Drahliana Moonrunner's page

Barry is SUCH an idiot. Freaking CW drama crap.

Flash has never exactly been the brain trust of the Justice League.

@Scythia - So would you not allow someone to play say a Paladin of Abadar in Hell's Rebels? Overthrowing the martial law declared by House Thrune in Kintargo would not be an action you'd allow a Paladin to take without falling?

When you find out the exact situation though, even the most strictest interpretation of legitimate government, would pretty much demand that the Paladin work against Thrune.

At what point are the laws from a former government no longer considered a "legitimate authority" with regards to the Paladin Code?

If they fail to serve good, they are not legitimate whether it's "former" or "present".

Skeld wrote:

James -

When you envisioned Korvosa, did you have a real city in mind, in terms of climate, location, etc.?

Thanks!

-Skeld

In terms of climate and location, San Francisco. In terms of personality, Magnimar is closer to San Francisco, with Korvosa closer to Los Angeles.

Is there that much of a climate difference between San Francisco and the City of Fallen Angels? (I've never thoght of LA differently since In Nominee :)

No there isn't one.

Masks of the Living God is the closest thing to what you want since it gives you a very good inside view on the operations of a Razmiran temple's version of boot camp.

I don't know of any archetypes that change the casting type of any caster, just the casting stat. You'd need a completely different class like the Hunter.

There's one or two magus archetypes that change the class into spontaneous casting.

Perhaps a nature-themed oracle might be part of the answer needed?

Drah,

The AARP, the NAACP, a few dozen other groups that have money and you know members that vote.

The AARP lost over 400,000 members when it endorsed the Affordable Care Act.

The NRA also has money and their members are more enthuisastic about voting. The NAACP's constitutency is one of the larger non-voting segments of the population.

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Two questions regarding elves: Would it be fair to say that the majority of elves who become paladins are Forlorn? Second, do elves tend to lend a sense of "specialness" to a character just because they're an elf, or is that just my own hang-ups regarding roleplaying elves talking? I recently got an idea to do an elf Dragon Disciple but part of me worries that such a concept is too "special snowflake" as much as I dislike that phrase.

First: It would not be fair to say that.

Second: That sounds like your own hang-up.

Frankly, if a PC doesn't feel like a "special snowflake" then that's not a great idea for a PC, in my opinion. The PCs ARE BY DEFINITION special snowflakes. They are the rarest things in any one campaign. They are the heroes. They are the stars of the show. They're the ones who make things happen. They're the WHOLE POINT OF THE GAME when you play. If they're not special snowflakes... what's the point?

I take it then you're not a fan of the idea of the PC's being Ordinary Joes put into extraordinary circumstances? Which may be what the poster is going for?

More military spending? I'm pretty ignorant of military policy but a lot of it seems like a money pit. Maybe you guys can convince me it's all not just expensive chest-thumping.

- Air superiority fighters seem so niche, considering dog fights are a thing of history so shelling out 200 million each on so many of them seems silly. Obviously the F-35 is a multipurpose fighter so it's not as guilty of this as the F-22 was but it's price tag is even more hefty.
- Aircraft Carriers seem to fit in with how modern warfare is conducted but their accompaniment of large ships with long guns seems superfluous. How often are those things even fired? What kind of ship-ship combat would even warrant those -- especially considering the plethora of long range options like missiles and air strikes? Furthermore, what navy are we even really competing with? These things have to cost millions in upkeep every year. Are they really necessary?
- The amount of corruption surrounding military spending is astonishing. As someone who thinks white-collar crime is fascinating, I'm blown away by how they get away with this stuff. Artificially boosting costs by playing bidding games with contractors. "Gold plating" leads to wasteful pursuits like 500$ wrenches, the latest big screen tv models, and 1000$ mattresses. The more I read about this the more I feel this spending needs a lot more oversight and accountability.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know damn well no politician is gonna get elected proposing the cuts to military spending I'm talking about. I also know that production and maintenance of these "obelisks of might" means lots of jobs for lots of people. But doing something "cuz jobs" is not a good enough reason in and of itself to justify billions of taxpayer dollars.

If you go by Trump's premise, this isn't luxury spending but remedial aid for a military that's falling apart. Ask someone who serves in infrastructure basis and he'll probably give you rhyme and verse how this only partially makes up for Obama's starving the military over the last 8 years, and has left us vulnerable to China's expanding ambitions.

