Branel's page

Uh... I think the Blog just directly described reasons why LG settlements may end up NOT most powerful by default, because if they can't maintain absolute control against Crimes and Heinous Acts, their Settlement Stats start to degrade and can go beneath what Chaotic/Evil Settlements will have. If everytime an enemy settlement-allied PC 'trespasses' your Settlement Stats go down, LG doesn't look like the default most powerful anymore.

And further, I see nothing to suggest that LG+HighRep is needed to achieve the highest Settlement Status regardless of those factors, GW has seemed consistent in saying that LE Settlements will certainly be up there with LG, and High Rep CG should also be fine, by their previous statements.

Is there any reason to suspect the same shenanigans wont be perpetuated against LE settlements? Both will have the same issue maintaining their Law stat. Also, without more specific information about these actions work we cant really cite them as a balancing force. Its seems a mite silly if someone can run backwards and forward over a corner of your hex to break your settlement.

The paragraph in the blog about corruption and unrest implies that chaos/evil are never going to be on equal footing with good/law.

As soon as any faction is giving a mechanical advantage, however slight, over another, you are going to skew the player base in that direction.

EDIT:

Branel wrote:

The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’.

We expect, given previous experience with MMOs, that without some kind of weight on the other end of the scale the trend will be incredibly lopsided toward Chaotic Evil. Thus we are trying to incent (i.e., shamelessly bribe ;) ) people toward the other side of the spectrum, in the hope that the pulls of natural inclination and incentives will result in a reasonably even alignment field. If it turns out we were overly cynical, and the incentives overcorrect and result in a majority landing on or near LG, we can easily reduce the penalties for Corruption and Unrest until equilibrium is restored.

And that quite neatly solves my issue. My main concern was that it appeared that the game was being, deliberately, skewed towards good. Ill shut up and go away now. :P

Branel wrote:

I have two concerns with the alignment system, assuming that I read it correctly.

The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?

Secondly, linking Reputation to alignment access goes even further to prevent people from making evil characters. It I am playing an evil necromancer in the woods and have a low reputation/evil alignment for all of my dastardly deeds, people could assume that I got that low reputation for being abusive/racist/misogynist in the chat window. That’s enough that I wouldn’t make the character.

I foresee a game populated by Paladins in my future.

1) I would say this mirrors real-life. A social structure with good order and a population that engages with each other on mostly benevolent terms is going to excel.

2) The balance to LG being powerful by default is that it is only powerful if done right. LG settlements are setting a high expectations bar in order to reap better rewards. CE settlements are setting a low expectations bar in order to improve the odds of reaping those rewards. A settlement that is LG in name only can find itself worse off than the CE settlement.

3) You can be evil without having low reputation. Evil is to Rectangles as Reputation is to Squares (not exactly, but close enough). Not all evil acts cause rep loss. But most rep loss actions cause an evil shift. The idea is that practically nobody will WANT a low reputation.

1, My concern was not realism, rather that this will lead to people to play only good characters.

2, I would prefer it that an excellently organized and active LE town could fight equally with an excellently organized and active LG town. The current system puts the LE town at a disadvantage regardless of how much work they do. Thus, people will be active, dedicated players will only start/join LG settlements.

3, Its the other half of the 'most' that is concerning. If you can have a evil character that does not have to take reputation losing actions then I have no issue.

Branel wrote:

My concern is that under the current system you won’t see CE settlements, as they are much less powerful than LG ones.

That's the point. CE is bad.

And thats fine, as long as it made clear that playing a CE (Evil Barbarian?) character is not a valid choice.

I suppose my issue is that in Pathfinder a evil character is as, if not more, dangerous than a good one. Making all the evil/chaotic characters worse than the good/lawful ones in the MMO seems to be going in the wrong direction.

I would rather slay evil as good and good as evil, rather than perpetual good on good.

LE is where all the power for evil settlements is going to be and thats expected. CE settlements....well thats going to be tougher. However if you sit down and look at CE vs LE is it not reasonable for LE cities to be effective and CE cities to not be so effective?

CE folks are going to be guys the LE settlement sends in a month before an invasion to attack a settlement before war is offically declared to soften the other settlement without being flagged for war.

My concern is that under the current system you won’t see CE settlements, as they are much less powerful than LG ones.

Due to unrest being higher in Evil towns and Evil being partially tied to Reputation, it’s unlikely that you will see any true, by which I mean organized and active, towns other than LG.

I have two concerns with the alignment system, assuming that I read it correctly.

The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?

Secondly, linking Reputation to alignment access goes even further to prevent people from making evil characters. It I am playing an evil necromancer in the woods and have a low reputation/evil alignment for all of my dastardly deeds, people could assume that I got that low reputation for being abusive/racist/misogynist in the chat window. That’s enough that I wouldn’t make the character.

I foresee a game populated by Paladins in my future.

That is a very expensive wand. At a cost of 6000gp I think there are many things I can get for that kind of coin that are much better.

Sure is and its obviously your call but at higher levels (8+) its not unmanageable and means that you rarely, if ever, fail saves.

You can always drag along a Paladin and annoy them until until they cast it on you. :D

If you disabled all the runes then krunes caster level should have been significantly reduced limiting the wilting damage. A sorc is still going to have to be very lucky to make the dc29 cort save though.

Correct about the spell level. Unfortunately our GM missed that bit of the "disabling runes" section, which I don't really have and issue with. There is a lot going on in that room. Frankly, I am impressed thats the only thing he overlooked.

