Bison That Meows at the Wind's page

I was perusing the PRD today, and came up with a few questions about poison.

1) Using poison has often been used as an example of an evil act in previous editions (I believe this was one of the reasons that the assassin PrC had an evil alignment). Does this hold true in Pathfinder? I didn't see it described as such in the core rules. Is using poison still evil? Maybe only deadly poison use is evil, but drow poison and the like is neutral?

2) If it is the case that poison use is canonically evil (or even if it's only deadly poison that's evil), why does the poison spell not have the evil descriptor?

3) I'm confused about which types of poison stack with themselves. I understand the current rules of adding another dose to increase the DC by +2 and the duration by +50%. I'm confused that the rules seem to state that this is only possible when using ingested and inhaled poisons (not when using injury or contact poisons), and then immediately use an injury poison as an example of stackable doses. Here is the relevant section from the PRD:

Unlike other afflictions, multiple doses of the same poison stack. Poisons delivered by injury and contact cannot inflict more than one dose of poison at a time, but inhaled and ingested poisons can inflict multiple doses at once. Each additional dose extends the total duration of the poison (as noted under frequency) by half its total duration. In addition, each dose of poison increases the DC to resist the poison by +2. This increase is cumulative. Multiple doses do not alter the cure conditions of the poison, and meeting these conditions ends the affliction for all the doses. For example, a character is bit three times in the same round by a trio of Medium monstrous spiders, injecting him with three doses of Medium spider venom. The unfortunate character must make a DC 18 Fortitude save for the next 8 rounds. Fortunately, just one successful save cures the character of all three doses of the poison.

Can anyone clear these up for me? Thanks.

Hello Paizo boards, long time no see. I've been out of the PFRPG loop for a little while, and I am considering starting up a new game. My previous games have kind of fallen flat, due partly to my campaign-ADD, my pool of players, and my limited player options for previous campaigns.

So, I'm bringing in some new players from my FLGS, and I plan to run a game set in Ptolus (which will allow me to switch plots and themes if I get bored, because Ptolus has a bit of everything). To open up player options, I want to allow almost anything from PFRPG and D&D 3.5 (and of course anything from Ptolus). I will still reserve the right for a case by case review/veto (Oh, you found a third party book that lets you play a red dragon with only a +1 LA? Let me think about that...), but I'm not sure about how to balance things in general.

I know PFRPG classes/races are slightly ahead of most 3.5 classes/races, but I'm not sure what exactly I need to do to ensure that everyone is on a mostly level playing field.

Any advice?

Hey Paizonians, I'm looking for advice.

I've got a PC that's a couple years old (Compaq Presario SR5410F running Vista). This week, a friend is giving me her old external hard drive. What I'd like to do is use the hard drive to back up all my important files, and then reformat my PC back to factory settings to get a fresh start, and then transfer stuff back from the hard drive an an as-needed basis.

Now, I'm not ignorant when it comes to tech, but this is the first time that I will be backing up to an external drive and the first time I will be resetting a box, and the prospect of me doing something stupid and accidentally losing all my files has me worried.

So, do you have any tips, tricks, or advice for someone attempting this for the first time?

This situation came up last week in my game with an alchemist pc, and a recent thread on grab/constrict reminded me.

Question: if someone catches on fire, and then takes damage every round unless they spend actions to put themselves out, when do they start taking damage from being on fire? Do they take damage as soon as they catch fire, or do they start taking damage on their turn after they catch fire?

And on subsequent turns, do they take damage before or after getting the chance to extinguish themselves?

We ruled that the fire damage started the turn following being set alight, and that the bad guy got an opportunity to try to extinguish himself before he took the damage. This worked well for us, but after reading James Jacobs' ruling on grab/constrict (constrict damage happens immediately), I thought I'd check to see if maybe we were doing it incorrectly.

I'm going to be starting a new campaign soon, and was thinking of allowing my players the choice between a 20-point buy, or rolling (either 4d6 drop, or 2d6+6, haven't decided yet).

However, when parties roll for stats, there's always a disparity in the rolls, sometimes drastic, like when one PC has two 17s and nothing less than 10, and another has two 9s and his highest score is a 15.

