Bruunwald's page

Put it this way: one does not go out of one's way to intentionally buy a chocolate chip cookie full of raisins just so one can have the "privilege" of picking them out one by one.

LOL

That's the simple, funny way of putting it.

The TL/DR version of the more complicated part of it is that I think highly creative people like to feel some sense of "ownership" in what they create. The more derivative a thing is forced to be, the less ownership we feel, and that lessens the sense of accomplishment and lessens investment (read: love) in the thing.

Additionally, other IPs act as roadblocks to the creative process. Writing around them becomes cumbersome and depending on depth of IP/crunch infusion, can require unhappy rules changes.

I think some of the latter is unavoidable when you are publishing third party material that is very genre specific. But somebody should not have to do that sort of extensive writing just to play his home campaign on his own table.

Rules as vanilla as Pathfinder currently is, avoid this issue naturally. Infusing fluff into the crunch creates this issue without exception, in my experience.

Additional question: Will this new edition advance the timeline of Golarion?

Better Question: Can Golarion PLEASE NOT be "infused" into the core rules?

I'm sorry that I am post-bombing this, but there is a subject that has just ruined my day, that I do not see enough people complaining about. (At least not yet.)

I assume from the announcement, that "Golarion-Infused" means that, as with Starfinder, the lore and setting will be in many ways inseparable from the core rules beyond a simple mention of the setting's gods in the cleric section.

What a horrible idea this is. This is the biggest turnoff of Starfinder and the reason why I've yet to run a game.

I love you Paizo, but Golarion is tedious for a lot of us, and so is separating fluff from crunch in order to get a simple home campaign going.

Vanilla is best. Core books should be resources, not advertisements or novelizations.

Obligatory Topic Derail Post:

Infusing Golarion into the core rules is the worst idea imaginable.

If they don't do that, I will buy all the new books.
If they DO do that, I will buy none of the new books.

Logan Bonner wrote:

Phylotus wrote:

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

This is their new baby, their second baby.

What's Starfinder then, their adopted child? :-P

It's our child pulled forward into the future and then brought back to our time.

You heard it here first, folks. Starfinder is Cable.

Oh man. Are you bringing Liefeld on as part of the creative team also?!? Will we see huge shoulder pads on every iconic?

Forget the shoulder pads... will any of the characters actually have FEET?!?

Two Things that I ask (and I am sure will be ignored):

Please do not muck too much with the monster creation rules. The high level of detail in monster creation is one of the reasons I have stuck it out with Pathfinder all this time. Nerfing and reducing detail like a certain other game did will make me cry.

Secondly... Regarding the Golarion-Infused bit.

Please NO.

NO NO NO NO NO.

Campaign settings are for... well, for campaign setting books. They are not for rulebooks. Rulebooks should be vanilla.

The big, horrible bad weakness of Starfinder is that it is infused with lore that probably 50% of GMs - at least anybody with any kind of creative streak - must REMOVE to get any kind of home game going.

You WILL lose me, and I think a lot of other customers, if we have to wade through any more Golarion in our Core books than the names of gods.

I love Paizo, but infusing Golarion into the rules is bound to result in the sort of tedium that just kills a game. Bad, bad idea.

Lol - he asked, didn't like the answer, threw a fit and left.

And the thread just went on and on...

RE #3: Can we assume creatures with multiple natural weapons still get an attack with each during a full round (or its equivalent)?

The OP's point seems to be "I am unsure if my GM will allow me to X = game broken and bloated, therefore new edition."

This is not an argument. Not only are options... well, optional, and therefore do not in and of themselves prove the brokenness of the system, but there would be no reason whatsoever to believe that a PF 2.0 would incorporate all of the options the OP would like, into a single, streamlined core tome.

Based on the history of virtually every single gaming system ever, the limitations of print, and economic considerations, any new core 2.0 would be as limited as the original, and any options the OP regards as viable for his enjoyment would necessarily be released over the course of years, creating the same complaints of brokenness and bloat as the OP is now suffering from.

What? No Gene Simmons jokes?

I am super excited for this Bestiary more than any before it for one simple reason. One word even. KRAMPUS! I cant wait to see what Paizo comes up with for stats of this legendary creature. I hope they do some other holiday creatures. Samhain maybe. Also interested in a lovcraftian player race. March cant come fast enough.

