Bowman-Deuce's page

Wow!
Thanks guys (and girl!).
Together, you have done an outstanding job of answering my question. You have take what for me was a seemingly impossible task, and molded the data into something both informative and useful. Even going so far as to provide helpful insight as to how to update the weapon from its first edition origins- to a useful- but not game threatening tool for our campaign.
Having no access to either the book or the magazine you mentioned; I am thankful you provided the required material so I could read and review it.
Again, Many Thanks!

One of my fellow players has become obsessed with acquiring a bow of heart seeking; ever since we fought an elf with one during a campaign three years ago.
Now he wants to have one made for his half-dragon character. He's already having a masterwork, +6 composite longbow crafted; but none of us could find the stats for a bow of heart seeking.
Our current DM said he thought it was a +3 enhancement; making the weapon a +4 in price...
If anyone knows the answer (and the reference for it) I'd be obliged.

Thankee!

So, what you're trying to create here seems to be the adventuring school of hard knocks; with the seven sins being the traps and pitfalls they are apt to fall into.
Twisted, but I understand that. Don't forget you'll need rewards for overcoming those traps and pitfalls; or do you plan to turn them into champions of vice from the start? Anti-heroes?
As I understood it; the purpose of role-playing gaming was entertainment; not a Jerry Springer (how depraved can we show these people that they really are?) show.
Yes I know, we routinely attempt to trick, trap, and slaughter them with abandon; but unless you're trying for a TPC (Total Party Conversion) to evil; these are supposed to be students.
If this is a Hogwart's rip-off, there need to be good teachers as well as bad ones.
I don't mean they should dominate the school, but a mixture of 25% helpful & supportive to 25% harmful & destructive with 40% just-doing-there-jobs, and 10% drifting along on tenure not doing much but taking up space; you know, like a real school!
Try factoring in the traits (Pathfinder® Character Traits available as a free download) as part of their school time! Combat, Faith, Magic, and Social are all Basic Traits that can help add character to their character.

I guess what I'm saying, is that if all they take away from this school is that it was hell and they're glad to be out of it, then you missed a great opportunity. Growing characters need a sense of wonder to be proper heroes, and it's our job to give it to them. Wonder begats hope, and hope keeps us going!

Wow that is some hard luck.

Some things to consider about the shop. Does the Patron OWN the shop itself of does he rent the space. The majority of shop owners actually rent from a kind of land baron. If the space is rented then that only leaves the value of the equipment and merchandise inside.

For merchandise figure he probably has enough stock on hand to keep him at his monthly income for about 3-6 months. Equipment for making his merchandise would likely be worth about a year's income, but it is...

I wouldn't call it hard luck, so much as the characters are growing, and I , as their DM, must grow with them.

Considering, he has enough money to travel to a distant festival, and offer bodyguards each a 200gp gem for payment; and he'd done this at least six years prior- which tells me he's doing pretty well for himself.

I'm thinking he started out small, but did such good work that people started coming to his tiny little shop, even though he's not in one of the better districts.
He's Varisian, but he sustained injuries as a young adventurer that cut short his wandering days. Events like the festival are a chance to get on the road for a short while- even if his health won't let him wander on more than a twice a year basis.
Putting the two together- he probably keeps most of his money by having a shop in Lowcleft (Pathfinder 2: the Skinsaw Murders; p. 63). It shares the street with brothels, pubs, dance-halls, and other vibrant forms of entertainment. The atmosphere would appeal more to his Varisian heart than the stale, cold shops of the Grand Arch on the cliffs above.
He was... a 5th level expert.

If my 4th level bard (who has scheduling conflicts between classes and her job) can't make it back to gaming- she had taken an interest in becoming a lapidary herself; perhaps she will volunteer to let her character apprentice under the merchant and help him replenish his stock and his business. I'd be surprised if a gnomish bard couldn't improve his business by quite a bit.

There's just that sticking point of how nice he would feel towards the rest of them. After all, they did:
a): leave him behind...
b): allowing him to be killed...
c): burn through his merchandise and profits raising the funds to have him raised from the dead...
d): and now, instead of refunding the expenses he incurred due to their negligence... they want to buy his shop and make him pay rent?