So, how do you folks handle this problem? Let the dice fall where they may and deal with the consequences? Do you let low-rollers re-roll or add points? Some other solution?

Consider the following scenario:

A) You're at <1 HP. Your party's cleric rushes over to heal you, and pours a healing potion down your throat. Unbeknownst to you, however, the cleric has secretly been working for the enemy the whole time, and he's just given you a potion of inflict moderate wounds.

Alternatively:

B) You're at <1 HP. The BBEG rushes over to you, smiles wickedly, says "Here, drink this" and pours a vial of poison down your throat. Unbeknownst to you, however, the BBEG intends to keep you alive for his amusements, and he's just given you a potion of cure moderate wounds.

Now, the question is, when do you get to make the decision about giving up your saving throw? Before or after you know what the effect of the spell/potion is? If it's before, than you would likely give up your save in A and attempt a save in B. If you get to decide whether to save or not once you get the OOC knowledge about the effects, then you would attempt a save on A and likely give it up on B.

I imagine a compromise would be to have the player state whether they intend to save or not, and then allow a spellcraft check to determine the effects of the spell/potion as it hits them; failure means they go through with their planned save (or not), and success allows them to change their mind if they wish.

However, it'd still be nice to get a sense of what the official verdict is on how this rule was meant to be played.

Augh...I made the thread, but it double posted, so I deleted one of them. And now, there's only one thread, but the post is missing off it.

So, here's what I was saying:

I've been thinking about making a Meetup.com group for my gaming group at our FLGS. That way, we could schedule game nights and announce what games are going to be run, and we can have group members RSVP yes or no to each night. Also, Meetup notifies its users of nearby Meetups that fit their interests, so we might bring in some new players (or new customers for the store).

However, I realized when I went to sign up that Meetup charges people to run a group - between $12 and $19 per month. If you're a member, but don't run a group, it's free.

So, I'm trying to find a service that offers the same utility as Meetup (mainly scheduling and RSVPing, but the "advertising" aspect is nice too) but hopefully for free.

Hopefully my thread title doesn't attract flames like graboids to a jackhammer, but here goes.

I had an idea recently for a new Pathfinder campaign, that I want to spin as having an old-world, "pagan" feel. I want there to be less flashy high-fantasy-style magic, and more subtle, natural-world type stuff.

The main way I want to do this is by providing a reduced list of character options (only X races and Y classes being available to PCs). For one thing, I first got the idea for the campaign by thinking of what it would be like to have the witch as the archetypal arcane spellcaster instead of the wizard. For another, it's a lot easier to give a player a list of options s/he's already familiar with, rather than try to create new houserules.

So, I figured for races I would allow humans, half-elves, and half-orcs, with a little re-flavoring of the half-races to be more like variant humans (no green skinned half-orcs!) - I'll probably look at using some alternate racial traits to help diversify here.

For classes, I'm pretty intent on banning wizard, cleric, monk, sorcerer, and alchemist, as they don't really fit the flavor I'm looking for. Maybe the oracle as well, but I'm not as familiar with the oracle yet.

I'm definitely allowing the witch, because I want to experiment with the witch being the primary arcane spellcaster. I also plan to allow the barbarian, bard, druid, fighter, ranger, and rogue. Certain archetypes for these classes might be disallowed or encouraged, depending on how well they fit into the themes of the campaign.

I'm not sure about the cavalier, summoner, inquisitor, or paladin. I'm not very familiar yet with the first three, but the inquisitor might fit in with the "arcane magic is viewed as evil" subtheme (I assume that the inquisitor can work as a witch-hunter of sorts). For the paladin, I'm thinking of allowing the spell-less version presented in the APG. I think making my vision of the church very clear to players will be important for capturing the right feel of the "holy warrior/knight" classes.

The other thing I should mention is that I don't intend to take this game past 10th level (my games are usually in the 1st-6th level range), so I won't have to worry about super high level magic anyway.

I'm still in the brainstorming phase right now, so I welcome any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Since I know I've got a lot of fellow parents on here, I figured I'd post this in case you hadn't seen it yet.

News article is here. Summary - some formula might possibly be contaminated by a beetle, which should be mostly harmless, but might cause some gastrointestinal irritation due to your baby eating ground up insect parts. Gah.

