Dom C's page

Irrgardless wrote:

Thanks!

Is there a timeline for the page being overhauled?

We already have the designs, mock-ups, and proof-of-concepts completed for a fantastic new downloads page, and have for quite some time. Unfortunately, page and usability overhauls that you all ask for (and that we love to deliver) are frequently trapped in a prioritization limbo.

3. Essential business functions - we have to be able to advertise, sell, and ship/distribute our products effectively. This also includes proactive maintenance of our infrastructure. Without these, we have no business and no jobs, and our customers have no new products or content.

4. User experience - we want our users to have a wonderful experience navigating and using the site. Issues in this category are often inconveniences, but either have workarounds or affect non-essential site features. Things like overhauling the downloads page fall into this category.

This prioritization is a classic one from IT since the 90s. I appreciate the sentiments having run help desks and special projects as an architect for the past 25 years, but I would strongly implore you to consider the following points:

1. User Experience (UX) isn't an afterthought anymore - everything is getting too complex and digital platforms everywhere are going to live or die by whether their services are painful to use. UX review and design should be a required element of everything you produce, just like editing is for the written word. Whether it's a printed book or a website forum, how your customer interacts with it and whether that interaction is pleasant and compelling should not be an optional idea.

I urge you to consider a dedicated and trained UX designer; it's a role that engineers scoff at, and think they can do themselves, but most are terrible at it due to the curse of knowledge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge).

2. Digital first / only approaches have exploded in importance since the pandemic. Paizo has been years behind since 2015 or so, and the market is quickly shifting at a speed it's never done before. It's not an understatement to call it transformative. We can't rely on "what you've always done" to make sense of this - check your analytics for how many users are getting PDFs only and VTT only products, for instance. I would imagine you're seeing a huge spike since 2020 that has only paced upwards.

3. Hasbro has given you one hell of a gift, and a lot of it was around their digital platform and experience. Thousands of customers have said very loudly (with their wallets) that they care about these things. To think that the website experience is not business critical in importance to your customers is absolutely outdated and dangerous thinking as a whole.

4. Splitting your tasks between Mission Critical and Not Mission Critical is absolutely smart, but each task (mission critical or not) should absolutely include User Experience 100%. The PDF downloads page, by your own definition, should be mission critical - it's how you distribute all of your PDFs in a secured fashion. Why would you think it's not mission critical to make that bottle neck as painless and pleasant as you can for your customers?

I wish the best for you and your team.

I know searching has been a long-looked at topic; I did read the posts from this year on the thread, but I apologize if this was posted previously.

I definitely agree about having complete spell lists that cross multiple books. It's difficult to easily browse while in game play for some of these statblocks that jump between Ultimate Magic, Core Rulebook, etc.

I'd like to see search preferences that can include or exclude specific books, or groups of books.

i.e. eliminate all results from the Mythic Adventures book, or specify Core Rules Only and that doesn't return optional rule set results.

Obviously I don't know that the information is separated by different indexes or how the metadata configuration is currently that would dictate how possible this is for the PRD today. Being able to dynamically include / exclude information by book and/or topic would fill one of the only major gaps I really feel in normal usage for my table.

All that aside, I wanted to say how I really have appreciated the updates to the PRD in the last two years as a GM, so thanks for that hard work! My day job is as a system architect for a global enterprise content management system, so I'm very familiar with how much it takes in the back-end to get these types of systems working as you have. Paizo has done a pretty great job in presentation and accessibility for this data and I thank you all for it.

I've seen and heard about other companies that spent millions on solutions that weren't nearly as nice and functional as this is. :) so Kudos!

I thought it would be interesting to see what other GMs have been writing as answers to Revelation Quill questions. Anyone doing something interesting with it, beyond farming ink?

In my case, the player's are looking for where the Runeforge is now, and piecing together the names and maps from today and those found in the Jorgenfist Library. The question posed by the players is in the "quoted by" text below:

Face to face for centuries, the stones all hold the key.

Within the face of Rimeskull's bluff, a death by ice for thee.

Anyone have some examples of their own, or anecdotes on how they handled this artifact?

