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Okay, with WotC we had 3E, 3.5E, and 3.XE. Now along comes Pathfinder RPG. We've been clamoring for it, telling Paizo they should make 3.75E, but they actually surprised the hell outta us and went ahead and did it. But 3.75E just doesn't have much appeal. Neither does 3.Paizo, as some folks locally have taken to calling it (Watcher, who started that? I lost track.). How about 3P? Short. Simple. Just as easy to say as "Three-E", and easier than "Three-Point-Five".
Agreed, 100%. Yup. Hadn't given it much thought, but Picking Pockets is more a function of being quiet and sneaky than anything else.
Actually, that'd probably be more a function of Perception: you're looking them over, picking out little details like clothing, walk, mannerisms, and (especially) how those differ from what's someone in those circumstances should look and behave like.
Gotta say the Saga skill system, simplified though it is, just pushes credibility too far for me. Say two people train, in their youth, as black smiths. One joins the military and spends years away at war, never picking up a hammer that didn't end up in an orc's skull. The other stayed at home and continued honing his skills at the forge. Five years on, the soldier returns home and, ability boosts the exception, is equally skilled at smithing to the professional smith. Yeah, it's all a game, but that pushes suspension of disbelief beyond credible limits. I like the idea that the cleric who spends his time in the infirmary will be a skilled surgeon, while his fellow who tends the garden almost exclusively might be skilled, at best, at first aid. Yeah, it's a bit of math involved, but there are many programs out there that can handle that for you with ease.
Text only version would be nice.
Okay,thanks to a lot of circumstances coming together (both positives and negatives), I'm going to be getting my 38 year old butt back in school this fall. The downside is that in order to do so, I'm going to have to significantly cut short the Savage Tide campaign I'm running so I'm not ignoring school work for game prep (always an issue with me). As it was, I had to stop reading more than one issue ahead in the adventure path - it was distracting me from prepping for the next session! So here's my situation: after a year, we're about halfway through Sea Wyvern's Wake (lots of ROLE play, lots of no-wife-no-kids camaraderie, some side quests, every other week game that gets preempted by real life every few months...). What story elements, Here There Be Monsters to Prince Of Demons, are essential for it to truly be a Savage Tide game? Stopping shadow pearl production is critical. Discovering Demogorgon's plan as well. What else needs to be in there? For example, reading through Here There Be Monsters, I'm really not finding anything that the characters need in the adventure in order to move the plot along, and plan on moving straight from Tamoachan (current point in SWW) to Farshore. (Don't worry - they'll be getting plenty of Isle of Dread time - I've got too much nostalgic feelings for IoD to let this opportunity pass by.)
Oddball thing is: I'm set against buying into 4E (haven't liked what I've seen, and most of the locals seem more interested in 3.5E and other systems), and am planning on sticking with 3.5E, but every few days we come across some glitch in the rules (usually from changes over the past year or two when WotC has been gearing up for 4E) that has me looking at my gaming shelf going "Hmm... do I really need that book any more?" One more purge, and Green Ronin/True20 will out number WotC products on the shelf. So, if you're in Louisville, KY, there's a comic shop on Bardstown Rd near Taylorsville Rd that's been seeing an influx of 3.5E books lately. I think they resell 'em for half price, and the books were well cared for...
Is she sending all the profits to the Gygax family? If not, this has to be the most disgusting thing to hit the geek community - EVER! Shameless... Immoral... Unethical... If she were charging only CafePress' base item cost, that'd be one thing, but this?...