You can go here to check to see if your formula is affected, but I've been trying to reach that website all morning with no luck - their servers can't hold the weight of millions of concerned parents.

It bothers me when players metagame by choosing the objectively optimal choice when it's unlikely that their character would have made the same choice.

The most recent example was in a paladin alignment thread. The party is heading into a tomb, and they spot a wyvern's nest with two sleeping adult wyverns nearby. Presumably, the party could have easily bypassed the animals with stealth. However, the paladin decided to kill the wyverns while they slept, because there was minimal risk in doing so, no real mechanical consequences for doing so, and it would eliminate a potential threat that the wyverns might pose in the future.

But when was the last time you read a story or saw a movie where the hero decided to kill a Neutral sleeping creature instead of simply sneaking past? In the few exceptions I could think of, the character is an explicit antihero. The fact that he would kill something when it wasn't necessary is part of the conflict of having an amoral character in the role of hero.

Most heroes wouldn't do this - but a player moving his PC about as if it were a chess piece would.

Probably the ultimate example of this behavior (in my experience) was in a zombie apocalypse game I ran last year. One player didn't get into his character at all (partially my fault, as I was the one who put together the pre-gens for the game), so he metagamed to a huge extent. His character behaved as if he had no fear of zombies, and he did everything that you would expect someone to do if they were fearless and had watched every zombie movie ever. To make matters worse, he quickly took charge of the party and became the de facto leader.

It made the whole game rather boring, with the players giving me descriptions of how they were constructing tactical barricades, destroying potential ambush routes, and making portable bridges in order to move from rooftop to rooftop, while I just kind of nodded and said "yup, that works".

The highlights of that game (by all accounts) were when people actually played to the complications of their characters - the EMT with a fear of heights who refused to leave anyone behind was one of the most interesting characters, because his player made a lot of character-driven decisions instead of simply choosing the optimal course.

I've been inspired to try out an action points system in my games, and I'm trying to decide which one to use. Basically, it comes down to how they are acquired, how thy are spent, and what they do.

Versions I've seen:
- How acquired -
1) Fixed amount gained each session/day
2) Fixed amount gained each character level
3) Gained as rewards for roleplaying
4) Gained by taking specific feats or items

- How Spent -
1) Before a roll only
2) Before and/or after a roll
3) Before and/or after a roll, but are more effective before than after

- What they do -
1) Reroll (or roll twice) and take the better result
2) Add +20 (or +X) to a d20 roll
3) Add +1d6 (or +1dX) to a roll
4) Roll a d30 (or other large die/dice) instead of a d20
5) Allow non-die roll effects, such as gaining extra uses of spells/abilities, or breaking/bending the rules in a thematic way, or slightly altering the plot of the game.

What version do you use/have you used in the past? Which has worked best for you?

A bard pc I'm working on now is focused on using a whip and Dazzling Display during combat to debuff and trip. However, I'd like to have something for him to fall back on if he gets stuck in melée and can't skirmish. I'll probably give him a falchion since he's half-Orc.

However, a thought occurred to me. What if he wielded a whip in one hand, and a short sword (call it a cutlass, since he's a pirate ;-)) in the other. He wouldn't attack with both on his turn, he'd just hold the cutlass in case he's forced into melée or if someone provokes an AoO from him (since you can't AoO with a whip).

That creates a problem though. Say he attacks someone with the whip on his turn. Later in the round, some mook provokes an AoO from him, and he hits her with his cutlass. What happens?
1) He takes twf penalties on both his attacks.
2) He takes an off-hand penalty on just the cutlass attack.
3) He takes no penalties on either attack.

I'm leaning towards option 2 right now, since 3 seems like it might be too generous in light of the twf rules, and 1 seems a little harsh (consider the same situation w/o the AoO happening - should he take twf penalties on just his whip if he doesn't do anyhting at all with the cutlass in that round?).

What are your thoughts?

Skill based magic system? Someone elaborate on this please. I've been looking for a good RPG with a decent skill based magic system for awhile now.

