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When I was in grad school, I was in a group with a bunch of undergrad. During one session, someone mentioned that one of my d20's was so worn that it was approaching spherical, and I explained that it was one of the dice that came with the old red box D&D Basic set in 1983. The guy looked at me in horror for a moment before saying, "Dude, your dice are older than ME."
There are certainly a few gamers in Charlotte. For myself, I've been in a couple of groups. The first is my Sunday Pathfinder homebrew that has been going on for about a year and a half. It's a pretty good group consisting of myself, my wife, an old college friend of mine and her husband, and a couple of 29/30 year old guys. At 37, I'm the oldest in the group, as my wife is inclined to continuously remind me. We're on a hiatus from that game at the moment - the two youngest guys have had real life intrude, so the rest of us have started playing Marvel Heroic for the time being in the interim, with the hopes that we might be able to pick up the old game in a couple months. The other is a Tuesday night Carrion Crown game - it's an all male group with a pretty broad age range. Both games play at my place in Mint Hill.
There was a Dragonlance wizard spell called Timeheal. If I recall correctly, it simulated healing by pulling a version of you from a point in time at which you weren't wounded. I'm pretty sure that was a 2e spell, if only because I never played DL in any other editions.
Swarms. My Carrion Crown group lives in mortal fear of the things. Our last fight with a ridiculous tick swarm ended with the rest of the party urging me to throw a flask of alchemist's fire at the party paladin - who was unconscious and dying - before the ticks sucked him dry. It was awful.
I figure that alignment, being connected to the metaphysics of the setting, is something that some of the more eggheaded types (wizards and clerics) are probably aware of, but not the general populace. It's sort of analogous to the way we're all subject to the laws of physics, but most laymen are only marginally aware of what those are.
None taken; the poster I was responding to had made the statement that he'd never seen an NPC _anywhere_ with the Leadership feat, so I chimed in.
I don't think I have ever seen any NPC, anywhere, with the Leadership feat. Eando Kline has the Leadership feat in Thousand Fangs Below. I only noticed because I was inputting him into Hero Lab the other day.
I'm thinking that, even by RAW, the trip or grab ought to be allowed. It isn't that free actions are specifically only permitted on your turn, but rather, that free actions are performed as a part of some other action:
I think that this suggests that free actions can be taken whenever a character is permitted to take an action. This might occur on their turn, but might also occur in response to an AoO. An analogue of this situation might be the drawing of a weapon during the course of a move action.
The spell component for Silent Image is a bit of fleece: because an illusion spell pulls the wool over your eyes.
As a physics professor, I can't help but chime in here: Assuming constant acceleration, the distance a person moves goes as 1/2*acceleration*time squared. It's that squared factor that makes the 180 foot figure way, way too low. Given the acceleration due to gravity of 32 ft/sec/sec, that means that ignoring air resistance, you'd fall 576 feet over the course of a 6 second round. Obviously, this is a high estimate, since in the real world the acceleration begins to approach zero as the velocity increases. For a human, terminal velocity is something on the order of 56 m/s, or 183 ft/s. Since doing an integral seems sort of over the top for a roleplaying game,it seems easier to assume that the acceleration is uniform until terminal velocity is met. I've yet to run across a situation in which a fall would last more than a round, personally.
Bear in mind that cover bonuses are supposed to reflect a combat situation in which people are jockeying for position, popping out of cover to take shots of their own, etc. So it isn't necessarily covering 50% of the body for every moment of the entire round. The initiative system creates the impression that the person is just hiding behind cover, waiting for his turn to move, but that's just an abstraction that we use to model a less grainy reality. There's also a game design rationale: if you make the cover bonuses too large, it could create incentives for characters to behave in a way that defies the genre conventions which Pathfinder is trying to represent.
I played a rogue with the Minor Magic talent before; my choice was the "Message" spell. It was essentially my short-range walkie-talkie which I could use to signal the rest of the party when I was scouting out ahead. It's hard to justify using a talent for most of the zero-level wizard spells, but I got a lot of use out of this one.
I don't think this is unclear at all. The primary difference in the wording between Wail of the Banshee and Sleep is the use of "1/creature per level" vs. "one or more creatures per level." This difference in wording is necessary because Sleep has a maximum HIT DICE limit for its effectiveness, rather than a NUMBER OF CREATURES limits. Note that in the body of the text itself, Sleep includes similar language about who is affected first: low HD creatures before higher, and in the event of ties, those closest to the center are affected first (just as in Wail of the Banshee.) Neither is a targeted spell.
Don't worry... Most of your enemies in Trial of the Beast will be of the nice, solid variety.