I don't see anyone complaining about 3.5 over in the d20/OGL forum. I see a bunch of folk talking about the game they love to play. There was complaining on the open boards until Paizo put up a 4E discussion board. Now all 4E discussion, pro and con, has moved here, leaving the other forums free for their focussed discussions. Perhaps once 4E has been released and, more importantly, Paizo has made their decision regarding which edition to produce products for, then, and only then, will the 3.XE folks leave the 4E forum for the 4E folks. Until then, however... Maybe the 3.5 folk should just stick to the boards about their favored edition except for the poll type threads? Except that the discussions that have been posted have been valid to the forum: discussion of 4E. Because those of us who will not be "upgrading" wish to relate what is known of 4E to 3.XE, and further explain to Paizo, the company we all know and love, why we would prefer their products be based on one edition or another, does not invalidate our posts as appropriate to this forum. If it did, the mods would shut down and/or delete inappropriate threads. If we 3.XE folks limit our responses to polls, our words become little more than soap box speeches, having little or no weight. If, however, we enter into debate with 4E proponents, and offer intelligent discourse on the particular rules elements as they become known, we can better provide for Paizo the wants and needs of their consumers with regards to the products they produce. We're providing market research for them, FOC! As much as Paizo loves their fans, make no mistake, they ARE a company. They are in this business to make money, and if they just rush out and switch to an edition of the game without first determining if 1) they can publish the products they want in that system and 2) publish products that the majority of their customers will want to buy... well, they wouldn't be the success they are today if they were that naive. So which would you rather suffer: five more months of 3.XE folks posting their opinions of 4E and providing feedback to Paizo, or a year or two from now having a Paizo-less world because they made the wrong decision based on not having that feedback?
If this was an interview, where are Jason's comments and quotes? I'd feel much better if we could "hear" Jason's words in context, rather than some "interviewers" recollections and rewordings of what he said.
Actually, I have to go with "No—I was planning on staying with 3.5, and I still expect to (although even 3.5 may go away in favor of True20...)"
1) Do you plan to convert to the new edition of D&D? No. I've seen little if anything to support WotC's assertions that 4E will the vast improvement over 3.XE that they claim it will be, while at the same time have seen significant improvements over 3.XE in Green Ronin's True20 system. 2) If Paizo converts its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products? Since Paizo will no longer be producing products for a system I play, I will stop buying Paizo products that aren't 3.XE or system neutral. 3) If Paizo does not convert its RPG products to 4.0, how will that affect your purchasing patterns for our products? My purchasing should remain the same.
Oh yeah - Have the Golem on either a Paizo Blue shirt, or a White one with Paizo Blue Trim ;).
Okay, when Paizo had the Dragon and Dungeon licenses, we had t-shirts for them. Pathfinder comes along, and we get the Goblin T. Titanic Games gave us the Kill Doctor Lucky and Stonehenge/Spinal Tap Homage T's. When are we gonna see a T-shirt featuring the Paizo Golem and Logo?
About the closest ones I can think of are from the WotC line, and would require some modification. Whitespawn Hordeling already has the arm flaps, but needs a new head and some smoothing. Twig Blight and Kobold Zombie are spindly and have arms partially raised, so it might be easy to place arm flaps. Halfling Sneak and Dark Creeper could have their cloaks clipped into flaps, and have a sufficiently large head to modify enlarge the eyes. Also in the DDM line, for a Hadozee, there's the Warape (upraised arms, but spiked gauntlets) and Taer (white crouching gorilla), but perhaps best of all would be an Orc, since they have the gorilla-ish faces to begin with, as well as offering a lot more variety.
Much as I hate to do it, I'm going to have to cancel my Pathfinder subscription too. Once we wipe out some debt, I'll be back, be sure of that!
With the way WotC has been handling things regarding 4E, it wouldn't surprise me if the OGL/SRD didn't become available until after 4E has been released. That way, WotC can have a certain exclusivity for the first few months of the new edition while other publishers scramble to decide if they want to support it and, if so, get compatible products on the shelves.
I've got enough money invested in 3.5E to cover my gaming needs for the foreseeable future. Roughly 75% of the players locally are in the same boat, with the other 25% playing other systems. Those reasons alone will keep me from upgrading anytime soon.