Disclaimer: It's been many a year since I've ever considered crafting a phrase in Iambic Pentameter, so I apologize in advance to the English Majors among you who are cringing. :)

I love all the maps, but at one point I had a list of "Festival Games" and I can't freakin' find it. Archery contest that could be applied to a game of darts in a tavern, tug-of-war, sack race, and so on. Do you think I can *FIND* that thing again? NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

If someone did it and posted, or recalls seeing something like that, would you be so kind as to reply here?

Quick search of the thread for "Festival Games" found this:

Lokansir - template doesn't seem to have been applied by the book, and I'm not super strong in doing this kind of troubleshooting so I'd appreciate some critique here. Here's what I think is going on...

Assuming it's an error:
- 4HD instead of +10HD from template
- BAB should be +13
- Rock Throwing should be 150ft with 2d8 dmg per rock, not 120ft / 2d6 (increases existing from base Hill Giant).
- Not proficient with Greatclub; cannot take Weapon Focus/Imp. Crit. with non-proficient weapon

If it's a conversion:
- Staggering Critical pre-req is 13 BAB - not eligible
- Rock Throwing should be 150ft with 2d8 dmg per rock, not 120ft / 2d6 (increases existing from base Hill Giant).
- Not proficient with Greatclub; cannot take Weapon Focus/Imp. Crit. with non-proficient weapon
- Too many feats (should have 7 if only +4 HD, not 10)

I am also pretty sure the available skill ranks would be 20 (10 for the giant, 10 for the template), which would allow for Climb to be +21 and Perception to be +19 after skill focus...

Thoughts?

Dangit! My players are going to end up in Jorgenfist on the 15th. I was hoping the PDF would drop by then for the PFRPG'd stat blocks and polish. :(

Very excited. though!! This adventure path certainly was the gateway drug for me into Paizo products right after the Dragon/Dungeon fiasco. I've already cleared out a place of honor on one of the bookshelves next to the Shackled City hardback. :)

I've been using this product (http://ebon.pyorre.net/) for many years to generate random names, especially during the MANY campaigns within Greyhawk. I've since moved on to Golarian and as a GM I have found myself at odds with the creative names that the adventure paths typically contain... it is a bit more difficult to come up with a name which fits seamlessly within the story. I'm one of those who always had difficulty when it came to naming NPCs or PCs anyway, so this just went from bad to worse.

I'd like to make my random NPCs fit more with the distinct flavor that each of these Regions have to offer, and in order to do that I thought that having a custom Golarian Book of Names in this generator would be great. Problem is, I'd have to craft it from scratch. :(

So I come to you, o' land of Pathfinder enthusiasts, to see who might be willing to work on this task or be interested in the outcome? Anyone have any experience with making new books for the program? Any suggestions or advice?

Thanks for taking the time to look!

Well said. Two thumbs up my friend.

*sweeping bow* thank you, friend. :)

The question is, does the group have Craft Magic Arms and Armor? because if they do and they can just put the +2 back onto the weapon for half price then selling the original weapon at half price really isn't a huge deal, as they can just remake the entire thing for basicly the same price plus the adamintine.

The character in question does have Craft Magic Arms and Armor linked with Master Craftsman (weapons). In the end he wound up with the weapon he was interested in having, and it felt like a victory for him. :)

@Skylancer4 - We'll have to agree to disagree. I'm a pretty lenient GM in general, but I do ask some level of realism/mutable-logic to maintain suspension of disbelief. I'll grant you that it's easier to ignore special materials in general and just make it an extra gp cost. This strikes me like one would do for shrimp to be added to their steak dinner. You like both, so why not just pay the five more dollars for the add? Okay. Enjoy your meal!

For me... well, I like the story of it and our group prefers to honor that. For us, you're talking about a metal that fell from the heavens(!!). A substance considered amazingly, nay, unnaturally hard in a world that has things like wishes and dragons. A substance *so* difficult to work with that what would normally take a week to smith into a weapon would take the same smith over a year to complete (avg craft check landed in the ~70 week range).

This same weapon will crush doors, pillars, and magical golems to rubble where any other may barely make a dent.

So at my table, no, it's not cheap or easy. These weapons are rare, passed on in whispers and stories, all with deep history and splendor.

Truly the stuff of Legends.

So a player of mine asked if he could improve his +2 earthbreaker by making it adamantine.