Party: Hey, Therav... we sold all the gear that night hag used to torture you and your fellow prisoners with- and we'd like to buy your shop so you have enough money to re-stock.
Therav: Gee, thanks... I'm underwhelmed.

I think I overdid it with some of my Wednesday night gamers. They had an NPC they were supposed to be guarding and when he ran off into the woods; after being dream haunted by a night hag (Mellorn Hospitality; Dungeon 107, p. 13).
long story short; the party leaves their patron NPC behind with the villainous monster; and rescues one of his five, fellow NPC prisoners whom they hadn't been able to heal.
When they return they find their NPC patron has been fitted for a Columbian necktie.

This does two things.
A): reminds them to keep their priorities straight; and
B): reminds them that for those with money, non-chronological death doesn't have to be permanent.

They started getting real remorseful, especially when they realized that not only were they not going to get paid- they were going to have to liquidate their patron's wares to pay for his raise dead spell.

When the rogue located some shady buyers for the torture equipment; the cages; and such other items they discovered; they decided to use the monies to buy their former patron's shop, allowing him to use the monies from the sale to re-supply it. The shop's supposed to be in Magnamar (giving me an excuse to familiarize them with the town). Question is; how do I figure out how much to charge for his shop?

On the one hand- they are helping him out of a jam; on the other- he wouldn't be in a jam if they had just rescued him the first time.
Thoughts, anyone?

Dread wrote:

unless we make sure we bring in younger players...if each player recruits say 10 younger players, then at least 2-3 of those will continue to play when they are older...I know thats how many players got into the game...word of mouth does wonders ;)

I've often thought of DMing a group of younger kids to introduce them to D&D, but its always seemed sort of... weird. Unless you know the kids and their parents anyway.

Unless, of course you all work together in a retail-sales environment. I'm 50+; and the ages of my Wednesday night group range from 21-29. I host it at my house; and yes, there is wry amusement when one of my players introduces me to one of their parents, and they notice I'm the same age they are... LOL.

They get to see the guy who dragged their kid away from a computer and put them into a social-gaming environment.

We sometimes go as a group to see new movies (like HellBoy II last week).

It's the only way the system keeps going.

CourtFool wrote:

veector wrote:

For example, I was teaching my brother-in-law the basics of D&D the other day and one thing I found myself stumbling over was "why do ability scores range between the numbers 3 and 18".

A sacred cow perhaps?

It's based on the concept that you're rolling 3d6 to come up with your stats, or some variation thereof; this is fast becoming a sacred cow of sorts as more and more people simply buy stats with points, but rolled stats are one sacred cow I'm rather fond of. I named her Bessie, and occasionally trot her out for old times' sake.

And hey, barring a player who rolls ridiculously well, it works. If someone rolls low, you can just let them reroll.

I like the option where your players roll 4d6 (re-rolling ones and twos); drop the lowest die and tally. Repeat this 7 times and drop the lowest score.

I have fewer dissatisfied customers that way.

But you're right- it works equally well to give them a ninety-five point dice pool and let them put the points where they like.

Or give them 1-18, 1-17, 1-16, 2-15s, & 1-14.

ok, here is my plan....NASCAR.

you put anything on the hood of a race car, and it will sell like hot cakes.

i listen to the NASCAR station on serius, (mostly just tounge in check, and there is no role playing station) its amazing. "i wont drink red bull because junior doesnt drive for red bull, he drives for amp, oh, and i made my son join the national guard too."

every driver has a following. so, you put dungeons and dragons on the hood of a race car, and you will have 100,000,000 people looking at it every single weekend. you put a hot driver in the seat, like a kyle bush, or dale ernhardt junior, you wont be able to print enough books.

all it will cost is 60 million dollars a year, and some amount of pride.

Oh, like when it became public knowledge that Vin Diesel plays D&D?

You know, I keep hearing how the industry is dying and how there aren't any young players getting involved, but the fact is that my brother in-law started gaming about seven years ago and now has a D&D group (no 4th edition for him either) with nine kids his own age in it. I think he's 23 or 24 years old now. I also know that the same people who were playing RPGs when I was in highschool still play them. I know this because I game with them. From my perspective, it looks like there are more people playing tabletop RPGs than ever before.