If you have the time and means, I'd recommend reading the old 2E product The Scarlet Brotherhood, which details the nation and its interests about the Flanaess. That said, militarily, the Brotherhood armies are composed of Human subcitizens, with humanoid shock troops of Orc, Goblin and Hobgoblin stock. Also, the leader of the SB, the Father of Obedience, is aware that the distance of the Amedio Jungle and the Olman Islands from the SB homeland is sufficient to make a too strong presence dangerous for their efforts closer to home.
Okay, I hit the Paizo Boards, same as I do at least twice a day. For the first time in a couple days, I glanced over at my shopping cart, and see there's a 10% discount listed on the total. What's up with that?
Actually, after looking over the previews on the WotC site, I may have to break my self imposed "No New WotC Products" vow long enough to pick this up. One of the worst things for me is the pre-session packing of my bag, and the decision process involved in figuring out which books will be necessary for the session vs. the carrying capacity of my shoulder/back.
Not sure how hard it would be, but perhaps you could add some code that, when it detects an item that has had a status change in someones shopping cart, would change the color of their shopping cart icon.
Anywhere along the Amedio coast would be good. An Olman fisherman's boat is capsized, and as he makes his way to shore is bitten by Bruce the Savage Shark, but manages to make it to shore alive. His friends heal him, but don't remove the taint of the savage fever. The next night, he succumbs to the fever and attacks those nursing him, becoming Patient Zero of an Olman outbreak. Some time later, a jungle creature attacks one of the infected, gaining the infection through the wound it inflicts. If the party has a few of these encounters before Father Feres succumbs to the Blue Slaad egg, it could really enhance that encounter.
If they do, I don't think it would be before the Pathfinder Chronicles Gazetteer releases in January. Until then, the information we have from one volume of Pathfinder, the Player's Guide, and four GameMastery modules would make anything posted to a Golarion board guestimates, speculation and fuel for snickering Paizoites ("<snicker> They're gonna be soooo surprised when they see what that really is...").
I've owned four of the so far six editions, and haven't seen a compelling reason to spend money on the seventh. Locally, that seems to be the consensus: with the investment we have in 3.5E, we have enough material to cover all our D&D gaming needs for many years to come.
Actually, I'd think that, since it's a fumble, it'd be a situation where you targeted one spell while trying to cast another. Say the only difference between Orb of Acid and Orb of Fire is the element key word. While the Orb of Fire might be cohesive enough to stick together while you hold it over your head before throwing, the dripping of an Orb of Acid makes it best to throw it sideways rather than overhand. Saying the acid keyword while your hand's over your head for a fire spell, and suddenly you're doing your impression of Arnold Toht...
For me, Darkmaiden's Dance became the Blue Nixie.
The supplement for #144 has been up for about a week (see HERE). The rest? Well, our beloved Paizoites are devoting any spare time they can find in the Pathfinder/Gamemastery schedule to work them up. Of course, seeing as how they aren't seeing any financial profit from the supplements, they may be using that free time for some well deserved rest. Be patient.
The great thing is, you can keep the cards in a box and have them available the next time the PCs face a particular monster. If I were to start a new campaign tomorrow, I'd have goblins, skeletons, orcs, dragons of various ages, elementals of various types and sizes, etc, in abundance, all indexed by monster type for easy reference. If I wanted to improvise an encounter, I could just go through the cards and pick out some appropriate critters of the right CRs to build a combat encounter appropriate to the PCs. The more you use the cards, the more valuable they become. Chris, check out The Game Mechanics Initiative Card page. They've got sets for all the OGL monsters. Plus, the page also has the 10 dragon species ready for use.
I used them for the first 2-3 sessions I ran of Savage Tide, but they just got too unwieldy. They're great for having a short list of NPC abilities, but it becomes a real hassle for tracking initiative. Now, for an initiative tracker well worth the money, invest in the GameMastery Combat Pad. Trust me: it'll be the best $17 you've ever spent on roleplaying. Then hit the Savage Tide Encounters PDF thread and ask Mando to include you in the mailings. Having the full stat block on one handy sheet just makes life so much easier.
