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If you don't like Vancian but don't want to change the system too much, give all spellcasters a pool of spell levels to draw upon (say 10 spell levels per level each day, so a level 8 has 80 spell levels to throw around before they are empty) and call it a day. Sorcerers get 15 per level and some casters get less.
The meaning of mine is obvious to small children. Still had a poster try to unveil it as some sort of big reveal. I like griffons, always have; I was reading today the Scythians and steppe people were big into griffon tattoos. There is also another poster that claims to live under bridges.
I treat all my NPCs orientation as completely and utterly unimportant unless a PC wants to know. And then I roll percentile. But did you make a table?
Also magicka's magic system is marvelous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magicka Would need to use counters to track the elements and power and prob a roll to see what they can use each round (or make it random but their level determines how many components of the spell they have). Spells of course have to have the correct combination to be used, but even if you don't have enough offense is always possible (if you get nothing but fire and water, at least you get a blast of scalding steam to use, hopefully you get what you need for a spell next time).
You could always run a warhammer winds of magic rule change? Okay for the next few rounds you have 7 spell levels you can use, then 0 (wind stopped) then 9. Go for it. Magic then becomes tied to luck with break or slow periods but no spellcaster running out.
Not really. The gods in Golarion, outside of Razmir, are notorious for NOT making public statements on their positions. There are at least two factions of Sarenrites that are in violent disagreement, yet the goddess continues to supply the priests of both with spells. Sarenrae has a bet going with some of her handmaidens as to which sect will come out on top.
"I just love to talk about glbt stuff intersecting with cultural issues in fantasy settings". Me too, and I have a few factions in development (world builder) that may have g,l,b. No offense taken, not by a long shot. Added you to my address book. Lesbian "themes" and flirting have been in my latest game. Makes it pretty funny and definitely chill. Very amusing that you went for the slip some tongue option and into make the dm blush territory. I try to keep a straight face and roleplaying wherever it goes but my players also sometimes challenge me in similar ways. Sexy puppets and roleplaying for good times and many chuckles for all.
... I think you are going to find very few examples on the historical ground you are also going to struggle to make it fit, i.e. rare anthropological examples of non-western tribes recognising a third gender is not the same thing as transgender in the peoples of societies today wanting to move between a gender binary that they feel on the wrong side of while feeling stuck in the wrong body. Jeff, I will definitely have a look at anything you provide though as I am very interested. There is also plenty on modernity and how it has damaged us, raised stresses and broken down old beliefs that stood for a very long time, so I wouldn't discount our modern condition just yet. Which brings us to talking about modern change. Take the claims that "An estimated 2 to 5% of the population is transgender" (source: http://www.transgenderlaw.org/resources/transfactsheet.pdf). This has not happened before. This wasn't the case in your grandfather's time and it wasn't the case before that. Their rise in numbers is new and very much a late modernity phenomenon, unless you can prove at least 2% of a previous culture's pop was transgender previously and in the relevant contexts (third gender islanders doesn't matter if a game isn't set on those islands. Would you not agree?). Of course then that has to be relevant to a game setting for trans to then make sense as being in the historically based game and for trans npcs, options for pcs and so on and so forth. We should not just accept or advance the idea that transgender people have been present all across history and cultures without serious evidence to back up such claims. Let us not let current political groups rewrite history. Of course without such evidence, putting them in historically based games does not fit. Hatshepsut wearing a beard to solidify her political power does not prove she was transgender when such a term does not seem to even have existed in that time. Nefertiti also took the authority of a male role, the Pharaoh, but had herself portrayed as a beautiful woman (as the perfect woman actually) and was a mother. With major recent changes, all I would like is evidence for the claims of what apparently was.
It was dark and hard to see that the party scout, a centaur didn't even realise they were being eaten by an ooze until their hp started to go down fast. So the party stares ahead at a centaur thrashing and jumping around stupidly. Everyone retreated.