Just after posting this, I happened to spot a post that my player made last night, with his perspective on the session:

Hello all, I just finished a D&D session this afternoon. My friend was starting a new campaign, and he was using the adventuring materiel out of the Dummies guide for Dungeons and dragons. We were using the pathfinder rules. I asked the DM if I could give the Oracle a try since I almost always play a cleric.

He said yes. He told me to use a 30-point buy. With all of those points I put together Prometheus, an oracle with the fire focus.

With 30 points at my disposal, I purchased strait 14 s in all my stats. I chose to be a human. I put my +2 bonus to get a 16 in Charisma. For feats I picked improved unarmed strike, and Improved grapple. Ok, probably not the best decision, but it was my mistake to make. I was going for a “monk” feel to the character.
For spells I picked Bless and Cure light wounds. For osirions I picked stabilize, light, read magic and detect magic.
For the Focus I picked Fire. For the revelation I picked the one where you generate heat and do 1d4 damage in a 10-foot radius. For the moment I forgot what skills I put in.
Prometheus had some basic gear like studded leather, a morning star, backpack, and bedroll, trail rations, water skin. Etc.

All in all we had a good time the party consisted of an Aasimar paladin, a tiefling sorcerer, (the players are married in real life) a halfing rogue, a dwarven barbarian, and a human fighter, and myself a human oracle.

We had a good time, first in the apothecary dealing with the owner, as she doled out cures for the filth fever the group picked up last weekend and the were rat lythancropy. I had just joined so I didn’t have any of these diseases.

After that the sheriff hired us to go to some outlying farmsteads and investigate why some animals were being slaughtered. Apparently the wizard who lived in the woods had gone missing. We were to investigate his dwelling as well. We entered the woods, and were first challenged by a worg. The battle went well in general, and my character used a bless spell to help turn the tide of the of the battle. Also used a cure light wounds spell on the Barbarian to staunch his wounds after the battle.

Next we found the wizards old house, and the barbarian dwarf burst in through the front door. On the other side was a pair of gnolls. Luckily I rolled a 20 for iniatative. I charged across the house until I was next to the gnolls, and I roasted them with my fire relevation, doing 4 points of damage to them. One of the toasty gnolls turned on Prometheus and skewered him with his javelin. The DM rolled a 20 and confirmed it.
My character went from a healthy 10 hit points to a Dying -10 hit points with the thrust of the gnolls weapon. A fight ensued and the gnols were killed in a couple of rounds.
Luckily another party member had a cure light wounds potion for me. I was brought back to -5 hit points, but stabilized.
Meanwhile n the next room, the sorcerer and fighter had crept into the neighboring room. A choker killed the fighter, lurking in the rafters. The Sorcere was choked into unconsciousness survived. The lurker was dispatch by the remaining party conscious party members.

All in all we had a fun afternoon even though we had terrible die rolls. I enjoyed playing an oracle. I know I probably didn’t build the character in the most efficient manner, and first level characters are always limited in what they can do. I would like to suggest adding the Cure spells, to an Oracles list of spells known for free. With two spells to choose from at first level, I knew one of them would have to be cure light wounds. I think it would have been nice to say be able to have chosen a Bless, and a Curse spell, for my spells known and say the Cure light wounds spell already “known”

I liked the revelations and the focuses. Oh I also liked the oracles curse very much. I chose clouded vision. We joked about my character ruining his sight illuminating manuscripts. My character would sometimes wonder why he left the monastery for a life on the road adventuring.

Anyways that was one brief afternoon, where I made a first level oracle and gave it a try.
Thanks

I'm not necessarily talking about LARPing here...I have a "set piece" destination I'd like my players to see.

The PCs are currently in an area of my campaign world that is modeled after my home state of Vermont. I plan to have them explore a set of ruins (of which there are many) and the dungeons beneath it. As it would happen, there is a ruin only a few miles from my home that would serve as a wonderful stand-in for the site.

It's called Madame Sherri's. Madame Antoinette Sherri apparently ran some sort of brothel and was a rum-runner. She had a grand, unique house, which burned down, leaving behind its impressive foundation, including an incredible staircase. You can Google for more information if you'd like, and you can see some pictures of it here:
East side (approach), south side, west side (rear, basement entrance).

