Brodie Pomper's page

I don't have time to upload their stats now but here's an overview.

The monk has many magic items that buff him (thankfully we've decided to not allow Monk's Robes into the game, being that they let him do 4 levels' more damage on unarmed attacks) and usually just flurry-of-blows everything to death. He is usually enlarged by the sorceress.

The fighter has a mercurial greatsword and is usually enlarged by the sorceress as well.

The Sorceress loves disintegrate, fireball, chain lightning, usually metamagic'd.

The Wizard/Arane archer is an evoker too, and stays out of the fray and hurls arrows and spells into combat.

These are their general tactics. We've been playing 3rd edition for 11 years, so we're pretty good at this.

Anything they can do, you can do better.

Just make exact copies of their characters (adjust how they look for effect) and throw in some henchmen. How can they not be challenged by themselves?

At some point they will encounter a mirror of opposition. Probably in Thousandbreaths.

I have been running a game of Kingmaker for months now, and my players have grown quite attached to their characters. Here they are:

Susquehanna: Dwarf Monk 13
Praedja: Aasimar Fighter 13
Inki: Human Sorceress 13

• Inki has the leadership feat and thereby has Bosco, half-orc Rogue 11 as a cohort/bodyguard

They absolutely stomp all of the BBEG's. I build up to these fights and they barely last a round or two. They're getting arrogant and snide. The Ring of Freedom of Movement on the monk is especially irritating.

They have kept their kingdom small and have gone the magic item economy route, so their kingdom has no unrest and tons of money. I tried to send the Tusker Raiders at their town (with a storm giant leader controlling the weather to mask their approach) and Jyoti set up a wall of fire, then they one-round-killed the storm giant and started laying waste to 50 hill giants on 50 mastodons.

The fighter and the monk charge at any enemy while the casters decimate from a distance.

I understand that most combats with trash mobs last a round or two, and BBEG's maybe make it 4 or 5 rounds, but I at least want to whittle them down and get them worried about death (I've killed the sorceress twice and the monk once) but even then they have teleport to get out of a dire situation.

The sorceress crammed the Occulus of Abaddon into her eye socket (she was Lawful Evil anyway) and uses it to scry on enemies and teleport to them and kill them at their most vulnerable. I am going to start War of the River Kings soon, and I want for there to be a real challenge, some real hatred for King Irovetti, not just a dutiful murder since he's the obvious BBEG.

I don't have time to upload their stats or anything. Any general hints on how to make them quake in their boots and feel mortal for a second without being cheap?

I think WoTC's stuff is better.

Just kidding. You've got my D&D dollar from here on out. So glad I cancelled all my pre-orders from WoTC when they killed your magazines. I pirate their books, look at them, and think, "wow, this wasn't worth the time to download, let alone they money to buy!"

Pathfinder looks fantastic.

Brodie Pomper wrote:

Also, is Pathfinder going to use that miserable "delve format?" It's illegible.

Pathfinder will not use the delve format. It will use a format more similar to (but not exactly the same as) Dungeon did.

What are you doing up? Thanks, BTW, the delve format is terrible. I bought Eye of the Lich Queen, and was furious to see that it's in this garbage that ostensibly reduces page-turning, but acutally engenders more. Stay cool James, and watch out, you're obviously burning the candle at both ends.

I know you guys seem to be working on this Varisia (new fantasy word to spell incorrectly, yay!) and maybe plan to use it in a few more AP's, but I would love for there to be a contest to make a new world to set an AP or two in. The winner would then work closely with Paizo for the duration of those AP's.

How.
Awesome.
Would.
This.
Be?

Lemme just say that I think you guys should own the brand. You'd handle it better. And your products are just better.

Also, is Pathfinder going to use that miserable "delve format?" It's illegible.

tyler walpole did art

sorry, me=stoopid

Could someone please check Dungeon #132 (the issue with Jubilex on the cover) and tell me who did the art for the critical threat? I would check myself, but I am not at home.

Thanks a bunch!