Mixing 3.5 in with pf Mind flayers after previous opponents have dropped the players will saves. Beholders or particularly nasty caster that a melee party can't get to (on the other side of metal bars, or shooting the player as they try to rush down a corridor). Orc barbarian-clerics that stay close, plug a bottleneck and heal only each other. Ghasts covered in yellow mould. Lastly, rust lords vs. character that are very dependent upon their equipment.
Let them die in game and save yourself, so that they understand they can't always rely on others and survive.
A great range of spells. Some of them are nasty and really dangerous. :)
Was that in a pre-made mini adventure? I threw a calzone golem at my players. They freaked right out. I think we played the same quest, or your dm took it from the same place I got it.
We fought a pie golem once. The player that had read the adventure paths and knew where everything was found himself very confused. I think the dm enjoyed his confusion. Ha!
A long post, I hope those that read get something from it. I thank you for reading as it took 9 minutes to write. As the dm they can run a game vastly different to our own current existence, where our social politics and attitudes we might have do not hold sway. I think it is one of the great potentials of roleplaying that we are not just stuck playing ourselves right now in this time or limited in playing people of late modern attitudes. Instead we can control characters in very different contexts to what we are used to. Of course we don't have to fight off goblin invasions (although that might be similar to the life of a pest control officer) but it goes far deeper than that into very different times or completely non-Earth settings. I support Jaelithe and his position that in running games located in a historical setting the beliefs will be of that time and place, and not of 2015 wherever and however we find ourselves now, and will not include certain groups that are active today. Some will not like this, the attempt to be and play quite authentically (or even just partially authentically) in settings that are not familiar and everyday in attitudes and social politics. I am glad there are games that offer something different to our norm, and that is also what I try to bring in my many games. If there are problems with acceptance then words such as "this isn't the world we are used to" can help players to understand they aren't confined to the familiar but they also aren't located in the familiar (one of my players was struggling to play a medieval Japanese fisherman turned bandit robbing people along the silk road, but they learned how to make it work and developed a character straight out of the old story Water Margin). One of the problems I find with transgender npcs being put into many games is if the setting is pre-modern and in that it is pre-anomie and pre the questioning of gender norms, roles and identity their inclusion, even as minorities, makes very little sense. If you are running a pre-modern setting anything close to being historical then including transgenders in significant numbers sounds like historical revisionism (my group of today was there!). Of course to get around this you can make your own setting where we see transgenders far earlier in modernity, or even in pre-modernity. Then Jaelithe is absolutely right and what we see is an example of a push of "their real world socio-political agenda" to get their people in places and times when they did not exist. I found paizo creating and placing a trans orc into one of their adventure paths to be very odd. Orcs are short-lived, focused upon reproduction and there has been no indication of gender dysphoria in orcs previously. Orcs are so hetero they hurt countries with their numbers. The trans orc came across as tokenism, but one in which didn't fit with the setting that has been presented, but I suspect it will fit with the changing setting into which Golarion is becoming. One can deny there is an agenda, but paizo have been very clear in what they want to represent and add in the future (and they certainly defended placing the trans orc even though it did not fit with orcs as they had been presented). People will change and run the settings in the way that they want to run them, but not every group of people or identity is going to be in every setting or game. Trans especially do not fit into certain historical settings and thus they don't fit into many historically located games. Some have said that it doesn't come up. If it isn't there then it is unlikely to come up. Thank you.
Some are not happy with accepting poor decisions, so the criticisms will, I suspect, continue. :)
Valar morghulis. As for animal companions, no I don't kill them but they will depart. In a sense they now feel an aversion to cooperating with the greater party and feel drawn back into the wild. This could create some problems in getting there if they died in a dungeon or mid invasion of an enemy castle. Fortunately it hasn't come up much as druids and paladins are hard to kill, in part because of their companions.
*Insert obligatory martials cant have nice things post* It would be locked. They are very sensitive to criticisms.
Yeah, if the ship has sailed and you want it in your games talk to your dm and persuade them. Or be the dm and say spiked chains are back, just as per 3.5.