Samhain? That's a festival, not a creature.

Bruunwald wrote:

Killer_GM wrote:

The Norv wrote:

Killer_GM wrote:

I'm suggesting that a Secretary of State who has sold/peddled influence to numerous foreign entities and governments for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, which the FBI is currently investigating (unlike the emails) is deserving of incarceration if her guilt can be proven, which I believe it will be.

She has been investigated. Again and again and again and again and again. And NOTHING has been found.

So yes, you're free to believe that, and there are MANY problems with HRC, but I cannot understand this line of thinking.

Those investigations were inadequate, and continually hampered by Clinton and her cronies who didn't play ball, and an Obama DOJ who didn't even attempt to seriously investigate her. If Trump wants to go after her, the evidence will be found. Hell, 20% of US uranium is now going to Russia, and investors donated millions to the Clinton foundation. That example alone (out of many) ought to do it.

Again, the "information" you flush into our world through your toilet portal is less actual and more a confection of your lower bowel.

You need to PROVE your wild accusations. With a better source than some paranoid right wing blog.

Given that Trump was able to win this election, I don't think he does.

A bunch of paranoid nutjobs agreeing with their lead paranoid nutjob cannot vindicate a lie.

The Norv wrote:

Killer_GM wrote:

I'm suggesting that a Secretary of State who has sold/peddled influence to numerous foreign entities and governments for contributions to the Clinton Foundation, which the FBI is currently investigating (unlike the emails) is deserving of incarceration if her guilt can be proven, which I believe it will be.

She has been investigated. Again and again and again and again and again. And NOTHING has been found.

So yes, you're free to believe that, and there are MANY problems with HRC, but I cannot understand this line of thinking.

Those investigations were inadequate, and continually hampered by Clinton and her cronies who didn't play ball, and an Obama DOJ who didn't even attempt to seriously investigate her. If Trump wants to go after her, the evidence will be found. Hell, 20% of US uranium is now going to Russia, and investors donated millions to the Clinton foundation. That example alone (out of many) ought to do it.

Again, the "information" you flush into our world through your toilet portal is less actual and more a confection of your lower bowel.

You need to PROVE your wild accusations. With a better source than some paranoid right wing blog.

The USA is done with the corrupt Clintons, who have no solution for 20 trillion in debt and how to pay for this failed socialist utopian dream.

What planet are you flushing this paranoid delusion from?

I voted for Harambe, but why is everyone here acting like misanthrope Clinton would be better than crazy Trump? They're both terrible people who are terrible for the US and terrible for the world.

I know this site is hyper left wing (by US standards) but seriously. Pretending she's any better than Trump is willful ignorance and denial, which is exactly what got us in to this situation in the first place.

The painful truth is we US citizens really hecked up this time, even more than usual.

I do have to say I didn't think the US would ever see another republican president. The US right just doesn't hold the same values that the rest of the western world does, and the millenials and 90s kids certainly aren't voting right. I'm totally floored right now. But Brexit happened and they killed Harambe. I guess anything is possible.

Also, stop being so dramatic. This is not the end of the world. Maybe in four years we'll have learned something and our prime candidates won't be members of the oligarchy.

One of the hardest things to tolerate throughout this crapstorm has been the lame equivalency argument. Hillary Clinton is nowhere near as bad a candidate or even human being that Trump is, and is supremely more qualified, resume-wise, to hold office.

This whole equivalency thing is just a short cut to thinking. Makes people feel better about not actually giving a crap enough to pick up a newspaper and actually read it.

There's been a lot of talk about the Republicans being in implosion.

But we seriously looking at the Republicans holding the majority in Congress, the Presidency, and all but extinct in state and local offices.

You have to remember these things are cyclical and they boomerang, ultimately driving trends farther and farther afield over time.

The Republicans are imploding. They are aging and their mindset is outdated on the world stage. Their general policy is to accomplish very little and to be destructive when they do act. Their status quo (rich getting richer and power concentrating with the wealthy) is not something society can tolerate forever.