Trump's proposed budget has been announced.

Shock of shockers... it would massively decrease funding for the rural white portions of the country which put him in office. That said, it is SO extreme that it has little chance of getting enough votes to pass... despite GOP control of congress.

It targets for elimination a lot of GOP popular targets such as the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, PBS, climate programs in the EPA, environmental regulation, What's not for them to like?

Well +20 to all stats would be about 2x the cost and 2x the time to make it. You don't have to worry too much about time at those levels, but still... it's going to take a while... and is there really that much money around?

Also yay for +7 to your spell DCs when everyone has +7 on all saves... and since we're talking about +20 belts, why not +10 cloaks of resistance?
And more spells per day? You don't run out anyway in those 15 mins adventuring days

Speak for yourself, I've rarely ever had those 15 min days that some feel are the norm.

Guy Humual wrote:

Irontruth wrote:

Guy Humual wrote:

Did I say the Bush tax cuts were a bridge too far?

Yes, you considered it so egregious that you included it in your list of sins of how democrats are just republicans.

Right, and I'm saying that I want democrats to be less like republicans, that tax cuts should be a thing a republican should have tried to make permanent and not a democrat. That doesn't mean I wouldn't have voted for Obama has I known he was going to do that, but just because I would have voted for him doesn't mean I'm not happy about it. If memory serves the republicans were holding government hostage by refusing to vote on a budget bill. The tax cuts were part of the compromise. I don't think he should have compromised. That was something he should have fought on.

Right now there's effectively two serious choices, republican or democrat, or horrible and less horrible, and you could also not vote which a large chunk of the population choose to do.

And then you held up FDR as your ideal democrat, who interred 120,000 people because of their ethnicity and denied safe refuge to another 200,000, resulting in their death.

You would rather have a democrat who denies thousands of people their liberty for no reason and/or put them in a deadly situation, than one who compromises on taxes.

The Internment of Japanese Americans and the ban on Jewish immigratio were a product of the time not jut one man, even a President. The reforms of Roosevelt are the reason that the United States even had a middle class for as long as it did.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Inlaa wrote:

Because I actually am fine with Paladin spellcasting; I'm just not fine with Lay on Hands being as powerful as it is in a setting with hampered healing. I also like the flexibility allowed by having it be a PRC in this no-alignment setting (raging paladins, anyone?).

I also like the idea of making someone "work" for those paladin powers, making paladins seem like actual badasses in this world.

Then why not just say that Paladins don't get Lay On Hands or Channel in your setting?

it would change the balence of the class to much to just flat out remove a class feature it would be like saying rogues dont get sneak attack, or wizards you have 1-2 less spells per day on every odd spell slot(1,3,5,7 and 9) and while it doesnt break the class it hinders it greatly

Lay on Hands is a gravy class feature, but losing it is not nearly the deal-breaker as losing smite. Maybe give them a bonus feat every 5 levels in trade.

Because I actually am fine with Paladin spellcasting; I'm just not fine with Lay on Hands being as powerful as it is in a setting with hampered healing. I also like the flexibility allowed by having it be a PRC in this no-alignment setting (raging paladins, anyone?).

I also like the idea of making someone "work" for those paladin powers, making paladins seem like actual badasses in this world.

Then why not just say that Paladins don't get Lay On Hands or Channel in your setting?

(*)Suppose that the Pathfinder rule of "Undead = Always Evil" (which is already canonically known to be not quite 100% true) was just a description of the situation up to the time of founding of this nation?

That's why it's a RULE. So that the non-evil exceptions are appropriately rare AND special.

This chart suggests that if you are starting a level six character under normal game assumptions, you would have 16,000gp in equipment. wealth by level

the GM in question may not be running a standard wealth by level campaign. the OP should confirm this by checking the gear of his peers.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The unifying term is Intellectual Property, and that's most likely what would be used against you in whatever case that would be found.

That's not how the law works, I'm afraid. You can't file a complaint alleging intellectual property violation. You need to be more specific than that.

For example, you can file a complain alleging violation of USC Title 17, Chapter 5, which is copyright infringement. You can file a complain alleging violation of USC Title 15, Chapter 22, which is trademark infringements. You can file a complain alleging both, but you need to be very clear about what you think is a trademark violation and what you think is a copyright violation.

