DigMarx's page

A bachelor of tarrasques. Alternatively, a spinster of tarrasques. Don't want to assume gender.

I got a beta code from a friend, but I'm getting an "unknown error" when I go to redeem the code. What am I doing wrong?

I got a beta code from a friend, but get an "unknown error" when I try to use it. Can anyone shed light on this?

Pun-pun called and asked if you'd seen his bag of rats :)

The first book (IIRC) of the Kingmaker AP has the Stag Helm, which grants extra uses of its power to "worshippers of Erastil" without any clarification as to what worshipper means.

Anyway, as a GM, you have carte blanche to create whatever magic items will further your campaign. Just like the monster CR rules, the magic item creation rules are intended as guidelines, not contract law.

Kevin Spacey is awesome

Wow, that's fairly blatant.

Awesome! I'll have to make my way over to North Shore one of these days. I've been lucky enough to have played in a few different groups since emigrating to NZ in 2010, but it's been shocking how few organizations exist for gamers in Auckland. Glad to see the Auckland Pathfinder Society is finally recognized!

Depending on the specialization of the individual wizards, and how the GM feels about the idea of a 10-round adventuring day, the first few levels are going to be very one-sided.

int NumWizPC
for Round(i=1, i<=NumWizPC, i++)
{
if SpellsMem >= 0
StdAct(CastSpell) = Sleep
else FullRdAct(Withdraw)
}

You ain't seen theorycrafting until you go to some of those other boards. Case in point.

And then, there's that...other place *shudder*

If a GM is creating an ability, that doesn't exist, to beef up a boss encounter, but then doesn't allow the characters access to that ability, it is not only hand-wave-ium, it is unfair. An important axiom to remember, and one that I always play by is: "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

Personally, I'm a bit wary of trading in absolutes like that. Should the GM ensure that every encounter is balanced for both CR AND action economy? There is an insurmountable qualitative difference between the outcomes a party of adventurers needs to address and those of their adversaries. Adversaries exist to be overcome, and their use is in the challenge they pose to the party. Overcoming unfair odds (is one of the things that) makes players feel heroic.

I recently ran 3 players through the mythic playtest encounter, and they absolutely steamrollered the last encounter. Not even a remote challenge. Needless to say, the players couldn't really own that success.

I know from my own experience if you give an inch, entitled players will take a mile. I ran a Legacy of Fire campaign a couple years back, and one of the players had maxed diplomacy to a ridiculous degree. He expected the plot of the *prewritten* AP to revolve around him and his ability to wrap NPCs around his finger. Essentially he expected to use diplomacy as a charm/dominate ability. Could not for the life of me convince him that diplomacy wouldn't make an NPC act against their self-interest. The other players and I tried to humor him for awhile, but the situation was untenable and improved significantly when he decided to leave. The diplomacy schtick would have worked fine in a freer, sandboxy campaign, but wasn't appropriate for what we were doing at the time.

Ultimately, I think a successful long-term gaming group has to be rowing in the same direction. If you've got a player who balks at the GM exercising poetic license, that player (and the group) may be happier overall going their separate ways.

If you want to boggle, it turns out that Pathfinder RAW doesn't allow you to apply sneak attack to a target that's unaware of you, unless some other condition denies the target its Dex bonus or makes it flat-footed. 'Unaware' is not one of those conditions.

Per RAW, I don't think that "unaware" is a condition. It leads to an enemy being caught flatfooted, but isn't listed as a condition.

In the game I'm thinking of, I created a serpentine sorcerer that was focused around information gathering - massive diplomacy (can't remember but it was something like +14 at first level with multiple feats and traits applied) and of course charm person (which we've discussed on other threads). This information would then allow the party to make best use of the terrain, the enemy's internal disputes, watch patterns etc etc. The GM didn't like this as he felt it was ruining the surprises in the module and basically refused to give any information out. At the same time he overruled game rules for dramatic effect, such as a dire boar (medium size but without stat modification)charging through a stone wall we were using for cover or difficult/narrow terrain for which we had to make acrobatic checks but the enemies didn't.

The other players were enjoying the story telling (which he was great at) but I was getting frustrated and probably disruptive by the inability for the party to control its own path by discovering information and the inability to use the terrain for tactical advantage so I left the group.

From your description it sounds as though you are trying to tell a story as the GM whilst the frustrated player wants to play in a strategic/tactical game where the GM sets the scene and the characters tell the story.

What a coincidence! I was the GM for that game. Just scanning the boards and came across this post. Anyway, I hope you've since read Howl of the Carrion King and have a better understanding of what Almah did and didn't know. Suze says hi. We still remember the whisky night fondly.

Zo

Oops, noted this might be better served in the Adventure Feedback forum.

On 11/25/12 I GMed the Mythic Adventures Playtest scenario "The Wrath of Nature".

There were 3 players present. We used the existing 7th level builds of the iconic characters Valeros (fighter), Ezren (wizard) and Kyra (cleric). I felt the 7th level builds were appropriate due to the fact that we were running with 3 PCs rather than 4, and the character sheets were readily available and didn't need to be modified for play (beyond adding the 3 mythic tiers).