Most professional ethics codes include rules designed to avoid the "appearance of impropriety," and I think that this is a good rule of thumb to use for these sorts of questions, as well. I'm a DM, an Adventure Path Subscriber, and also a player in other people's games. Currently, I'm playing in a Carrion Crown game. When the game started, I had read a good chunk of the first book, and I'd flipped through bestiary material of some of the other books, looking to mine them for ideas for my own homebrew game. When I joined the Carrion Crown game, I did the following: 1. Full disclosure: I made sure that the GM knew that I had a bit of inside information on the early books, to ensure he was comfortable with it. 2. Avoidance of anything that might look like "insider trading:" In Book 1, there's a particular encounter which turns out to be an ambush, in which the PCs are manipulated to make themselves more vulnerable to the attack. I knew it was coming, and what's more, I knew that my PC was likely going to be the first target. My character is a pretty cautious fellow by nature, and it's likely that that he would have taken precautions during the run up to the attack, but because I didn't want to give the impression of metagaming, I kept my mouth shut and intentionally did NOT put up pre-emptive defenses. My PC nearly died, but no one could have accused me trying to game the system. 3. Cease the potentially abusive practice: I haven't cracked the spine on any of the Carrion Crown books since we started playing. At this point, we're somewhere in book 3, and I've got no idea what to expect. For me, this was a no-brainer. Part of the thrill of the game for me is the thrill of exploration and discovery, so reading ahead would ruin that aspect of the game. Even when I play video games, I generally play through them once while avoiding any kind of spoilers or walkthroughs, and then use walkthroughs as a way of checking out content that I might have missed the first time out. I would expect players in my game to observe a similar social contract.
His kid threw a tantrum on facebook. He responds with a tantrum on facebook. With bullets. At least you expect 15-year-olds to throw the occasional tantrum.
That's a really good idea. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icrit/id442011026?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ifumble/id442012141?mt=8 No plot twists, though. EDIT: Too slow... I'm still waiting for an Android version. I'd snap those up in a heartbeat.
A couple of things: First, keep in mind that Lawful (the alignment) does not simply mean lawful (the legal term). Many players interpret the Lawful alignment to mean "always obeys the law," but that's a mistake. In truth, the Lawful alignment is a much broader concept, which just happens to often (but by no means always) overlap with the legal term. Second: alignments are really big bins. Two lawful good characters might each choose different but equally valid responses to the same situation. There isn't a single correct answer. The last paladin I played would respond to this problem by trying to organize the community around the woman: "This poor woman has fallen on hard times. That can happen to any of us. But as people of Golarion, our strength is in our connection to each other. Alone, we are vulnerable to the whims of fate, but together, we are strong! Won't you stand together to help your neighbor in her time of need?" The idea that by helping the least of us, we help all of us is a very lawful good concept. Maybe the community passes a collection plate on her behalf. Maybe other local people of note can be convinced to exert economic pressure on the landlord by refusing to do business with him or perform work for him. Maybe someone else offers to put the woman up until she gets back on her feet. There are a lot of options.
Assuming constant acceleration, a person would drop about 580 feet in one round.
I can't speak for anyone else, I'd be more likely to mine 5e for elements that I could port into Pathfinder than the other way around. Plus, it's not like it's binary; I know plenty of people who are invested to some degree in both Pathfinder AND 4e, running multiple games or multiple groups.
The stern, stick-in-the-mud paladin archetype is not only unnecessary, but I figure it ought to be fairly rare. Back in the old days of 1/2e, a paladin's most restrictive ability score requirement was a 17, and even now, they tend to be high charisma characters. A high charisma character like that ought to inspire friendship and loyalty from those around him, not grumbling and annoyance. A person with a 17 charisma, if nothing else, ought to be fun to hang out with at a party.