What does everyone else think? Should we leave a few areas untouched forever? Give us a couple "Here there be dragons" areas, with little more than sketchy rumors.
Back when I first started playing D&D, the one artist I really couldn't stand was Erol Otus. Hated his work with a passion. Fast forward ten to fifteen years, and I gained an appreciation for his art. It had a style and flow to it that other artists couldn't capture, even though their stuff was more realistic. Today, EO is one of, if not the top artist for D&D in my opinion. Kyle's work is fast moving up the ladder, primarily because it has a very similar feel to Erol's pen and ink work. If he had been more into humor, Erol Otus would have been producing the same art many years ago that Kyle is producing today. Of today's crop of artists, with the exception of Wayne Reynolds (who can somehow make a painting of a person standing perfectly still, yet still in motion), I prefer those who have a more comic-bookish look, cell-shaded: strong lines, simpler transitions between colors... Gimme something that's got a clean appearance, not one where the colors bleed and merge so much that I'm questioning whether something's an arm, and if so, who it belongs to! Gimme art that doesn't look like it was left in a too-hot car before being brought in photography/scanning! Gimme art where the colors match what you'd see in real life, not some rainbow of unrealistic hues (My gods, if you ever have Jeff Easley do anything for you, I'll seriously consider dropping my subscription!)!
This is the kind of thing that makes me want to keep a laptop behind the screen... Excellent work.
For those of us whose time is only slightly more limited than their attention span, would it be possible to have, on the GameMastery Module page, a checklist of the GameMastery modules sorted by levels?
Actually, it's not so much the materials they've used on Pathfinder that dictates the price, it's what's missing from the product: advertising.
Each of the original Complete books had an Asian-themed base class: Ninja (Adventurer), Wu Jen (Arcane), Shugenja (Divine) and Samurai (Warrior).
My only complaint about Pathfinder's quality (and it's one that carries over from my Dungeon subscription): the images print too dark*. Compare the bedroom scene on page 17 of the print edition to the same page in the PDF. The print editions images loose details in the darker areas because the images haven't been properly color corrected.As a result, when the inks hit the paper and bleed, dark areas of the image get darker; if the images are properly corrected, when printed, they retain the same quality as the original. When you get down to it, though, this is the only complaint I have about Pathfinder's quality. Everything else about the production is superior in every way to most of the D&D products out today. *<sigh> Children, be warned: this is the kind of obsessive analysis of printed materials you'll pick up from 10 years in the newspaper industry...
If you guys ever have an interest in opening additional facilities on the other coast, you'll have to fight me off. ;-) Sorry, but I doubt they'd want to open a facility on the east coast: it's generally too expensive for both the company and it's employees. Now, a fairly cheap city like Louisville, KY, with it's UPS hub, that's the place to put a new shipping facility... :D
You could also expand this a bit to factor in that certain types of creatures are more well known by the general populace than others. Your average folk might be well versed in Animals and Humanoids (-2 DC), but they probably aren't familiar with the difference between a Black Dragon and a Wyvern (+1 DC), and would likely know little to nothing of Aberrations and Outsiders (+2 DC).
Disenchanted? Actually, no more like thrilled. The basic rule of thumb rule actually makes the monsters more mysterious and legendary. Is this a standard rule suggestion or something that is new? I am unaware of this ruling, being somewhat of a 3.5 neophyte. This is covered on page 78 of the 3.5 Player's Handbook, although there it uses the creatures HD instead of CR (I've found it's one of the more overlooked aspects of the Knowledge skills). I do agree with James that the current system is a good bit unrealistic. For example, a character without Knowledge (Nature) can't identify a dog (a DC11 check; untrained, you're limited to DC10 checks or less). One of the rare bad 2E to 3E/3.5E decisions was removing the Frequency stat. That would have made a great variable for Knowledge checks - say DC +0 for Common, +5 for Uncommon, +10 for Rare, +15 for Very Rare, and +5 for Unique (the Tarrasque example James gave explains this one). Drop the base DC to 5 to allow the average man to be able to identify the livestock and working animals on his farm.