However, political trends boomerang. We tend to see a conservative backlash every eight or so years, as voters whip themselves into a frenzy and conservative elements take advantage of the unrest. Each time, they come back worse than ever; more repugnant, less honest, more determined to maintain the status quo.

But, eventually the anal clench relents, the country realizes that things always suck under a Republican president, and the vote swings back to the middle, and during this time, progressives move the "middle" just a bit more left and more progressive ideas become the norm.

I think we will continue to see this boomerang trend for decades, but over time the country will align itself in a more and more progressive way until we are more on par with the rest of the world. We might not see it in our lifetimes, but it will happen; the Republican party will one day be forces to either make a paradigm shift to keep up with the advancements of a more enlightened world, or it will have to die.

If our country cannot make that happen, then frankly it doesn't deserve to survive.

You know what thread I'd like to see resurrected? The one where the werewolf dragon born monk/sorcerer/barbarian (or whatever he was) was complaining about his companions falling into the 10 ft. deep pit he dug all the way round their 20 ft. wide camp every night before tucking in, because they lacked the Dexterity to leap over it when awakened by the GM's nightly raids.

Gold.

Well, the next time one of them has the back of your favorite head up against a wall, and you've just told them Jack Burton has their check in the mail, just look 'em in the eye and remind them:

"Concern for life is not weakness. Contempt for life is not strength."

It won't change anything. But it might confuse them for awhile, and that's good for a laugh or two.

Here's another version of the same question: doesn't everybody replace core with splat?

No.
And no.

Most people I know don't know what a slayer is and don't care.

Probably all of this could have been bypassed with an acknowledgment that, for most of us, it is a given that the PCs are exceptional, and because of that, and in line with standard fantasy tropes/mythological tales/fairy tales/legends, their colleagues, opponents, foes, rivals, and mentors and special tools are equally rare, especially magical tools and spellcasters.

The exception would be higher magic campaigns, which can range widely.

That isn't to say that I don't enjoy reading through post after post of increasingly angry pedantry, bordering on a flamewar. Because I do, in a sad, sick way. But it is a long way around to go, to point out something that has been an instinctive go-to default for most GMs' campaigns for more than forty years.

I guess my players are an exception. They don't seem to have any problem using it in combat; either finding opportunities, or giving up their moment of glory to do it.

I used to have a player or two who you'd never catch "wasting" actions to help anyone else succeed, and while that sort of behavior might have been taken for granted when we were teenagers, it became pretty lame to see full grown men with gray in their beards still acting this way. Fortunately, the Natural Selection of our gaming group has weeded those fellows out.

I think it was partly an incident with a party paladin and a demon of some sort that convinced much of the group that Aid Another was still viable at higher levels. Those +2s might not seem like much in some situations, but when you are aiding a character who is made for combatting a particular foe, they add up quickly to a neat and tidy combat with much fewer resources wasted amongst the entire group.

What stuns me are the people claiming it's "getting worse." Since the core is the same as it's been since Day One, I can only imagine these poor unfortunate souls live amongst oppressive, fascist-like dictatorial Game Store owners, or a fleet of Satanic GMs who force them to play with every new splat book that comes out, and that they cannot decline to play the game at all because a Paizo-paid assassin has fitted their beloved pets with explosive collars programmed to detonate if they don't sign in electronically at their weekly game.

How can a thing that is the same get worse due to expansions if you are not required to use the expansions? OH... IT CAN'T.

For my part, I love Pathfinder for the same reason I loved 3.5: monster building. I love making monsters, and I love a system that defines them clearly so that they can be made to be balanced. I'd played D&D since 1981, and I saw no reason to give up what felt to me to be a system that had finally arrived at a place where I could fairly create the menaces I had long dreamed of building. I don't deny that the system overall can be cumbersome. But being old school, I don't let it drag down the flow of the game. If things need to move, then I just move them along, and the rules can be bent to do so... nothing different from how we always played.

The only systems I've ever played, where monster creation felt more Game Master-friendly, were the ones I, myself, created.

I'd like to make sure I understand the consensus. At least as it seems to stand.

That is that the only people who DON'T know how to design something for Pathfinder, are Paizo themselves, because they've never even glanced at all the work they've done for it.

Did I get that right?

Seems like that's all I've really taken away from this discussion.