Tell them they took the derogatory title for PF as "3.5: caster edition" far too seriously.
Yep, this is the truth of it. The particular distaste for trips and the spiked whip is on display.
If you want a mission/quest that includes homosexuals you could have a save Antinous on behalf of the emperor Hadrian type situation. There could be all sorts of intrigue, maybe Antinous was kidnapped as leverage against the emperor/king/high-priest? Save him and as the campaign goes on they see more and more statues of Antinous cropping up with plaques honoring the pcs. May make the players smile and help them see that their successes have consequences. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/hadrian-the-gay-emperor-7 69442.html As an aside on the Calistrians, yeah I have fond memories of a ninja character waging a war against them. They can be extremely bad news and deserve a lot of d6s in the neck, but again there are a lot of plots that easily work with Calistrians.
Well, obviously. But being LGBT specifically doesn't inherently have to be one of the things they're prejudiced against. No society is perfect but the degree and nature of that imperfection can vary widely.Agreed. Absolutely. I'm simply saying that since the world isn't a nice and benevolent place, there are certainly areas where LGBT people would be treated worse than in other places :) Evil lesbians of Lamashtu or the secret gay society of Zon-kuthon. Oh my...
For my settings, it's just a thing that's never been an issue. As in, "Who cares what you're attracted to/feel your gender is like when there are MONSTERS running around out there? Grab a pike and let's go!" This is how it has been for a long time in many games, the monster hunting narrative over the sexuality/gender/trans focus. However, I think there is a shift in fixation and a lot of people want to change this. Not sure it is a good idea to focus upon this, but people will run the types of games they want to run.
You have numbers of people who have been playing RPGs from all over the world?So you are in effect saying that people are lying about how long they have been playing? I mean, yeah, not all of us were baking cookies for Gary for the first game, but it really isn't hard to have been playing for X amount of time. It's a matter of being alive and having run across the game. I'm curious what "proof" you'd be interested in? After the "originals" the numbers of people that were exposed to (the mind altering virus that was) AD&D is not accurately known. The print-runs aren't the real number, as a whole party may use a book, copy it and spread it. Those that were raised reading their older brother's AD&D books (better than simplistic children books), or their father's collection or bought it second hand, third hand and so on enlarges the early reader/player groups to huge numbers. Who has been here since AD&D is not accurately known and would be nigh impossible to determine. Who has been here before that may be more easy to determine but it faces much of the same problems. I know youngish people that are still playing AD&D (they love it). When I think of the number of lives gaming material has touched, it feels very humbling. It feels like a tradition that is passed on and some of the rivalries start to break down and seem unimportant. Who was there? Well everyone has their story to tell on how they found and came to this hobby.
AD&D is nothing like PF? There are similarities and PF still uses some of the old AD&D rules! :D Falling damage per ten feet and the base damage of longswords, the same names for many classes and the use of ability scores. To say they are nothing alike is false.
I have not seen people leaving the table over minor differences or due to different social values. No one has stood up and said "well I oppose the opinions and beliefs of what's his name over there" and stormed out in an indignant self-righteous huff. With people of different races, political persuasions and backgrounds, we have all managed to game together.
102. Ranged sneak attack.
72. Rumpstab 73. Rogette.
Fighting the gods and their long-running schemes to manipulate all mortals is a true act of good for humans and all other mortal races. :D Course the good gods would not be pleased with him shutting down their manipulations and shattering their high interest bank accounts. It is chaotic neutral as it is incredibly defiant against the existing faiths. They will probably see it as evil. It also allows people the freedom of opting out of existing arrangements that control them before they are born. It is good in that it frees people, prevents their torment in the evil afterlife or their manipulation and absorption in the good.
Damn unrealistic magic!