The players were all experienced and generally made well-considered decisions while refraining from using out-of-character knowledge and/or metagaming.

I ran the monsters in a manner appropriate to their intelligence. The only change I made to the adventure as written was to substitute a Fire Goddess's Blade for the Bow of Erastil after the second encounter. The gp values aren't equal but the swap had a negligible effect on the adventure.

To sum up my experience:
* I think the players enjoyed using the mythic powers, but Amazing Initiative is just too obvious of a choice. I don't know that it's irredeemably broken, but it needs to be brought in line with the other uses of mythic power. Perhaps as an extra standard action that stacks with Haste, etc.
* I like dual initiative as a monster ability, but it would be unfair to make it a monster-only ability.
* Consideration should be given to making the use of mythic power a once-per-round ability.

I'll let the players speak for themselves here, but I think the Mythic Adventures path abilities are generally good, but there are some very obvious choices, which to my mind means an imbalance. No one used mythic power to add a d6. Similarly, the mythic spells have some clear winners. Mythic CLW compared to Mythic Bless? No brainer. Anyway, that's it for now.

Zo

For those interested in learning more about so-called cultural Marxism, have a read. Did I just Godwin-by-proxy?

Any society that CAN be undermined by public education, equal rights for all, and the idea of "to each according to his need" SHOULD be undermined.

Your GM is ruling that unarmed attacks can't be used with Power Attack? Is he house-ruling it? Because Power Attack is most definitely compatible with unarmed strikes, by RAW.

Having seen the pawns and knowing the name of the monster is covered by the base, it's obvious to me that the same could be done with the knowledge check info.

I've read through the playtest document and I like what I see. Sure there are some obvious picks and no-picks as far as mythic abilities and feats and so on, but I reckon that'll get ironed out. Mostly.

What I'm concerned with, and will bear in mind as I playtest, is that it appears to require a crap-ton more bookkeeping, both on the players' behalf and the DM's. Everyone has a ki pool now. Feats need to be cross-referenced between mythic and vanilla and the new prereq of mythic tiers has entered the picture.

If that doesn't faze the average player, then they have to reckon with the lesser trials. Much of the wording appears to require the DM to keep track of the success of the trials, especially the "do X to a creature with full hit points" trials. How should this be handled? Does it not break immersion when, after a fight, the fighter raises his hand and asks "so, was that ogre at full hit points, or..?"

I'm not complaining, nor have I tested it in-game. It's just a thought I've had, and I could be totally off base.

deuxhero wrote:

Do they? I don't think they qualify for being made of special wood materials.

Well it doesn't say SPECIAL wood on there, and I don't see why it would have to be. Arrows are wood fitted with a metal/whatever other material tip.

So they are primarily made of wood.

Yeah, that was my take on it as well. Spears and lances, too. Silver would be the go-to. Not many folks carrying silver weapons around other than werewolf hunters.

I haven't tested anything in-game, but on first glance there is an imbalance among the flaws.

For example, compare
Insanity (confused for d4 rounds after being critted or failing save against mind-affecting spells)
to
Material Weakness: Silver (crits auto-confirmed and multiplier increased by one, plus no DR when hit by weapons primarily made from silver)

I like the idea of flaws. There may need to be some rebalancing, if only to stop the min/maxers with Dependency: Urine.

Anything reasonable, served in a glass with a nice bit of heft to it. Since moving to NZ I've found Cooper's Best Extra Stout to be my go-to stout (even though it IS an Aussie brew).

It would be a cold day in the Abyss (unless it was one of those cold layers; then it'd be hot) before I (as a DM) let someone without armor proficiency take the armor expert trait! :)

This thread is tl;dr, but I think this series of videos would be quite helpful

Someone has finally made a gazebo mini! If only such a thing had existed years ago. Think of the needless suffering that could have been avoided.

Cool. Not sure I'm with you on your interpretation of Appraise being for non-magical items, considering you can tell whether or not sth. is magical with a high enough success. Regardless, I think my question is answered. Cheers.

Are we talking about a PC that has appraise but not spellcraft and has identified an magical item?

No, but for the sake of the argument, let's assume yes. My original question was basically "how common are magic items in terms of their prices being Appraised?"

If you have successfully identified a magic item, then you know exactly what the item is and how much it's worth.

So you're treating a magic item's price as one of its properties per the wording of Spellcraft, I take it.

This may have been dealt with in an older thread, but assuming a low-level caster has successfully identified a magic item (say a +1 sword in this case), would the item count as a "common item" for purposes of Appraise? At what level of power would magic items stop counting as common and warrant a higher Appraise DC?

I just like that this is being discussed.

The problem with this is that everyone has their own personal variation and interpretation of just the Pathfinder rules.

I totally agree with what you've said, but surely an API that ties into monster stats, condition modifiers, skill check DCs and other objective concepts could work to everyone's benefit. It's not as though there's a massive market for PFRPG apps wherein one developer is seeking to shut the competition down. This is a miniscule community, and Kyle Olson's Combat Manager working with Hero Lab working with D20PFSRD working with Paizo Game Space doesn't do anything but benefit everyone.