125. Because there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

Still, pornography has been shown to have some influence in causing a few issues. Younger viewers often have their expectations of sexuality influenced by pornography (Is my body suppose to be look like that? Is that the most pleasurable way to have sex? What the hell is this 'foreplay' real women are expecting me to do? Am I suppose to do what those women in the videos do?)

I would like to see some real evidence of that from a legitimate study. My understanding is that this is little more than anecdotal, Oprah-style pseudo psychology. I have never seen a genuine medical study that correlated a real connection between porn and body image, and I wouldn't expect to see one.

Kids generally get their body image problems from peers, from the locker room, from parents, etc. Those are REAL influences that act upon a person's psyche day after day after day, representing data from people who actually matter to us. There's no comparison. As for being clumsy at sex... how many of us were the Greatest of Lovers right out the gate on our first dates? Why blame that on porn? That's just part of growing up.

I have seen a legitimate study from Johns Hopkins, no less, that correlated a possible decline - yes, DECLINE - in reported violent sexual offenses in areas where porn was more readily available.

As with all things that are fun, I think porn needs to be taken in moderation. As the father of a friend once said when we were randy teens, "you don't want to skin the derby."

Sleeping in nothing but a belt and a headband...

Sounds like the '80s.

I had one guy in the game who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and used it to his advantage in every situation, tried to impose rules on non-rules and story situations, argued often, stopped the game at times, was completely inflexible when it came to ad hoc rulings, killed momentum and spontaneity, and re-interpeted the rules to his advantage each time it suited him without a hint of irony.

Bad rules lawyer. (Bad! Off the couch!)

I had another guy in the game who had an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and used it to help me clear things up when there was confusion, who helped his companions choose good spells and feats, sped up the time it took to find obscure rules, set the rules aside when really fun things were happening, liked ad hoc rulings for the spontaneity they provided, and waited until after the game to keep me honest by bringing up anything he thought might be problematic later, or might have been a questionable ruling.

Good rules lawyer. GM's helper.

The Fox wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

You might want to back up a second and recognize that you are essentially saying we should outlaw people being wrong.

Think about that for a second.

Nope. People can be wrong all they want...until that wrongness impacts someone else.

More to the point, who decides who is "wrong" on these matters? From an objective standpoint.

"I hate black people" is an opinion. It is a bigoted opinion, but it isn't "wrong". You can't prove to the man that he does not, in fact, hate black people.

Perhaps it is morally wrong, but I doubt anyone here wants to see the world after it has been taken over by the morality police (I imagine if would look a lot like Australia will in 20 years, if you pay attention to what's going on over there).

Clearly, nobody is wrong about whether or not they HAVE an opinion. That's just dodging the subject. Everybody has an opinion. We all know that.

But I call BS on the old, tired, lame, wrong-headed argument that keeping jerks in line makes the rest of us the bad guys. An editorial on CNN recently opined that people ought to be allowed to think and say all the stupid crap in their minds, and then they ought to have to face the consequences for doing so. And I totally agree with that.

But when you make that thought and that speech into a physical thing that affects the lives of others, you are crossing a line. You are now doing real harm in the world. And there is nothing - no phony "objectivity" shield in the world, you can hide behind, that will make that okay or mitigate your guilt. Objectivity is great for science, and it's all nice and well in an online argument. But in the end, we human beings HAVE to set standards and we HAVE to agree upon a mutually understood standard of respect and civility, or we won't last as a species.

Did everybody here take Critical Thinking 101? Yep. We all are duly impressed with each other's ability to debate objectivity and subjectivity until we're blue in the face. Hoorah - we're so damned smart.

So what?

How does that apply to actual human beings? How would you like it to be applied to YOU?

And by the way, this "Freedom of Religion" nonsense isn't new. Back in the 1960s an almost identically-named law was floated (and killed by the Supreme Court), based on the right of Christians to freely practice their religion by discriminating against, and banning black people from businesses, on the basis that the Bible advocates slavery, amongst other awfulness, and so they ought to have the right to avoid them, blah, blah, blah...

My response to this is simple: if you're not adult enough to be a part of the human race, you don't have to. Stay at home with your doors boarded up. Pout in your closet all you want. But the rest of us have every right to make the world better for ourselves. ALL of us. And we're too far along as a species to keep acting like little children.