Thanks to a very helpful fellow dm, here are his rules on falling damage. I liked them, they worked and falling became quite serious (and I was playing a monk!): Alternative fall damage system Damage from falling will be determined by a d20 roll, with the following modifiers: +2 if total acrobatics modifier is between +2 and +7 (+4 if 8-15, +6 if 16 or above)
-2 if fall occurs as result of being attacked
Total outcome for damage per 10 feet fallen: Below -5 – fall damage is d20+5 per 10 ft
Note that in the fall damage system, a natural 1 just counts as a 1, not -10.
The build is set up to do that, clearly thought has gone into it. The players has set out to solve a problem, and they have in accordance with the system rules. I don't have much of a problem with that. Was the dm unhappy or a player?
A lot of them actually! Yes on 1, 2, 3. Also complaints against monks. My vanilla monk was the strongest member of our group in the campaign. The megadungeon wasn't built to make him shine but shine he did. Characters almost killed by rogues means that "rogues are weak" is not something I hear much of. Don't have much problem with problem players over the past few years. I am quite selective with who I play with these days. Martials are weak without all their gear upgraded along very specific lines and all their slots filled as mandated by the online community guild of optimizers. This isn't my experience. Lastly, a lot of what 137ben said. :)
Something unrealistic like their minds rendering mind affecting spells completely ineffective? At times the "it is unrealistic" crowd make me very very confused (maybe I failed a will save?).
Definitely makes a lot of sense, so slow fall would prevent it kicking in until you passed the slow fall distance? I recommend you try it in your games. See how it goes.
I see hp as in between both of your positions, grit and toughness to keep going through serious hits, but also deflect and make it into a glance especially if it is a low damage hit that only just got you. Take a crit, if you survive it, you didn't make it into a glance, you endured it but it didn't quite mortally wound you (in fencing, I've seen people get stabbed and at the last minute pull away minimising the contact and penetration, so it is a real thing to be hit fast but not hurt). However for a minor bit of damage, that isn't going to kill you, your character is either too good at taking a damage, or they are super tough, or both. Warband (which I frequently praise) and War of the Roses also had a similar situation where your skill meant you learnt how to take hits and not die so easily. These games factored in speed, hit location (head is bonus damage), penetration (getting a weapon deep inside someone does massive damage) and a skilled player can seem like they have a massive pool of hp because they turn almost every hit that actually gets through into a glance (in ideal circumstances, hence why it is best to snipe, ambush or gank them). Some people hate hp, but I embrace it.
You have buildings over 200 feet tall in your game? Or are you defining 'not wanting to die from a fall' as a type of 'trying to prevent damage to oneself'? I like how terraria does it. Forgiving for jumps, but once you start falling serious distance the damage rapidly goes up into the insane levels. So falling from a sky fort is a sure way to die (without wings, jetpacks or the like). They even have an achievement if you take massive damage that is just shy of killing you.
Makes sense is working through it and then it makes sense, common sense is a person's interpretation of common knowledge, common beliefs. Unfortunately, take real world common sense to a game with a fantasy setting, and it doesn't fit very well.
Beware of common sense in games, especially if someone is using common sense to say dragons couldn't fly therefore they shouldn't be able to fly in a game of fantasy and adventure. I have a problem with common sense in games where it becomes about limiting and blandening characters to be more useless and less effective or capable--whether that involve certain rule or ability changes ("naa, your ability doesn't work here, it isn't realistic, it is against common sense"). This is mainly because I want to play in an entertaining and exciting game, not a pure reality simulator, and because reality isn't actually as limiting as some people claim: people can shoot 3 arrows in six seconds, they can fight multiple people at once, surprisingly some people can take an amazing amount of damage, block or parry large weapons with smaller weapons, break multiple people with martial arts, know a tremendous amount of information, sway whole groups of people and so on and so forth. How we make it work is part of the game, but I do not trust or enjoy people shutting down parts of the game because of their common sense, as I probably won't share their outlook. Common sense can be just another way of saying it should be this way. Well, should it? Often I find it should not. On the rules
Greatsword? Mace and shield is where it is at, so you ignore armour, do great damage and have magnificent defences. Mace+shield is very strong in that game.