My initial inclination (and a careful reading of the Core Rulebook indicated later) was that this is a property of the core weapon (a component) and was a material component that had to be in place prior to the item being imbued by magic. Essentially the metal is "consumed" by the magic and this cannot be changed without sundering the effects.

Therefore, in order for this to happen, he would have to craft or purchase an earthbreaker that was already adamantine and add the magic bonuses or pay outright to do so.

I'm comfortable with that ruling, as is the player (who is a smith & currently has Master Craftsman for weapons anyway), but I was curious as to what other GMs / Groups are doing or think on this.

Thoughts?

Partly to bring it up for a new group and partly to play devil's advocate on this:

While I'm all for not making things insta-death circumstances, there is something to be said for the fear of character death at a table. If the heroes believe they are essentially invincible because you blunt all the sharp edges of the world they are in, I feel like an important part of the magic of role-playing is lost.

Consider a warning to them at the start of the book and let them know that it's a murder mystery with everything on the line. That doesn't give anything away but may help them keep from blundering into the haunts quite as blindly as you fear may happen and build the anticipation of going through the very haunted house.

That said, all the ways mentioned otherwise are certainly valid. At my table, suspension of disbelief is a part of the game everyone enjoys. That makes the above very important for our game style. One of my players nearly ended up jumping out of that window...

If possible, please email me (customer.service@paizo.com) some digital pictures of the misprint for our records.

No problem - pictures are on their way!

Thanks!

I received the shipment with no visible damage on the box or package inside (yay!). However, after opening up the Bestiary 3, I found that it had been the victim of a printers binding error and has half of the first fold pushed out of the spine, a glob of .... something... underneath the inside front cover paper, and a general warping of the first 30 or so pages.

How can I go about getting this turned in for a correctly bound copy?

I'm glad I could provide some system testing. :)

I'm really looking forward to the Basic Set as the answer to some new-to-RPG people that have been badgering me to run something for them.

so... no delivery after a week or so and when I check, it is showing the same problem I had on the last order (order unavailable)

Me thinks that this is a bit more than a random mis-communication with UPS. :(

Additionally, the last time this happened (order 1806012) my book was shipped via USPS rather than UPS, which I had paid extra to have done in the first place. I'm not broken up about that for the last order, but I would appreciate that not happening for this larger order.

As always, thank you for your help!

Oh damn. I'm without sound at the moment, but this looks incredibly awesome. What exactly is MorphVoxPro, if you don't mind me asking?

MorphVox is a program that lets you distort your voice with customizable profiles, so you can modify it and make you sound like different people or creatures. Screaming Bee makes the software; some podcasts use it to do different skits, etc.

Not really handy to use at the table in a live game, but very cool over internet audio games. :)

http://www.screamingbee.com/product/MorphVOX.aspx

This may be relevant to everyone's interest here:

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/gaming-music

Enjoy!

Dom C wrote:

sooo... I got a notice that it was supposed to ship a week ago, but it now says unknown. :( Any tracking number or problem with it?

It appears that there was a network timeout between us and UPS at the same instant that your order was being processed. Our system charged and "shipped" your order, but a UPS label was never printed for your package.

I apologize for the delay and I will get your package shipped out to you as soon as possible.

Thanks,
cos

Cool deal. Thank you for the explanation. :)

sooo... I got a notice that it was supposed to ship a week ago, but it now says unknown. :( Any tracking number or problem with it?

So I am preparing to run this adventure path as a first time GM and i wanted to get as much help as I can. I know paizo has done a good job of supplying game material for each AP be it flip maps, game cards, folios and the like. So my question is, what is there out there for rise of the runelords AP that I can pick up to help me along as a first time GM? Don't be afraid to name everything either I'm looking at everything as a possibility.

I used the Map Folio to great effect (and still do; my group is starting the fourth book here shortly). Having nicely printed maps to lay out for players is always a good idea in my gaming world.

The item cards were fun to use at my table, but somewhat incomplete in my opinion. I kept feeling like I should either have a card for all the loot beyond coins and mundane items, or the most important/rare items. Neither approach can be achieved with the deck, though, and that frustrated me. I guess a little too OCD for the realities of the product line.