Me, again. My first experience with D&D was first edition at a Sci-Fi con in Louisville, Ky (102 miles away) back in the late 70's.

After that, I joined a (semi) local SF group in Lexington, Ky (36 miles away) for about 10 years.

Then I got married and my gaming attendance dwindled and died.

Four years later- I got divorced, and the dark clouds lifted...

(lest anyone think I'm saying marriage is the death of role play, no way! Several of my old Lexington group are married and still get together and game, nearly every Saturday night! It just didn't work out that way for me...)

I was talking to one of my co-workers about gaming and found he and three other co-workers already had a group and were looking for a 4th player...
That was ten years ago.

Our main DM has gotten married and is available less and less... so I started another group by being DM for two co-workers about six months ago. I'm getting one of the players from my Thursday Night 3.5 group joining my Wednesday Night Pathfinder group (as soon as he can make up his mind which dual-classes he wants!).

My point is... as long as there are players, and word of mouth, the games will continue. After all people still play skittles, a table game found at craft fairs.

Whether the industry will thrive- that remains to be seen.

Well,

To touch on Dopplegangsters recent post, parenting is the root problem - lazy parenting force-fed technology by an consumer-driven society. Video games aren't the problem, the parents who give their kids video games are the problem.

I work at our local Wal-Mart; where I see bad-parenting all the time. Case In Point: I make it a practice when a video game warning comes up and asks "Is the customer 17?" I'm looking at an eight-to-12-year-old moppet with a grandmother/father in tow. I point out the "Blood, Violence, Language, Adult Themes" warning on the back. Half the time- that's enough.

Responsible Parent: "Come on honey, let's go pick out another game."
Brat-in-training: "But I played it over at Joey's house, his mom didn't mind."
Responsible Parent: "That reminds me, I haven't talked to Sylvia lately..."

Other times...
Irresponsible Parent: "That's okay, (s)he's too young to know what it means anyway."

Right...

The idea of a divine focus: a scroll, map, or manufactured item or 250gp or more created in or around (1/2 mile) of the location you wish to travel to is a good possibility.
As an alternative solution; if they are just trying to find- oh let's say, the metropolis of Trondheim, and they know it's somewhere along the northern coast. They just want to know the best route but they don't have a map. To keep them from wandering through one set of bad directions after another- say that "find the path" is like Map Quest; turn by turn directions revealed to the caster each time they cast it.
They'll have less to remember each time they are forced to recast it. And I like the idea that it doesn't specify what kind or magnitude of dangers lie along the path- just there (current to the time the spell was cast) location.
This allows the DM to insert or delete wandering monsters!
Japh: "I thought this spell of yours was supposed to warn us of upcoming danger."
Dante: "It does, but the creature probably was in it's nest when I cast it last; not out looking for food."

I recently ended a two-year campaign introducing several pagan friends to Dungeons and Dragons. I was the only non-wiccan there, and a Christian, but a friend. One of the players had a witch (we used a modified template from a sourcebook he found and the spellbook from the DMG). He thought it was cool to have a character that reflected aspects of his real-world self. And he was emotionally grounded enough to accept his lack of combat-heavy spells.
Strangely enough if a band of paladins were to have come across the party- the "witch" would have been the last person they would have gone after; they would have been hot-footing after the party's sorcerer (he was training to be a Necromancer!).
- Arch

Just Hobgoblins?
It seems to me they should be the dominant race (and I liked the idea about making the soul-stones a spell focus- that way only some of the cleric spells would be denied at its loss); but not the only goblinoid race...
It also opens up the way for a variety of half-hobgoblin slave races from formerly subjugated peoples (they live here because they don't fit in anywhere else...).
- Arch

The theme running through the previous posts seems to be to "set up potential adventure themes to be run here"; and "disappointed by lack of sizzle in DM Secrets."
So what you're saying is that instead of "design a country" it should have been "Design a country and include a campaign premise."
At least that's what I'm seeing.
- Arch

I am thankful for my God, my family, and friends, both those who play, and those who don't.