I ran a logic puzzle of this type maybe 10 months ago in my campaign. It went over great. The PCs were in the ruins of a wizard's school which, because of a malfunctioning portal, had spewed forth hundreds of demons which had overrun the place before the entire site was sealed off. In order to shut down the gate, the players had to collect amulets belonging to the five head Magisters of the school, and use the amulets to activate a device with a command sequence: they had to speak the full name of the magister, while holding the amulet which was associated with that Magister's specialty school, and do so in descending order of rank within the school. Some advice: 1. Know your group. As several posters have pointed out, some players aren't going to be into this, and your game will grind to a halt without buy-in. In my group, we've got two PhD scientists (who have both remarked that the analytical portion of the GRE, which consists of puzzles like this, was "a pleasant diversion between two other exams), and a couple others who I knew enjoyed riddles, brain teasers, and other puzzles. 2. Have an escape valve. I can't disagree more with what Ecaterina Ducaird said. Sure, the challenge is being met by your character, not the player, but this doesn't imply that the player should have no input. Think about combat: an accomplished fighter is probably well-schooled in tactics, but those tactical choices are the result of player input. There's no skill check to see if you're smart enough to flank or avoid AoOs. Intellectual pursuits should be the same way: the dice are there to augment player input, rather than simulate the outcome entirely. The sort of skill check stuff Ecaterina mentioned is a good idea if you find that your players are stuck, just not enjoying the puzzle, or if the game starts to grind down. Use successful checks to give additional hints, point out mistakes, etc... but making the whole challenge nothing but a string of d20 rolls is boring an unmemorable. Use it only as a last resort if you need to kick the game back in gear. 3. Be organic when you introduce the puzzle. Don't just rattle off a set of clues, hand them a grid, and say, "Good luck." If you do it right, it won't even come off as a logic puzzle at first. As my players explored the ruins, they kept finding references to the five magisters. Diaries, angry letters back and forth between feuding wizards, statues or portraits with partially complete identifying information, etc. Without any prompting, the players had already started trying to figure out who was who. I was able to dole out clues gradually over time. The players who enjoyed logic puzzles were able to work through it gradually while they explored, but there were still encounters between clues that could keep the members of the party who weren't into the puzzle from being bored. No one was just sitting around, waiting for the puzzle types to finish. 4. The fluff of the original puzzle is irrelevant. All you really care about is the logical structure of the clues. The puzzle that you picked has a natural RPG flavor, but you could always reskin ANY puzzle, which means that if you skim around a book or website of puzzles, you can pick one as your basis with whatever difficulty you wish. I stole the logical structure of MY puzzle of the web, but the original puzzle had them figuring out the first and last name, mode of transportation, and travel time for five people. I swapped the specialty school for the mode of transportation, and the transit time, being numerical, was pretty easy to map against the ranks of the wizards. I went through each of the clues, and "refluffed" them to fit the new scenario, while preserving the original logical effect of the clue. So for instance, if the original clue was "Mr Smith did not ride the bus," that would translate to, "Magister Brocard is not a necromancer." To make that clear, I'd maybe have the PCs find a snarky letter between two other wizards about how Magister Brocard can't master the simplest necromantic magics. (Plus, identifying the sender or recipient of the letter by first name could serve to deliver the clue that Brocard's first name is NOT one of those mentioned in the letter... Two clues with one piece of evidence.) 5. Don't be afraid to overspecify the problem. If you look at a logic puzzle from a book or a website, the clues have been chosen in such a way that you have the bare minimum amount of information needed to point to a unique solution. If you add additional clues on top of that, you aren't going to break the puzzle, but you will likely make it slightly easier. Hold a couple of extra clues in reserve for if the party doesn't seem like it's having fun, and you want them to have an easier time progressing. They'll still have a feeling of accomplishment at the end, and likely won't even realize that you threw them a softball. Personally, I know that I enjoy this sort of thing as a player, and I know that my players really enjoyed that adventure a lot, so this sort of thing CAN work. I say go for it.
Isn't this going to step on the toes of Skulls and Shackles a bit? I often see this kind of overlap with the game publishers. I wish there was a bit more synergy between them so that they don't overlap genres. Personally, I see that as a plus, rather than a minus. Something that I've seen a lot of GMs do while running adventure paths is to sprinkle in outside material in order to add a bit of flavor, give PCs a chance to make up for some XP or loot that they might not have gotten from the AP for whatever reason, or just break up the monotony of a single, focused plotline. Sidequests are a good thing. From that point of view, having a trove of material with similar flavor and setting that could easily be inserted into a Skull & Shackles campaign would be an unqualified good thing. I'm likely to pick this up for precisely that reason.
I treat braces for charging in my game the same way that I treat any other readied action. When an NPC opts to ready any action, it is obvious to the players that the NPC has, for some reason, held his action, but I do not announce that he has readied an action (vs. simply delaying) or what trigger he is preparing for. As such, there are warning signs that the NPC might be setting himself for your charge, but nothing is certain. If you see a guy with a spear holding back in a fight, you charge him at your peril. Keep in mind that the initiative system is just an abstraction. It isn't as if characters are just standing around and moving, one at a time. In actuality, all the actions in a given round are more or less simultaneous, but we resolve them in initiative order simply as a concession to necessity and the very slight differences in timing. In character, the cavalier begins charging, and the spearman sets his brace AS the horseman rides down on him, so it's likely that the cavalier has already committed himself. If the cavalier has a chance to notice anything, it's simply that the spearman seems to be fighting somewhat cautiously prior to his beginning the charge.
People have mentioned the Namir boss fight... I was able to take him out with blind luck: I was cowering in a corner, cloaked and hoping I would regenerate my health, when he just happened to leap over the wall directly in front of me. So I punched him. It's odd that a guy who could survive all the grenades I was carrying exploding in his face would have such a glass jaw. |