Now, I could simply show them the pictures, and say "This is what you see." That would still be pretty neat. But wouldn't it be much cooler to actually take them there? It's only a 10-minute trip away.

The question is, how to play once we're there? We could just turn around and drive back to my house, but that's the back-up plan. Ideally, we'd be able to do a little bit of gaming while we're there. I just don't know exactly how to make it work (I don't want to bring along all the accouterments of gaming).

Help me brainstorm.

Hey everyone, don't mind me, I just need a place to vent to the anonymous crowd...

In April this year, I lost my job when my workplace went out of business. Since then, I've been on unemployment, and I've been able to get some work once or twice a month at a local graduate school. However, this doesn't compare at all to my previous income.

My sister-in-law has been living with us while she's finishing her last years of high school. Her parents (who are divorced) had been paying her portion of the rent while she was here, and that helped to offset my lost income a little bit. Then, just a month or two after I lost my job, her parents just stopped paying for her (partly due to some sort of dispute over childcare payments).

So, my income had been pretty much decimated, and we were no longer receiving rent for the sister-in-law, plus we ended up subsidizing the cost of her food and other necessities. That's just the monetary part; I won't go to the extent of complaining about the injustice of basically being forced to adopt a teenager...

Taking all this into consideration, we decided we needed to downsize. We found a new cheaper apartment downtown, told the sister-in-law that she would have to move back in with one of her parents, and decided to trade/sell both our cars and consolidate to a single, more fuel-efficient car. Our move in date for the new apartment is October 1st.

We had everything all sorted out - it was going to be a big zero-sum equation. Trading in my wife's Jeep would pay for all the upfront costs of getting the new (well, new to us) car. Since we paid last month's rent upfront on the current apartment, we could take the money that we would've spent on rent, combine it with our security deposit, and use that to pay first/last/security on the new apartment. The sale of my Honda would just be icing on the cake.

However, things took a bad turn. Something went wrong with the financing for the new car (I suspect that it had something to do with the fact that my wife has some health problems, and the financiers didn't like the medical bills on her record). We ended up having to pay a down-payment that was more than $1,000 more than we expected, and instead of staying the same, our monthly payment went up by $100. All of a sudden, we were in a different position; instead of wanting to sell my car, we had to sell it. If we don't sell it, we won't be able to afford to move in to the new apartment, and there's no way we'd be able to stay in the place we are now.

When I talked to my landlord about this, he confessed something truly scary: he was in a financial tough spot himself, and until a new renter paid him first/last/security, there was a good chance he wouldn't be able to pay us our deposit back.

So, now I have two weeks (less, really) in which to come up with approximately $3,000 out of thin air. There has been next to no interest in the apartment, and literally no interest in the car. I feel trapped, and it's driving me crazy. We can't afford to move, we can't afford to stay...we have nowhere to go. I really don't know what to do.

Any useful advice would be appreciated...it feels a little bit better to get it off my chest, but venting my feelings won't keep me from becoming homeless at the end of the month...

Another thought that just occurred to me:

Can I use the necromancer's grave touch ability (melee touch attack, 1d6+(1/2 CL) cold damage) to deliver touch spells? Not Chill Touch, obviously, because the spell and the ability are separate standard actions, but what about another touch spell like Touch of Fatigue?

Round 1: Cast Touch of Fatigue, hold the charge
Round 2: Close with enemy, attack with grave touch, and discharge ToF

I just made 2nd level tonight, so I gain the second level wizard ability that gives me a first level necromancy spell I can cast each day.

So I have to choose 2 necro spells and one other one for this new level. My necro choices are rather limited, but the other isn't. Grease, perhaps? I'm also considering Babau Slime from the SC, to dissuade enemies from entering into melee with me.

(A little lengthy; thanks in advance for your patience and your responses)

This past Saturday I started a new campaign at my FLGS. I started the PCs at first level using Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed rules. Character creation took a little longer than usual because I was the only one familiar with the rules, and there were 6 players. However, everything went smoothly for the most part. I've played one or two sessions alongside some of these guys as a PC, but I've never DMed for any of them before.