This comes from a brainfart brought on by Gary Teter's previous "Tom Sawyer" post. My own technical knowledge is insufficient to do anything but pose the questions that follow. I am not equipped to contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way, but I'd like to hear people's opinions.

With the advent of Pathfinder Online and the Paizo Game Space VTT, isn't it time for a unifying, open source API? There are so many disparate websites, character generators, mobile apps and virtual table tops, shouldn't there be some method of ensuring they work together? Programmer D&D-nerd friends and I have discussed this topic at length and it could be revolutionary if handled correctly.

I'm surprised your boss hasn't sucked you

Why did I grind to level 6 if I am just going to encounter, and have the same chance of cracking, the same difficulty of lock?!

While I agree that having every DC scale with a party's level strains plausibility, neither should having a comparatively higher level mean that the challenge of adventuring should be limited to higher monster CRs.

Using your example of a lock, from a DM/design perspective there are a couple of things to consider:
A) Range. Not every lock should or will scale in difficulty. Higher skill levels should reward players in dealing with routine/everyday challenges. At the same time, new and more difficult challenges become doable.
B) Common sense. If I'm a BBEG you can bet I'll put a higher-quality lock on the treasure room where I keep my collection of fist-sized rubies than I would on the treasure room where I keep my pouch of 47 gp, 23 sp and a masterwork backscratcher.
C) Expectations. If I'm the aforementioned BBEG stowing treasure in my dungeon full of greater shadows, using a lower-quality lock would be stupid because I'd expect that any adventuring party skilful enough to get past my minions would have the ability to crack a DC 20 lock like an egg.

Another point: language, whether written or spoken, is not a static thing.

Amen to that. It wasn't that long ago that all important nouns were capitalized, not just proper nouns. I'm an American ESOL teacher teaching British English to international students in New Zealand. The disparity between what students have been taught, what their expectations are, and what they'll encounter here in NZ leads me to believe that the acceptance of a certain amount of fluidity in grammar and spelling is necessary in this day and age.

No, Jesus doesn't cry if you begin a sentence with "and" or end one with "for". Splitting an infinitive is fine if you do it to clearly illustrate the point you're trying to make. I may feel that using "loose" instead of "lose" demonstrates ignorance and makes me not want to read someone's post, but I wager that in 5-10 years' time, I'll be in the minority.

No, there's no way to do it.

For some reason it's okay for dex to do almost everything strength does but the reverse is not okay.

So write a feat or fighter archetype, get feedback on it here and use it in your home games.

Just...what? Buh.

I had DC 20 in my head, but the ability to justify is where I came up lacking. That said, when I was younger and working with my old man, a master woodworker, I could eyeball 16ths of an inch all day long. He could do 32nds.

Laughing at my cries. Classic.

To derail the derail, any notion of what the DC would be to spot the difference between 10 and 11 foot gaps?

What APL modifier do you run them at? Running a solitary dragon against a party gives an action economy ratio of 4:1 or worse. Additionally, players often know when they're going to encounter a dragon, giving them the further advantage of preparation. As stated previously, give dragons the benefit of their intelligence. Maybe they've heard through the dragon grapevine that this party has been slaughtering their kin like livestock, so they've taken precautions. Dragons are the iconic big bad, there's no point running them against a party unless they can put a reasonable hurt on the PCs.

.

Check out this blog I found -> Starship Combat News

Zero-G combat tactics are fun. However, I understand the gravity of a star
can make your energy-beam (c-beam) weapons miss. I wonder why that is?

.

Gravity "bends" space-time. It's the same principle that causes black holes to appear black (i.e. we can't see them).

In a large group, a fighter with combat expertise and a range of combat maneuver feats could provide a lot of variety. I played a monk in that vein who was the only melee-er in a group of wizards and all that stopped the bad guys from getting to the squishy mage-meat was me and a couple of summoned aurochs.

DigMarx wrote:

Encumbrance doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing rules concept. If said halfling is obviously carrying too much, common sense says his movement should be reduced. No need to track every tenth of a pound.

No, track every 1/16 of a pound. Listed weight values in the RAW go as far down as 1 oz.

I reckon if you're going to go that far, you shouldn't deduct the weight of food eaten until, say, 6-8 hours afterward. Depending on Constitution/Fortitude/spiciness.

Encumbrance doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing rules concept. If said halfling is obviously carrying too much, common sense says his movement should be reduced. No need to track every tenth of a pound.

I was split between the fire giants and the demons, but I've got giants in my collection (more with the storm giants) and don't have any large demons. I may end up using the futuristic figs for the d6 SW game I'm running.

Just got the email and locked mine in. Vampire - Sophie + Demons + Paizo Red Dragon. March can't come quick enough! I'm honing my painting skills in the meantime. What have the rest of you gone for?

When is angst-powered flight going to be available?

Have a look at TGDMB. They've got a scramjet engine powered with a 20/20/60 mix of angst, condescension and nerdrage :P

EDIT: But it's all on paper. None of them have been able to gather a group to test it out yet. But I kid.