Ok ... starting my petition to get GenCon to come to Seattle ...

Too late! Been bombarding their Facebook page since this afternoon with bids to come to San Francisco.

This again? There really needs to be a button for voting down a post and maybe even killing a thread.

As some have noted, Charisma in the game stands-in for BOTH physical beauty and power of personality.

The Core book says so. In actual words. That are printed in English.

According to Internet memes, Cheeseburgers would come from the Catfolk homeland.

You got that backward.

That's who WANTS HAZ the cheeseburgers.

Somebody else -- we may never know what diabolical mind -- invented them to taunt the Catfolk.

342. Two words: "Edition Wars."

Pack the space beneath the floorboards with black powder, install a bronze plaque into the floor enchanted with explosive runes. Tell them it's dedicated to their greatness and they won't believe what great things the plaque says.

325. Manchester United lost again.

He doesn't WANT the pants. He just wants to see if he can steal them.

320. A visiting wizard has replaced the missing head of his stone golem companion with the head from the statue of the town hero.

I like how this new person came here with a very simple question: "can I play a non-evil Drow in a home (non-PFS) game?" and you essentially tripped over each other in your rush to punish him for asking.

Firstly, there is no hard rule on this, nor "official" rule as some of you have stated, but beside that, he never said his game was set in Golarion, so assuming so and shoving that down his throat was extraneous and presumptive, at best. Moreover, this thread is not in PFS.

Worse, you all quickly hijacked the thread to get into a giant argument about emo characters and "Mary Sues" and whatever other bits you lot might have stumbled upon over at TV Tropes.

The short and quick answer is that guys have been playing non-evil Drow in home campaigns since the game began, and as long as his GM is okay with it, really ANY backstory is just fine.

Seriously, this behavior is the cause of two things:

1. It's why we can't have nice things.

2. It's why people are afraid of gamers.

I wouldn't be surprised if the OP never came here for advice again.

312. "Why does your wand of sound burst go up to eleven? Why don't you just make ten the top number and make ten be a little louder?"

My variation on this is that I am almost never, ever a player. I am just about always the GM.

For decades and decades now.

Sometimes when I see a mini I really like, and I start to work on him, I will think, "man, I'd love to play this guy as a PC."

And then, maybe I'll stat him up. Even though I know I'll likely never get to play him.

In all the various "what's your favourite AP?" threads over the years, I've been struck by the fact that the ones I rate highest were the first few I read back when it was all new and exciting. Probably a case of becoming spoilt/jaded, I'd guess.

I still really like the recent ones (barring Iron Gods, which I think was done well but is not my cup of tea) but none have grabbed me the way those first few (Crimson Throne, Legacy of Fire and Rise of the Runelords) did.

Is that true for others? Are your favourites generally amongst the first few you read?

It is a long standing tradition in RPGs that players fall in love with their first exciting experiences, and then hang their nostalgia hats on those systems and adventures, enshrining them in a rose-colored glass case against which no subsequent system or adventure can compare.

If you started with the original D&D box sets, you're likely going to find out that you defend your position on every new rule change and every new system release to those pamphlets. If you started in 1st Ed, same thing. 2nd Edition kids think that edition was the pinnacle of greatness. 3rd Edition kids can't understand how we old folks ever played the game before their Precious was released, etc.

Adventures follow the exact same pattern. If, to use myself as an example, you fell in love with the game through AD&D's A Series (slavers), G Series (Against the Giants), and S Series (Tomb of Horrors/White Plume Mountain), then you are apt to rapt nostalgic about how "cool" and "dangerous" adventures were then, and likely nothing since has ever compared.

My own adventures and campaigns are a constant struggle to bring that feel back, even if to update it and refine it into something better balanced and more "realistic" in detail. I am always disappointed with new "professionally" published adventures, Paizo and otherwise. But not because they suck. Intellectually, I understand that most are well written and deserving pieces of work. Emotionally, however, I just cannot connect with them the way I did back when it was all new.