Over the past two days, I've been getting ready to run the game this Saturday night. I wasn't expecting to run a game when I showed up last week, and I want to be more prepared this week. Two of the players took their character sheets home with them, but the other four left their sheets with me. As part of my prep, I put together a sheet with info on all their characters (attack bonuses and damage, race, AC, common skills, etc). In doing this however, I noticed a few "errors" on the sheets.

Most of these were minor things. For example, one of the players decided he wanted a better Int partway through chargen, and switched his Wis and Int scores, which I approved. However, he forgot to change the ability mods on his skills. Another player miscalculated the TWF penalties, and ended up crippling his attack bonuses pretty harshly (he also did his math wrong on saves, and screwed himself over there too). Another player forgot to add his racial penalty to Wis. Little things like that, which I easily fixed for them.

However, when it came to equipment, these errors really stood out. MCAU gives a starting gold of 10x5d4 per character, so I told everyone to start with 125gp, which is the average roll. We only had one copy of MCAU, so a number of them ended up shopping out of the PHB (which I allowed), so I expected there to be a few discrepancies (especially since some of these guys had already demonstrated that math wasn't their best skill).

Out of the four players, here's what I got:
PC1: 128gp gear, 0gp leftover, total: 128 (over limit by 3gp)
PC2: 112.6gp gear, 42.4gp leftover, total: 155 (over limit by 30gp)
PC3: 81gp gear, 100gp leftover, total: 181 (over limit by 56gp)
PC4: 239.73gp gear, 4gp leftover, total: 243.73 (over limit by 118.73gp)

PCs 1-3 I'm not worried about. PC1 only bought two weapons and some armor, and an overage of 3gp isn't that big a deal. PCs 2 & 3 both have overages which can be covered by their cash, and these are the two guys that demonstrated in other areas that they aren't too good at math.

PC4, however, worries me. He is over by a massive amount, almost at 200% of the number I gave him, and he's even over the maximum possible starting gold, so it's not like he took it upon himself to roll. And unlike PC1, he didn't just buy a few things. He bought a sword and shield, as well as expensive (for 1st level) armor and longbow. He then went on to buy the standard adventurer's smörgåsbord of crap: flint and steel, mirror, crowbar, bedroll, waterskin, sack, backpack, torches.

This is also the guy who messed up by "forgetting" to apply his racial Wisdom penalty. I even remember him mentioning that he though it was weird that a leonine race should take a Wis penalty. Unlike the other players, the only "mistake" he made on his stats directly benefited him. He's also the oldest of the players except for me; he's the only one in college, while the rest are in their teens, and he expressed frustration with the younger players once or twice when they wouldn't stop talking and pay attention to the game.

So, enough ranting. Here's the question:
1) What should I do to adjust for this PC's illicit wealth? Right now, I'm leaning towards just reducing treasure in the first few battles until it balances, but that approach still leaves the other PCs with less wealth than PC4, because they'll be splitting treasure evenly.
2) I'm planning on saying something to the group on Saturday to the effect of "I noticed a few mistakes on your sheets, and I fixed them for you" and pointing out where they had accidentally gimped themselves, things like that. Maybe it would be worth saying "PC4, you somehow ended up with a lot more equipment than you should have", or would it be better to take care if it "behind the screen", as it were?
3) I'm going to keep an eye on this player in the future, and I think I'm going to require that the players leave their sheets with me each week so I can make sure all their stuff is in order, and so I can have their stats available when I prep adventures and in case one of them doesn't show up. Is there anything else I can do to guard against a potential cheater?

Okay, I'm confused. I don't have my physical PFRPG with me, so I was looking up rules on PFOGC.com to help one of my players build a barbarian.

While looking at barbarian rage powers, I realized that they are no longer utilizing rage points. Instead, they're going on a "X rounds of rage per day" basis.

However, the Extra Rage feat (which my player was planning on taking) still is listed as providing an extra 6 rage points.

So, what's up?

Have barbarian rage powers changed, and I missed it?

I just received my Paizo order today, and unpacked my Stonehenge t-shirt, my d20 car magnet, and my...GameMastery Item Cards?

They're not listed anywhere on my packing slip or invoice, I didn't pay for them or order them...but I now have a booster pack of 11 GameMastery Hero's Hoard Item Cards. Is this some kind of super secret customer loyalty program? If so, count me in.