The problems I see with this are actually ones I'd encourage, as they will make for some good roleplaying. Perhaps the party comprises some of the "two dozen vagrants and curs" employed by Gorvi (Sandpoint 6-7). What brings them to Sandpoint? Perhaps trying to find out the source of the Seven Tooth Tribe's "wealth." Maybe they got wind of the attack planned by their rival tribe, the Thistletop tribe, and want to undermine their efforts. Of course, there are comedic possibilities galore during the assault on Sandpoint. Things like one of the PCs chasing an enemy goblin, only to be halted by the relentless pastry throwing of the Avertin women (Sandpoint 21), especially when you add in Alma's reaction once the PCs become heroes.
Didn't anybody see all the topics created about this? Word is we'll be getting them by the end of August. Patience is key. Add to this that James came back from GenCon sick, and they may be delayed a bit into September.
Specifically, James has said a few times over the past month that he hopes to have them ready by the end of the month. Mind you, "Gen Con made me sick, and I'm kind of posting this in a Nyquil fugue right now", so that may put him behind a bit.
I'm hoping that once Living Greyhawk ends next year, WOTC might find it in their hearts to sell the GH setting to Paizo; or at least licensce it out. SCREW THAT!! If Paizo is able to get ahold of Greyhawk (THE wish of wishes), I want them to have it in its entirity! After pulling the plug on CodeMonkey, Paizo and Sovereign Press, three companies that were putting out better licensed product than WotC was creating in house, I wouldn't accept a license from WotC if they paid me.
And, if I can add my 2 cents, you should be also VERY proud of Gary, Vic and all other Paizo staff who are doing such a great job getting everything in place. Maybe you could raise their wages? Or better yet, give them the possibility to come to Gen Con next year ;-) Actually, I think giving them a week away from the mewling hordes of fans clamoring for their stuff is richly deserved (especially the online staff!).
Check "My Downloads" under the "My Account" link at the top of the page. PDF released yesterday.
Golarion is the setting WE are building guys, all of us together. I'm looking forward to it being the Forgotten Realms of 2016 So who's going to write the Pathfinder novels? Forgotten Realms has always had, in addition to a large number of gaming supplements, 1) a large number of novels, 2) strong authors and 3) characters that didn't get "watered down" by multiple authors, all of which appealed not only to gamers, but fantasy fans as well. Greyhawk had two great novels published by TSR, a handful of so-so ones and then a ten year gap to the next hit-or-miss novel series, with Gygax's Gord the Rogue series being off the radar of most people. If Pathfinder wants to find the success of Forgotten Realms, they need to appeal not only to the Paizo-phile gamer, but also the general heroic fiction fan walking through Borders or Walden Books looking for something different.
Nah, don't sweat it. You're not the first person to assume we're near (or a part of!) Wizards of the Coast. :)(Psst... we're in Bellevue, not Renton...) ;)D'OH!!!! Well, if I can't even keep that simple company fact straight in my head, I guess I've shot my chance before it even exists ;) Actually, it was more of a Sneeches thing: I keep mixing up which one was what one and what one was who. Mnemonic: Paizo is the Belle(vue) of the ball!
(Psst... we're in Bellevue, not Renton...) ;) D'OH!!!! Well, if I can't even keep that simple company fact straight in my head, I guess I've shot my chance before it even exists ;)
Okay, Gamemastery General Discussion seems as good a category as any for this... Does Paizo have/intend to have demo teams (beyond Renton employees at the major cons)? People dedicated to hitting the shops, game days and minor cons to demo and promote Paizo products? And if so, how does one sign up for the team?
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