That said, I did end up buying a lot of the item cards and use them for all magical equipment or special quest items as I have cards available. My players have small 1/2" width 3 ring binders for their character sheets and notes, which include card folio inserts to hold their equipment cards. Getting a card from some enemy or treasure pile makes them excited, so I guess it does what it is meant to do.

I really like the cards for scrolls and potions - people remember them much more now than when they were just written on a sheet.

It's still there. It's at paizo.com/retailers.

We'll be making it a bit easier to find soon.

yay!

I did remember it was a sub-directory, but it's not in the Sitelinks or a domain search for your google results or anything. I guess it's cached in the robots.txt to block crawling. :)

Thank you so much for the fast help!

Okay, so I received an email a few months ago about a directory to let our FLGS know about and sign up to so that others can know they carry Paizo merch.

Now I can't find the email after telling them about it and all my Google-Fu came up empty handed... it is like it never existed at all on the site.

Like... spooky gone.

Have I gone mad? Am I missing something? Did it go away, banished beneath the 1s and 0s of the rejected internet applications on the 300Baud connection island?!?

Anyone?

...but at what rate? Automatically? Does the Intelligence fade a little at a time? Something akin to ongoing ability damage from a curse or poison? Could such an animal be capable of acting intelligently for a short period of time in order to carry out one last act in dedication to its master? Could it temporarily "remember" its former intelligence somewhere down the line to do the same?

Probably more out of nostalgia, but I can't help but think of the decline in Flowers for Algernon in parallel for this.

The entire book is a great story based on this concept of gaining / loosing superior intellegence. Highly recommend a read if you haven't already.

So much for "The Fabled City of Xin-Shalast"

I'm really dumbfounded by the decision to print the location of Xin-Shalast on all of these maps. It's such a spoiler.

My party is in the process of searching for Xin-Shalast in the last of the ROTRL series. Having it printed on the map kills some of the suspense.

I've asked my players not to look but that's kinda silly.

So much for there being any suspense to that module. Or the Lost Cities supplement for that matter. Not very lost any more.

<shakes head>

As I'm currently GMing this series, I can see where you're coming from... but first it's been 4 years. Hard to cry spoilers after that much time. Especially related to products that are from "GM-centric" product lines.

Second, if it matters that much for you and your game that these things remain secret (and I'm down with that), then you should make a standing rule to limit your player's reading of anything to the Player's Companion line. That should help limit the spoilers.

Another complication to this is that half of the enemies only speak Giant, and most of them have a low INT. It's like talking to a six-year-old in many cases IF you speak the same language. You're not going to get the clearest answer to any question just on general principle.

Charm Person doesn't turn the affected into a well-spoken professor that can give a friendly lecture.

The name has to stay because Eric Mona promised me 100% rules supported PC Goblin Ninjas at GenCon last year! :)

Dom C wrote:

The official calendar (slightly different from the 30-day-months that had been mentioned) is being printed in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea World Guide that's due out in a few months. Whatever the Swallowtail festival of 4707 lands on would be the appropriate start date.

And you know this ... how?

The nice (and official) editor lady said so. :)

The official calendar (slightly different from the 30-day-months that had been mentioned) is being printed in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea World Guide that's due out in a few months. Whatever the Swallowtail festival of 4707 lands on would be the appropriate start date.

Elorebaen wrote:

I would suggest using Skype in conjunction with the VTT you use. Easy and free.

I've thought about that, and it looks like a lot of other people are finding Skype very helpful, but it doesn't suit me personally. I cannot stand the sound of my own voice*. It is horribleawfulbad. Just the prospect of listening to myself talk for hours is enough to make me want to swear off the idea of gaming ever again.

So yeah, gonna stick to typing. ;)

(* -- this is also why I will never do a public reading. Never. NEVER. Would rather swallow live toads on stage.)

Perhaps Skype + Screaming Bee would help. ;)

Out of curiosity, is your aversion to your own voice completely, or your own recorded/over phone voice?

There is a lodge in Magnimar that is detailed quite nicely in the Seeker of Secrets book. I had my players make contact with Lord & Lady Heidmarch at a dinner that the Lord-Mayor held after the Skinsaw Murders. After the Lord Mayor announced that they had agreed to inspect Fort Rannick, Lord Heidmarch asked that they return with a written account of what they find of any areas to the north. The stories of their exploits, especially if they survive the Hook Mountain adventure, might be enough for Lord Heidmarch to consider a field promotion for the Bard in my party.