But seriously, I'm guessing I received them by mistake. Maybe they slid out of some warehouse guy's shirt pocket. I haven't opened them yet, and if you guys wanted them back, I'd be happy to mail them to you (on the other hand, I'd be happy to keep them; but I run a small shipping department myself, and I know the value of honesty).

But anyway, thanks. I think.

I'm trying to find a polo or golf shirt with something like a d20 or a Paizo golem where that stupid little alligator would normally go. I want something that doesn't scream "gamer" but has that little touch; a little dressier than a t-shirt, something I could wear to work if need be.

Anyone know where I could find one of these? I'm at a loss.

Here's what I'm using for a PC kobold in my playtest. What do you folks think?

-2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Cha (going along with favored class: sorcerer)
Small
Speed 30'
Darkvision 60'
+2 to Craft: Traps, Profession: Miner, Perception
+1 natural armor bonus

Basically, I've changed the (previously sucktastic) stat modifiers to conform to the other base races, gotten rid of daylight sensitivity, and expanded the bonus on Search checks to all of Perception.
I used the halfling as a base model.

Keep in mind I'm not saying that this should be the default kobold for PRPG, I just want something that's balanced against the other races for my playtest.

This thread is for the purpose of identifying and correcting potential imbalances between the sorcerer bloodlines. Jason has already acknowledged the error I found in which the Abyssal bloodline grants Intimidate as a class skill, even though the sorcerer already has it as a class skill. Jason is working on coming up with a replacement skill for this.

It has been pointed out by many posters that the bloodlines need to be balanced against each other, most recently here:

A few of the abilities still make you wonder. One bloodline [Celestial] grants wings usable 1 min per level per day and another [Infernal, Draconic] grants unlimted use of wings.

Fey 1st level touch is once a day for 1 round effect while the Corrupting Touch lasts for several rounds.

I think a little look at these similar abilities between bloodlines and balancing them to a more uniform set of standards would smooth over a bit of the bumps that remain.

So, after you've looked over the bloodlines and played with them a little, what inequalities or imbalances do you notice?

This thread is for the purpose of identifying and correcting potential imbalances between the sorcerer bloodlines. Jason has already acknowledged the error I found in which the Abyssal bloodline grants Intimidate as a class skill, even though the sorcerer already has it as a class skill. Jason is working on coming up with a replacement skill for this.

It has been pointed out by many posters that the bloodlines need to be balanced against each other, most recently here:

A few of the abilities still make you wonder. One bloodline [Celestial] grants wings usable 1 min per level per day and another [Infernal, Draconic] grants unlimted use of wings.

Fey 1st level touch is once a day for 1 round effect while the Corrupting Touch lasts for several rounds.

I think a little look at these similar abilities between bloodlines and balancing them to a more uniform set of standards would smooth over a bit of the bumps that remain.

So, after you've looked over the bloodlines and played with them a little, what inequalities or imbalances do you notice?

I like the idea that bloodlines grant specific spells and class skills, further differentiating any given sorcerer from the next. However, I notice that the Abyssal bloodline grants Intimidate as a class skill. Intimidate is already a class skill for sorcerers.

I also agree with what Smerg said in another sorcerer thread in this forum, that the various bloodlines need to be compared to each other side by side to make sure that no bloodline is universally better than another.

I'm a player in a soon to start 1st level game, using Burnt Offerings. The plan was to have my fiancee DM and my roommate and I would each play 2 characters (not an issue, it worked great in our RHoD campaign). However, my roommate has flaked out on the game, so it's down to me and my fiancee.
I'm not opposed to this, but there are a few issues:

• I want to use this to playtest the PRPG Alpha, so I'd like to start out at 1st level, and stay away from gestalts etc.
  
• She's a new DM, and would be intimidated by the task of modifying the adventure's encounters to make them easier (except maybe by simple things, such as removing a goblin from each encounter)
  
• I really don't want to have to play 4 PCs.
  

And please please PLEASE no spoilers! If you'd like to present an example of a particular scene or encounter that would be difficult and how to make it easier, that's great, but please use a spoiler tag so I can show my DM this page without ruining the adventure for myself.
Thank you.