Makes me a terrible customer in terms of adventure paths (I'm still a GREAT customer when it comes to snatching up rulebooks) because I approach them with caution, rarely buy, and then never seem to use them for my own games. Makes me a really good writer and GM though. I always go the extra 10 or 11 miles.

You have my sympathies. I have probably the most extended experience with the most problematic players you could imagine in the years since I began playing (1981), and I always cringe when I hear about this sort of thing. I feel you. This person sounds like a combination of a couple problem players of my own. Probably not coincidentally, they, too, are both female. I find female problem players have a different bag of tricks from the male problem players, though I will say that in my experience the males are more chronic and less apt to change for the better before getting tossed from the game.

This is a particularly difficult situation, because you don't want to lose the boyfriend in the equation.

Now, I am going to throw something out that you might not like.

She is being a jerk, yes.

So are the rest of you. The GM is responding to her stubbornness by trying to punish her character. You guys are getting riled up by her behavior right in front of her, and trying to push her. You are fighting on her terms, allowing her to control you emotionally and make you angry. She is pushing buttons (perhaps unwittingly) and you are responding in kind.

As a father, let me tell you that the worst thing you can do is let your kid see that he is upsetting you. It is the quickest and surest way to lose control of the situation. Same thing goes for being a GM and for playing in a group.

In short, the problem player wants attention, even (maybe especially) negative attention, and man are you guys giving it to her.

I am not going to give you a magic bullet to fix this, because there isn't one. It's a precarious position. But the rest of the group is also responsible for making it so. You are placing too much importance on the boyfriend's role in your game. This makes it unbearable to lose him, which in turn ratchets up the tension. You also seem to be making some real assumptions as to why she acts this way. I have a feeling you don't know for sure that LARPing has caused this behavior. Like Uma Thurman's gangsters in Pulp Fiction, gamers are worse than a knitting circle when it comes to sitting around gossiping and making assumptions about others.

You all need to be honest and speak with each other, and you all need to be flexible. If you don't want to lose the boyfriend, you will have to deal with the girlfriend like grown up human beings, rather than inflexible man children whose favorite toy is threatened. Get the group together and talk about everybody's role without pointing fingers. Find some common ground and play there. Stop treating other people like children of a lesser god and concentrate on the positive things they bring to the table. I bet you'll find that if you can zero in on something positive in her, and help her accentuate that, she will back off on the more obnoxious stuff.

End of line.

Not quite, if you go by these diagrams:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/combat/space-reach-threatened-area-te mplates

For example, look at the 30' cone. It looks like you sweep out a 30' distance from your point of origin, so each side is 30', and the max distance down the center is also 30'. It's not a right circular cone, but a conical spherical section like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_sector

So, if you wanted max radius, you should be X/sqrt(2) above the ground, and you would end up with X/sqrt(2) in radius: 10' radius for 15' cone, 20' radius for 30' cone.

No. Because a cone is a cone.

A cone spell has the 3D shape of a right circular cone with height X and a base diameter of X, where X is the listed length. So a 15' cone spell like colorspray has a height of 15' and a diameter of 15'.

So shooting it downwards would affect a 3x3 cross on the ground as you originally asked. because of how the grid system handles non-5' increments.

Yes. Because a cone is a cone.

I am just asking in general, because it feels like the fabric of reality that holds everything together is falling apart...

Getting back to the OP, what organ is it that "senses" the "fabric of reality that holds everything together," and what brand of ginseng improves it so that I can share in this tingly sensation?

I made a dungeon out of a dead outsider and put fleshy deformities and decay all over the chambers. Then, to make matters worse, I put a key item in what looked like a floor sphincter. Said hole had trap oozes in it.

That's funny, because not too long ago, I began an adventure with an "introductory" encounter where the party found themselves stuck in an interdimensional space with The @#$hole of Eternity, which was a talking sphincter occupying a 15'x15' square in a dungeon floor. I actually sculpted a mini for it out of Magic Sculpt surrounded by Hirst Arts tiles.

A temporally-misplaced McDonalds manned by a crew of goblins determined to run it right, but hampered by a lack of the company handbook (and the fact they are goblins).

Sounds like not everybody at your table is mature enough to handle an Evil Game.

Might want to proceed with new, non-Evil characters until everybody has had a chance to grow up a bit.