This actually gets back to some pretty fundamental aspects of the US rule of law. I only have to respond to what you actually say in your complaint, and depending upon your specific complain, there are things that I may or may not be able to say. As a simple example, parody is a legitimate defense to a claim of copyright infringement [Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569 (1994), Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 252 F. 3d 1165 (11th Cir. 2001)] but not to trademark infringement.

He's not asking for a specific question of legal advice. He simply wants to know if he can get in trouble. And he doesn't need a crash course in law to get an answer. Which is as long as he doesn't publish, he's fine.

The unifying term is Intellectual Property, and that's most likely what would be used against you in whatever case that would be found.

To the OP, if you're using someone else's work, it only becomes an issue if you publish. If what you do stays in your group,than it's not an issue.

It can become an issue if you post a web blog, or make your campaign into a network effort like PFS. Legends of the Shining Jewel for instance was, originally Living Procampur, an independent spinoff of the Living City campaign, which filed off all of the Forgotten Realms product identity after they were politely given a suggestion to Cease and Desist from WOTC.

Did anyone mention that the belt is +20 to all stats? >.> I actually don't know if that was the case but I mean why not?

A Belt of Physical Perfection is one that modifies Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. So we're going by the name used.

Annoying characters are usually those run by annoying players. Or they are GMPCs foisted upon a group.

As for the EPA, science, health care, social security, LGBT rights, the conservatives are saying some really terrible things that's for sure, how anyone in their right mind could vote for them is beyond me,

It's not that hard.. because the other person warned about abstract threats to people you don't really care about, and then she said she was going to shut down the coal mine where you worked at where you supported your family. Of course she didn't actually say that, but that's how her words rang in your ears.

Claxon wrote:

_Ozy_ wrote:

Claxon wrote:

Quote:

Yes, I'm well aware. I'm also pretty sure there is no cap mentioned in the rules, unlike the bonuses for weapons/armor.

That's what I'm looking for.

It's not specifically mentioned, but it is what the game is designed around.

Given that you can, with difficulty granted, boost your STR well above a +6 using other abilities, I seriously doubt that the game is 'designed around' a specific +6 limit to enhancement bonuses, anymore than it is 'designed around' a wizard with access to the wish spell.

Some things will make the game easier, some things will make the game too easy. The GM is there to serve as a gatekeeper to keep the game in bounds of what is generally agreed upon, whether that's a +6 enhancement stat limit, or a raging alchemist rocking a +24 or so.

Given that you can boost your strength in other ways is why the enhancement bonus caps at +6. They don't want you to be able to accrue too high a strength score. That other bonuses to strength exist is a point in favor of why enhancement bonuses are limited, not against it.

Except that that +6 'limit' existed long before alchemical bonuses were even a thing. So no, I don't believe that the +6 stat limits were created with the current ways to boost your strength in mind. So either the game is now broken, or boosting your STR doesn't actually break the game compared to, say, a wish spell.

Seriously, give a 20th level fighter a +20 belt of physical perfection. Is he now more powerful than a 20th level wizard?

By the logic presented, I take it you have no problems giving a spellcaster a +20 boost to their casting stat?

"You use your Wisdom, rather than your Charisma, to determine all class features and effects relating to your sorcerer class, such as bonus spells per day, maximum spell level you can cast, and the save DCs of your spells."

Are class skills considered class features?

thank you Nicole

The only thing a class skill determines is whether you get a +3 after taking one rank in it. The skill remains operated by it's base attribute.

Guy Humual wrote:

Get money out of politics

That would require overturning the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United.

That by itself wouldn't do it as money in politics was already a problem before that decision made it worse. It would however, be a start.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

According to the Gygaxian model, a Paladin would be within his rights to summarily execute an evil cultist who has repented from good on the grounds that he would be preventing him from backsliding and would send him to a hallowed afterlife.

Would this sit with Sarenrae?

No. And it's not a paladin's "right" to execute ANYONE, regardless of the paladin's faith.

And it's one of the reasons that there's comparatively not a lot of Sarenite paladins; it's tough for them to square the circle about being good all the time but sometimes not being lawful.

I meant repented from evil TO good.

No difference, other than to double down and to say that anyone who executes a redeemed bad guy and worships Sarenrae is gonna be excommunicated... at best. That is NOT what Sarenrae is about.

Are there then dieties that would sponsor a Gygaxian Paladin? Possibly Torag?

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

According to the Gygaxian model, a Paladin would be within his rights to summarily execute an evil cultist who has repented from good on the grounds that he would be preventing him from backsliding and would send him to a hallowed afterlife.