Christopher Wissel. That's the only peice he's credited for, can't find a website.

Here's the cover to whet your appetites.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32562971@N00/201456784/
Paizo guys, if this is a problem, delete the post, I'm really just doing FREE ADVERTISING...Warning, it's a huge honker picture. 3 megs... Flickr will scale it down, but you can DL the full size pic if you feel like; you get to see the dots!

This is a really nice issue, although the mud sorcerer's tomb is too old-school for me. Nice traps, but nothing I'd run. I am really friggin' amped for the Savage Tide, even though I totally can't run it with my groups, they'll just keep yelling about how it's a King Kong/Pirates of the Carribean ripoff/cash-in. >Sigh< The perils of hanging with cynical people.

Heck, I should UL the covers every month, people like the art so much...

. . . I'm refusing to read the preview in dungeon 138 in case I I'm not the one in my group who ends up running it.

Hmm, I guess that would also mean I should stop lurking in the STAP message boards . . . ::grin::

I could never run it with my players. I'd just keep hearing, "this is just a friggin' King Kong/ Pirates of the Carribean Ripoff/Trendy-crossmarketing-cash-in." I'll read it and enjoy it though.

Of course, this is just a fluff issue. My 3e campaign is very much 1e/2e in regards to these types of things.

If you look at the

I could imagine that being a cop, you get tired of grim stuff and psychodrama...right? You fight pathetic monsters everyday, and have to unravel complicated, contradictory stories where everyone is kinda in the wrong...so you wanna leave that behind when you play? Just guessin.

Yeah, I didn't like 2E, the ART bothered me the most. Even as a 14 year old, when I started playing around 1999, right before 3rd edition came out, I was like, "jesus, this art is so lame...except for DiTerlizzi's work."

Also, there were a lot of campaign settings, as opposed to the big three we have now, stat blocks were hard to read, leveling up took forever. That was one neat thing, you REALLY felt like you'd accomplished something when you FINALLY levelled up after that 100th goblin. But it always made my logic gland release hormones that made me ask..."how are all these guards 4th level when it takes forever, a lot of murder or practice, and some luck, to get to 4th level? Do they have kobold farms where they send the guards to kill them day-in-day-out?"

We had to make up so many random rules for things covered by feats and skills in 3.5.

Did I mention the art sucked? Wayne Reynolds and Todd Lockwood are the best fantasy artists out there, bar none. There were artists just this talented during 2E...where were they? The awful beefcake/cheescake art where everyone was shiny, didn't have a backpack or spell components, just a sword and a chainmail thong bikini.

Now, one thing that I really liked about 2E was Planescape. I read that book front to back, didn't get a word of it, and loved it. But I think the modern campaign settings are more playable.

The art, again with the art.

When I got my 3E Players Handbook, my brothers and I fought over who got to read it. We were salivating at the complicated choices you could make in terms of feats and skills, spells and prestige classes, not just munchkining but also thinking of awesome character concepts that just weren't there in 2E.

2E had rules bloat, just like 3E is getting rules bloat. We'd best keep an eye on that.

Hey! I have that sling! The Hot-Sling! I love it.
Incidently where abouts are you? I live in Delaware and was wondering if you are somewhat close by.

FH

York, PA. I know, sucks, donnit?

You should get your daughter some of those big stuffed soft dice so she can practice her rolling technique early! heh heh.

Already got em. As an aside, my GF and I had a pair of fuzzy "sex dice" and we had some visitors, and hid the offending items you don't want family members seeing, but we forgot the dice. So then comes the question from the 12 year old-cute-as-a-button-girl, "why does that dice say, 'ass?' The other one says, 'lick.'"

Whoops.

Just thought this'd be an appropriate place to post this. I'm gonna try to seed the next generation of gamers. Here's my 5.5. month old daughter Katerina paging through my newly arrived Monster Manual IV. I love her so much to let her crease the pages like that. No one else can do that and not get a talking-to.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32562971@N00/189498161/

BTW, check out the rest of the pics and tell me what you think
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32562971@N00/

Yeah, I'm just looking forward to getting out of college and getting hired by 30-somethings who played D&D, while the smeg-chuffing dolts who made fun of them clean our crap off of the toilets.

