPad. I used to be able to navigate using GoodReader and download a file directly to my iPad. Now all I get is the script customization file. I did eventually get one of the files directly down (I think via the main web-browser, which eventually allowed me to download the file to GoodReader, but I'm still not certain).

I'd like to see this aspect of things improved (or tell me what I'm doing wrong).

Thanks
Bill Faulkner

I have uploaded the Pathfinder Character sheets to my public iDisk folder, so anybody can download them from there - the URL is http://public.me.com/wdf.

The following files are available in the Pathfinder directory:

• Path_CS(Mac).numbers is the iWork '09 version of the spreadsheet
  
• Pathfinder CS(iPad).numbers is the iPad version
  
• Mkhai 4th.pdf is my 4th level PFS monk, exported from my iPad as a PDF to demonstrate what things look like when you want to export a file to be printed. It also provides an easy method for those wanting to see what it looks like.

Feel free to download them and use them as you wish.

I would also like to extend my thanks to Doug - Played 3 slots of PFS, Doug GM'd two of them and all 3 games were very enjoyable. Further, all my slots were done with generic tokens (I came to Origins primarily to play Arcanis) and Doug was very accommodating to those of us who didn't have "real" tickets.

Thanks Doug

If anybody is interested, I have a preliminary Pathfinder Character sheet one can use on your iPad (if you have one). It uses the iPad version of Numbers, so that is a requirement ($9.99 from the app store).

My character sheet is free for anybody to use, modify, whatever.

If you are interested, drop me an email at PathfinderCSRequest (at) me (dot) com and I will email you a copy. Please be patient, it may take several days for me to respond. You should be able to read the attachment directly on your iPad.

Bill Faulkner

I don't have Numbers but would get it if there is a good character utility for it.

If anyone is interested in my Pathfinder character sheet using Numbers for the iPad, please email me at PathfinderCSRequest (at) me (dot) com and I will email you the spreadsheet.

If I get overwhelmed, I will look into alternative distribution means.

Bill Faulkner

Just wanted to let you guys know that the IAnnotatePDF app is fantastic for managing character sheets. ... Now all we need is a high quality dice rolling app, and we'd be all set!

I've been working on a Numbers character sheet for Pathfinder, and while I haven't used it in a game yet (too much time GMing), I do plan on using it. It does require that you purchase Numbers for the iPad ($9.99), so its not ideal for everyone. If people are interested, please reply and I'll arrange something to get it distributed.

As for die rolling apps, there are several (primarily for the iPhone, but they'll work on the iPad), but I don't care - I need those physical dice baby!

My group has just started running Curse of the Crimson Throne, and I've got a couple problems with it. Firstly, it refers to the dnd 3.5 monster manual for stuff, etc, which made me realize it's not on the Pathfinder system. Is there a conversion list or errata released for it, and if so, can I get a link?

Secondly, #7, the first one, never says about what level the characters should be at any of the various points in the campaign. Is there an errata or something similar that says that by point X characters should be level Y?

To answer the 2nd question first, most APs are designed with Ch 1 for CL 1-3, Ch2 for CL 4-6, Ch3 for CL 7-9, etc. There's some room for fudging, but that's approximate, based upon the ELs for each chapter.

I've found for CoCT (which I'm running using PFRPG) that the fast track for XP is working pretty well, since it most closely matches the 3.5 XP track.

As for the first question, you have a few options:
A) Use the 3.5 stats as presented, doing skill and CMB conversions on the fly.
B) Do your own conversions - this works fine at the lower levels, but is a bit more work as you proceed.
C) Use conversions others have done. The CoCT message boards here have some conversions. Here is a link for conversion of Chapter 2, 7 Days to the Grave . It doesn't seem like anybody has done one for the first chapter, Edge of Anarchy, but its pretty easy to do with option A or B.

Also, where it says to look at the MM, then simply use the stats from the Pathfinder Bestiary.

Hopes this helps. I've just completed Chapter 2 and we are having a great time with this AP.

Well, I just installed 10.6.2 and it did NOT fix the problems with the missing A's. That is rather disappointing.