I'm also using the Faction guide to track FP with the Pathfinders through them.

I'd rule that a weapon would gain the benefit of that spell when against an attack by any creature that the Bane is aligned against in terms of hardness & HP.

How I interpret it is this: The magical enchantment adds to the hardness and HP not because it's physically making the actual steel or material of the weapon itself stronger; it's a rule interpretation for the strength of the magic force it was imbued with.

Essentially the force of the magic per enhancement bonus is equivalent to material (steel, cold iron, whatever) of the power of X hardness & X HP.

The magic force that makes the sword +2 in the first place is more-or-less the same as the spell Bane, or any other spell that modifies the enhancement bonus of a weapon. If the creature attacking the weapon is the same as the Bane is aligned against, the spell would activate. Since the magic would be active, it's enhancement bonus grows and each point of enhancement translates to more hardness & HP for those reasons.

I would also rule this to be true with weapons that have the Bane ability permanently on the item.

I was just saying the height of the dam (~300') isn't relevant. Yes, the height of the hole is, and thanks for providing all three numbers.

No problem - sorry about the sq vs. cu.; I had to type the response three times due to 500 server errors for the post. I started to seriously run out of time to reply and got sloppy. Obviously you figured it all out. :)

Incedently, the entire thickness is 50' of wall - the safety wall is part of that dimension according to the diagram. My math was based on the wall below the safety wall on only one side, and then added the wall as it juts up above the walkway.

It's actually good information to know; my players will be making their way to this challenge in the near future.

I haven't got my HMM book with me and I need the approximate dimemsions of the dam and the hole that's been punched in the top of it.

From what I recall the top of the dam is a 45' wide walkway in between 5' wide safety walls; I don't recall how long/wide the dam is or how much of that width is covered by overflowing water in the illustration (maybe one-tenth or one-twelfth of the width?)

For my purposes today, the dam's height is not relevant. I'm basically trying to calculate the volume of stone missing from the dam where the ogres and Black Magga broke through.

Thanks.

The height *is* relevant because volume requires three dimensions. :)

Going by the grid on the map, you have the walk-way correct. It's a hole that is ~50' wide east to west, and ~75' from the top of the dam, so that's a hole that is 50' x 50' x 75' = 187,500 sq. ft of stone.

If you would like to be specific and detailed, you'll add 1,250 for a 5' x 5' x 50 ' safety wall (188,750 sq. ft. total). If you consider ~10% of the structure was probably hallow, holding rooms, tunnels, and other things that are not stone, then you're removing 18,750 sq. ft. and looking at a total of 170,000 sq. ft. overall.

Enjoy! :)

Real Life Responsibilities suck. :(

Quoted for Truth. Just about the only thing I do outside of work, chores and parenting is run the game. Luckily my wife is a gamer as well, and very supportive. :)

Gorgeous! Bravo!

I only wish that my MapTool campaign had not yet passed through that adventure. Ah, well.

Add it to the community stuff thread!

I'm going to do that, but the thread has gotten really cluttered. I felt like making a separate post would allow it to be found easier in a forum search or the like.

With our next session covering the end of book II coming up in less than two weeks, I have just started toying around with GIMP and these maps, and I have to say, thank you for pointing me in this direction! I'll be able to add the grids, crop the images to 8"X10" sizes and print them in color onto carstock so I can lay them out room by room as they progress.

Thanks for the tutorial AND the maps, once again!

I'm glad that's working out for you. :) Having those skills should open up a lot more options for maps available on the forums and online for your group.

You'll probably see a couple more maps from me for the Hook Mtn Massacre, as well. I run a bi-weekly game and they just found the bear in the trap... so I'm probably two months ahead of your group.

...Making players guess at what the DM thinks is right is not fun though...

I would agree with this sentiment. It has to be an open conversation with the players in question prior to the game and in-between games. Trust between them is essential - the players have to trust the GM to not screw them over on things for no good reason, and the GM has to trust them to play the challenges fairly.

Unless the act is cataclysmic-ally evil / unaligned, then there definitely should be warning. It's not an on/off switch so much as a dimmer in my opinion; my point is that it shouldn't be an always on switch, either. If the possibility of loosing those powers for good isn't real, then you're not risking anything in doing questionable things.