Again, nerd pride.

Most of my friends are "closet nerds" and I am "opendly nerdy." I have a bright green shirt with "nerd" in painfully bright yellow on the chest. So that's where I'm coming from.

I remember getting our games club shut down at my private school because it was viewed with suspiscion. And this it at a non-denominational school!

The main problem most people have with it is that you can't really "win." There's no point in D&D where a myconid comes up to you with a note saying, "congratulations, you've beaten the game!" Most people have trouble getting their heads around this.
My one roomie at Temple loved D&D when I introduced him, cause he was an actor/baseball player, so he got to act and act out he-man fantasies. My other roomie was mystified, "what stops you from saying, 'okay, I have a chainsaw that can kill god?'" and I said, "well, there's no challenge, therefore no fun." He was puzzled.

My third roomie said, 'okay, whatever Pomper, I'm gonna go get laid,"
"Me too," I said, "choosy girls choose geeks!

At work, I co-exist with a bunch of uneducated christian hillbillies, so I got a lot of flak for a period of time until I explained what the game was all about. Like most fears and hatreds, it stemmed from ignorance.

If someone burned all my books?

I might have to hospitalize them.

Uh, can't you just select the text in adobe reader, then...copy and paste it...then, uh...print it? Doesn't that solve your text-only hangup?

I have the book, I just never played it. I'm really glad it didn't win the campaign setting contest, as it is cumbersome and not terribly interesting. I can barely read it because of the insane amount of racial feats. Sorry, but I really dislike racial feats.

I have not gotten my issue in the mail yet.

We had some flooding here in Pennsylvania a bit more than a week ago, so that may account for some delay.

Anyone else NOT get their issue in the mail yet?

Yeah dude, I'm in York, PA, and I haven't gotten mine yet either. Grumble grubmle.

I like Greyhawk enough for the fact that it's the first setting, everything fits in it, and there's dungeons everywhere. That said, I don't like the actual details, like the Suloise and the Barbarian tribes. I find it all boring. But, like any other setting, it's got cool stuff and bad stuff.

That said, sure give it a proper 3.5 treatment. The 3.0 gazeteers were B&W, and I could barely read them out of boredom.

I dislike the covers with buxom women on them because it's embarrassing to read them in public. They think you're some kind of degenerate nerd, slavering over big-breasted elf girls. I'm a nice, normal guy with a kid so I obviously get laid, bucking the stereotype, and I think that this aspect of the game is a little juvenile, but unavoidable. "Pretty girls sell magazines."

This is one of the things keeping chicks from playing. My friend's girlfriend said, "this games seems kinda cool...what the hell? How can this girl possibly fight and cast spells around those things? Without the bras we have today, she'd be painfully bouncing all over the place...and aren't elves all skinny and small? Why the hypermammary development?"

Yeah, elves are irritating. Except in eberron. Then they're cool. But as my friend noted when I was giving them a presentation on Eberron: "All the short races are cool. The gnomes are like the CIA, the dwarves are bankers, and the halflings are nomadic, dinosaur riding barbarians. The elves, meanwhile, are obsessed with their ancestors, the humans are blah, and the orcs are weirdy-beardy druids. Long live short people!"

Think Christopher Columbus--the PCs start off as rankers, crewmen, marines & such and end up leading the expedition after all the leadership has been killed or corrupted.

When I think "Christopher Columbus," I think of the players shwoing up, converting, enslaving, raping, and killing the natives, killing them with their viruses, and building Wal-Marts on their land. Sorry, I dinnae like white people.

Actually, my grandfather helped to invent those things. Every time I see one of those cards that falls out when you first open the magazine or the little glued-on inserts, I think of Grandpa Tony. He also worked on the first plastic milk jugs, and when he brought one home, my dad (who was young at the time) said they'd never catch on.
And yeah, that annoyed me that it ripped them.