As for the fort save, any Sorcerer that goes to fight a Runelord without getting 'Bestow Grace' on herself is... well... silly. (My Sorcerer has a wand of it)

So in my case:
+3 class bonus.
+2 con bonus.
+2 profane bonus (Endurance Rune)
+4 resistance bonus (Cloak of Resistance)
+9 sacred bonus (Bestow Grace)

Total of: +18.

So the save is 50/50. Better if you are level 11 and have a Cloak of Resistance + 5.

(Writing this up made me realize that Protection from Evil doesn't stack with Cloaks of Resistance, so looks like both the Gm and I 'cheated' in that combat.)

Hey, I was playing the level 10 Sorcerer in Matthews game above.

I actually enjoyed the horde'o'creatures we ended up fighting in that encounter (although I do feel sorry for Andrew having to track that many stat blocks, so as Matthew said, hats off to him). We were fighting the Runelord that specializes in conjuration, I expected the room to get really packed.

We managed to kill pretty much everything in the room except his spear, a babau (we were ignoring it as it was not powerful enough to hurt us) and a fire elemental. I say this to point out that the time delay made the encounter more challenging but not impossible for a properly kitted out party.

The problem was the Empower Maximized Horrid Wilting. To illustrate; A level 11 D6 hit die based character (read Sorcerer) with high, for a mage, con (lets say 14) only has 63 hit points. Now chances are a Sorcerer 11 is going to make the DC29 fort save nearly every time but even then she is going to take 76 damage. Which puts her on -13, 1 point from death.

If the Runelord simply casts Empower Maximized Horrid Wilting on the party as soon as they walk in, then recalls Horrid Wilting (using his pearl of power) and again casts it Empowered and Maximized the party is dead.

As a highly intelligent NPC (30?) there is no reason that I can see that he wouldn't do the above.

The only way that I can see a party surviving this scenario is if the GM doesn't do her prep thoroughly (Which I am occasionally guilty of but sadly Andrew was too good a GM in this case)

Lastly, I though that this scenario was well laid out both thematically and in challenge. Its only the combo of hitting a level 11 party with two consecutive level 13 spells that causes issues.

For something with role playing flavor: Discovery Age.

Then you can change the age with major functional release (assuming you go that way).

For something of a more technical nature: First Iteration.

Doesn't imply that the game is unfinished but does imply that there is more to come.

An average level 3 guard (assuming Fighter 3) has a Perception check of +3 (3 skill ranks, 0 wisdom bonus, not a class skill, and its doubtful that a fighter wastes feats on Alertness and skill focus (Perception).

An average Rogue at level 3 would have +9 (+3 for skill ranks, +3 for class skill, +3 skill focus if your goal is to do that).

+9 beats +3 almost every time.

Bottom line, rogue trumps guards almost every time. A high level rogue (12+) wins even more, as even in a metropolis, guards shouldn't be above 5th-6th level. And even if you have a high level guard or two, they are not going to be wasted patrolling the streets looking for a pick pocket.

So to the OP, yes a rogue can get rich pick-pocketing, especially high level ones.

You just have to deal with that.

A few things in regards to the above:

It’s more likely that the town guards are warriors not fighters, but the point is moot since neither have perception as class skills. However the premise that someone that’s core occupation is to be on the lookout for trouble hasn’t bothered to pick up a perception based feat is a bit thin. Regardless lets assume that none of them do and have a look at the calculation.

When a rogue pickpockets someone everyone in line-of-site gets a perception check against the pick pocketing role. Since villages are going to start shouting “thief!” as soon as they notice the rogue you are going have more than town guards making perception rolls(Some of which have perception as a class skill).

This means that you have multiple apposed rolls. Combine this with the fact that most NPC’s would be pushing to have a gold piece worth of coin on them and the rogue would have to do this hundreds, if not thousands, of times to get enough wealth to be relevant. At some point he is going to roll low and one of the dozen people that get opposed rolls is going to roll high at which point he gets spotted and assuming he gets away, wanted posters go up, etc, etc. To stop this he would need a pick-pocket of 20+.

So let’s assume that he does have that 20+ pick-pocket. Due to the time to stalk a target and rob them of their pouch multiplied by the thousand or so time he has to do it means that on a pure time vs. reward scale he would be better off adventuring.

In net, the really greedy rogues are off adventuring, not stealing coppers from peasants.

Oh, and if you prey on a town for long enough, someone is going to pay a cleric/wizard to divine you out…

Hey guys, I just did a quick check of Amazon, and they list a book titled Wise Men's Fear by the same author as the sequel.

It appears to be currently available.

Unfortunately its not, Amazon has had it ‘available’ for the last year or so. The author only just recently submitted the final draft to his publisher, so I would imagine that it’s still a couple of months off.

You can find the authors blog here: http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/blog/blog.html

Personally, having just run my players through offing one queen (Curse of the Crimson Throne), I am happy that the point of this adventure path is not the elimination of another.

I try to limit myself to one regicide a year :)

Paizo could have quite easily written a path for the elimination of the House of Thrune but it seems to me that they were aiming for a different type of campaign.

Revolution instead of Assassination.

It may work, it may not, but as far as I am concerned they get points for trying. I find it harder to come up with new material than to change the new back to the standard.

I just finished running my group through ‘Shadow in the Sky’ and one of the things that I did change was the Drow. I have run across to many Dizzzzits and Dri33its in too many forms for them to be even mildly credible anymore.

I did rewrite the beginning background story but I’m not sure how much of it I am allowed to reproduce here, so here are the salient points:

Thus ends my rant. Hope it helps some of you out.