Wasn't there a porn star who took up Pathfinder and joined the forums some time back? I remember everyone arguing that she wasn't really who she claimed to be and demanding proof it was her... Jenny something? That's not cricket! We have people from very diverse occupations here, truly sad it went that way. Reason to boot a player: chronic tardiness. Had to do it alas, but I wasn't nearly as bad as another dm, who would kill their character (hilariously and ignominiously) if they said they were coming and didn't. Fuzzy npc land didn't exist in his game, lying about coming carried the penalty of character death. I'd allow the ape, if he had rudimentary roleplaying skills, he knew which dice to roll and took care of his own sheet.
For the enemy monk thrashing an entire party and shutting down the foolish archer, I would have loved to be there, with popcorn. If only it could have been streamed right into a monk's are weak thread. I agree with you on design at 1, have some fun and don't care about the build too much. I've done the build it procedure, plan it out to 8 or 12, or up to 18. I've carefully tailored them, reached and completed them. The problem is what then? Far better to develop a character and have them grow with a campaign (very happy you have long campaigns to do this in, you are lucky) and go into the areas you think fit and will help, rather than a specialist that can't adapt and isn't built to be adaptable.
I am glad that Hiding did the work, played it, ran through and identified how it is overpowered. Great job doing the testing, with constructive criticism to boot. There is something that really irks me. Lovecraft's works aren't about being a powerful summoner spamming cosmic entities, they are about powerlessness. This isn't Lovecraftian (because it can summon star spawn over and over), it is actually anti-Lovecraftian.
Psychologists would probably find many games and gamers quite odd and befitting of all manner of diagnoses. Gamers of all stripes have been declared "dangerous" by health professionals before. Not sure psychs belong in games of people trying to chill out and have fun in imaginary worlds, after all the world is controlling enough without paratrooper pscyhs invading tables to find people "dangerous" and throw a spanner in the works of existing games. Course I play to escape the nanny state for an evening (the nanny state is a big deal over here in recent years), but that's just me. ; )
Wow. Groping a sea witch while they are unconscious. That is definitely a moment where as a dm I would ask "are you sure?". Then I would ask it again with my tone indicating how bad it could go, and "is that your final answer?". As for the second situation, while leaving is a good call it is also a great time for the dm to have the people or authorities make that "adventurer" pay for his misdeeds. A public hanging may be the finale, if he is lucky and the people relatively calm.
My players grew suspicious of really helpful convivial cleric hippies. They worried about being converted.
Culpam poena premit comes. The player has a habit of doing this, so they should be punished. You could prevent punishment, but then you have allowed them to get away with it if one only steps in after the betrayal (hence my idea of redressing betrayal with betrayal and execution). I take what you say though, and for it to fly in the past a dm has had to allow it, to the detriment of the party. A dm could have outlawed betrayal and that may have solved the problem, but since a player does want to run betrayers 1 through 3 the simple solution of murdering his character into line could work and set an example (do not or you will live not) as well as blow off a bit of stress and allow some to get vengeance for dead characters, if they lost chars to past betrayals. Murder them into line, or the murders will continue until there is group loyalty. ; )
If "betray" is enabled then pvp is enabled. Party should just kill the character and say "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Or in this case, us." Then kill his next character just so he gets the message and knows what the path of vengeance will lead from this time forward. Then welcome him back and adventure together with conviviality. On odd events like this, we had one character that would sometimes turn allegiances to the other side, maybe it was due to their anarchist politics? Alas, you could never trust them as they would sometimes just flip or refuse to help your side. Lol, he was a temp bodyguard to my character once and let me die to enemy vampires without lifting a finger. Hilarious in retrospect. We also had fellows that heavily identified with the monsters and were very sympathetic towards them, overlooking their murder and aggressions. One raised broods of abominations as a nanny. I always found that a bit odd, but my othering is +10. ; )
Long term gains for short term losses.
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