The description of Paladin has "In pursuit of their lofty goals, they adhere to ironclad laws of morality and discipline." Not "mostly keep with their laws", not "when it's convenient, except on Tuesdays". We're talking absolutes.

As the GM, you should always be fair in all things. In the end, however, the GM is the representative of those deities and the final say on what they think of what the character is doing. If the player isn't interested in playing by the rules of the GM at the table, then my suggestion is that there are over a dozen other classes that are awesome as well or find a new GM to play your Paladin under that sees eye-to-eye with you.

First suggestion from my experience doing the same thing: Read up on Detect Evil - there were subtle changes from 3.5 which are important (especially at low levels). Read and re-read those abilities. You need to know them forwards and backwards, because the differences are very small but have large ramifications.

If the area is heavy Undead and Demons/Devils, that would mean to be that there is a concentration of powerful members of those three types of creatures. All of those should be VERY interested in a group with *one* paladin, let alone *three* godly champions. I would be putting down layer over layer of influences and big-league-players trying to either trip them up, set them up to loose their paladin-hood, or kill them outright.

My favorite way to do this is based on a term in chess called a Fork. Basically you provide situations where hard decisions are to be made. Skeletons are easy prey... but skeletons with children trapped in their rib cages? Batter the morals of those characters and let them prove they deserve the title of Paladin. Also be willing to strip those powers if appropriate! It has to have teeth if it's going to mean anything. I don't mean "you jay-walked! Your powers are gone!" of course, but it's a very strict code of Lawfulness and Good that need to be obeyed to have their powers.

I can't imagine any major Demon or Devil on the material plane wouldn't see a band of three paladins as a direct threat to them at any given time. These creatures, specifically Devils, play the ultra-long game and winning the soul of a Paladin is one of the highest prizes in their wicked game.

Those maps are quite nice! Now if only they had a 1" grid on them and were printable to 1" = 5' scale....

=)

They are already printable to that scale; each map is 17" x 17".

I use them in D20Pro, which allows you to specify resolution (200dpi) and overlay any color/brightness of map grid on the image, so I never add grids to any map... though sometimes the floor tiles will create one for me.

Also, I prefer to teach people how to fish:
Grids in GIMP

It's actually super easy. Gimp is free to download and use, and works like a champ for basic map work.

EDIT: Dunno how much you know, so I'm assuming nothing - no offense intended.

More on the specific Tool for grids is in the documentation here.
To help size the grid: PX stands for Pixels, and that is synonymous to Dots in Dots-Per-Inch (dpi). Since these maps are 200dpi, if you want something to be an inch apart on them they need to be 200px apart.

First, thanks to everyone who's made awesome things and shared them!

Here's some quick ones I put together this past month from all the excellent mapping resources that are far too numerous to name. Not really perfect, but good enough for battle maps. :)

I'm using d20Pro to project them onto my game table, so they are only 100dpi. Not really high-res... The Shadow Clock and future maps are going to be at 200dpi default.

Anyway, hope they're useful to someone!

http://www.mediafire.com/?j93tjkkissfwo

Currently has:
Foxglove townhouse - All Levels
The Seven Sawmill - All Levels

Soooo... I found the module map was really confusing and less than optimal for my purposes, so I went another route. I based mine roughly on this 3d Ross Lucci did.

I incorporated three of the details from the module maps to that, though - Clock face on the south, made the hole in the wall roughly flush with the bell supports to aid in making that battle with the Faceless Stalkers more interesting, and moved the roof entry to the south as the wrap around ended more naturally there.

If you stack the maps, you'll see the tower kind of leans back and forth. That allowed me to simulate the crooked, leaning tower and keep all the parts "on square". I modelled the clock gears, clock face & floor all in Sketch-up and pasted them in with shadows. The rest I made or adapted from mapping tiles.

I figure if my party TPKs here, they're going out in style!

http://www.mediafire.com/?hvqqvs97sxyb8

There are two versions of most of the levels - one before the bell drop and one after. About 100MB of pictures overall. Each map layer represents 20' of height overall.

I would love feedback on them, good and bad.

Thanks!

@Greycloak: that is, indeed, an awesome idea.

I just got to the Shadow Clock with my party, and they are poised at the top in a fight with Xanesha.

Through a series of dueling stealth and perception, the rogue was able to get himself directly under her without being aware of each other. He beat the perception check to generally notice an invisible creature is nearby as he suprised her with dancing lights in her face (essentially, he sank my battleship with placement right off the bat). She still couldn't figure out where the light came from (yay +3 perception vs. stealth heavy rogue!)

He crawled up the rafter and took a swing at the square he thought she was (correct) and rolled a natural 20, backing it up by clearing her FF AC through use of a Hero Point. It was very impressive.

The Ranger was able to get up to the top of the wooden stairs just in time to see her become visible and, in turn, triple hit him with the spear which dropped him to -2. His body hit the floor with a wet thud and we broke for the next session (which is this sunday).

They could pull it out, but I'm really expecting a body count. She's down around 25 pts thanks to the Rogue's beyond lucky hit.

I was expecting a TPK... now I'm kinda hoping for it. :)

(If you are interested in a new battle map for the clock, check this out)

Dom, thanks for updating your subscription address. Unfortunately, the upcoming subscription shipment we have for you will be going out to your old address. Hopefully it will be routed to you correctly, but if it's not, we will reship it out to you once we receive it back from the postal services.

Please let us know if there's anything else we can do to help out!

Ahh, well. It was worth a shot. That was probably the best order it could happen to, anyway. :)

Thanks!

I have my subscriptions mailed to my office, and we moved this past weekend. Wouldn't have been a problem execpt that the boss screwed up the mail routing applications so it won't get correctly diverted otherwise.

New address is on my account now. Thanks!!

The way I'm running it is that the levels stack as if the Companion was on the Ranger list; the greater bond to nature the druid has, along with their training, allows them to "use" more creatures effectively. The -3 Ranger levels does what it needs to balance the strength.

I do wish some sort of errata was on this; Hero Lab throws an error because of this, and I need some official word to get that changed. :/

I have the same problem with that whole "do Paladins get a Heavy Horse instead of an Druid Animal Companion Horse" question, but I digress.

One of my players is running a Druid / Ranger cross-class character and chose a Tiger as it's animal companion, which is of course available to Druids but not Rangers.

My question is are Ranger levels intended to stack with Druid-based animal companions that are not on the Ranger list, or should this companion only gain the benefit of the druid levels only?

Mr. Bill approves! :)

Great work!

"Damaging Magic Weapons: An attacker cannot damage a magic weapon that has an enhancement bonus unless his weapon has at least as high an enhancement bonus as the weapon struck." -Core rulebook, p468

Incedently, not in the SRD that I could find. I had thought that was one of the little things that changed from 3.5 to PF, so I'm happy to see it stayed. Thanks for the reminder, Gorbacz!

So I revise: Your Barbarian is now the bane of all mundane weapons. :)

My PC just found Redshiv's corpse.

I told my players the sword was adamantine (Appraise check) and we read the material description...
Isn0t a 3000+gp weapon a bit too much for the party? And more than that, did I read well that an adaatine weapon bypasses every hardness below 20? This means the barbarian character can automatically destroy every weapon he sunders with this sword? (hardness automatically removed, and he deals 1d10+13 of damage without rage).

If it's money you're worried about... it's ~1500gp if you can sell it. Perhaps Savah doesn't want to buy it from the party and they have to sell it in Magnimar to get what it's worth? That's hardly a lot of money for a group of 5-6th level characters. Plus it's not like there's a ton of loot to be had in those first two books anyway.

As to breaking weapons... any mundane weapon? Yes. Any magical weapon? Probably for +1, and less than 50% for +2's, not bigger.

First, thanks to everyone who's made awesome things and shared them!

Finally got to the point in the campaign where the maps made by everyone here get scarce.

Here's some quick ones I put together this past month from all the excellent mapping resources that are far too numerous to name. Not really perfect, but good enough for battle maps. :)

I'm using d20Pro to project them onto my game table, so they are only 100dpi. Not really high-res... I think I'm going to start making the maps at 200dpi default and scale down from now on so they will look better for people printing them.

Anyway, hope they're useful to someone!

http://www.mediafire.com/?j93tjkkissfwo

Currently has:
Foxglove townhouse - All Levels
The Seven Sawmill - All Levels