Would this sit with Sarenrae?

No. And it's not a paladin's "right" to execute ANYONE, regardless of the paladin's faith.

And it's one of the reasons that there's comparatively not a lot of Sarenite paladins; it's tough for them to square the circle about being good all the time but sometimes not being lawful.

I meant repented from evil TO good.

If you want a place that's accepting of undead, the go-to nation is Geb.

Of course if you yourself are still breathing, then there might be problems.

You would need both of the familiar bond feats, to take the feat.

According to the Gygaxian model, a Paladin would be within his rights to summarily execute an evil cultist who has repented from good on the grounds that he would be preventing him from backsliding and would send him to a hallowed afterlife.

Would this sit with Sarenrae?

Guy Humual wrote:

thejeff wrote:

My suspicion is that the answer is simple. Sanders never really was a threat and she knew it all along. Not only did she not use the attack material, she didn't actually conspire against him either. Because she didn't need to.

She had major networks with Bernie blackouts, if Ted Cruse and John Kasich had of been a single person fighting against Trump that race still wouldn't have been as close as Sanders vs Clinton. We got to see a lot more of that race though. Sanders strength was strictly from the internet and word of mouth.

Had he been a serious candidate, gotten into the race earlier and actually worked at getting out the vote, making himself known in those early states, that primary would have been even closer and Hilary might have tried her dirty republican tricks on him. However, I think Sanders never thought he could win, he was just trying to move the democratic platform to the left, and in that regard he succeeded admirably. I'm not sure it was "the most progressive platform in party history", we certainly didn't hear much policy talk at all after Sanders coincided, but I think that was what Sanders always had as his goal that cycle.

I thought you though she did try the "dirty republican tricks"? My point was she didn't even bother with standard campaign attacks. Bernie never got enough traction to need it. You can blame the media for that, if you like, but Clinton and the DNC sure as hell don't run the media or they wouldn't have spent nearly so much time on Clinton scandals. It might have been closer than the Republican race, but it wasn't nearly as close as the Obama/Clinton race in 2008 was.

I think you're right about Sander's initial approach. Something changed after the early primaries, though. It may have been closer than he'd expected, but still a real long shot at victory, but he started to work on tearing her down, even though his chances of catching up were slim. I don't know if he just got caught up in the race or what,...

Sanders had major problems from the getgo, but his biggest weaknesses were among minority voters. He tried to get around this by making a token hire from Black Lives Matter to be his minority liaison, but I didn't see much liasing going on afterwards.

Still not used to this Guild name change :)

So this question revolves around rebuilding a character before playing it at level 2, the idea of taking a feat to modify something before you have it, and an unchained barbarian who takes Lesser Beast Totem as their level 2 rage power.

So I have the barbarian in question at level 2, but I haven't played him at that level yet. I'm wondering if it's ok to "re-optimize" the character and take Weapon Focus (claws) with my level 1 feat.

My gut instinct says no, but I'm really not sure and I'm looking for opinions.

No.. you have to rebuild your level 1 character AS a level 1 character before you apply your level 2 changes to it. Since you don't have the claws at level 1, you can't take the feat at level 1. You finish your rebuild at level 1, and THEN advance the character to level 2.

Now if you want to change your level 1 feat, you can retrain it (which isn't free) provided that at level 2 you now qualify for it.

Gestalt is a 3.5 mechanic. So you may want to look it up on the SRD at d20srd.org.

It's hilarious to watch someone ridicule other people's belief in God while at the same time worship thier lord and savior Bernie Sanders.

Unlike most Republicans apparently, I can back a person for public office without insisting that he's some kind of supernatural being. I can even support Sanders even if he has positions which I do disagree with, (he does). If he had been on the ticket, I'd have voted for him, and I did vote for Clinton despite the fact he wasn't. And despite the fact that I've disagreed with her considerably more than I did with Sanders.

All I know is Bernie Sanders had a HUGE town hall event, with people that voted FOR Trump and still managed to applaud for a guy like him that was saying "Changes in Energy do not mean we toss out coal miners. We need to reinvest in these places to bring EVERYONE back up."

Like I've said before. Sanders draws from much of the same themes that Trump did. Both of them are beating iconclastic drums.

To quote Stephen King: “When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.”

If only that was true. The actual motivation is even worse. If you actually READ the Book of Job, All that was done onto him because Satan suggested that it'd be a good idea to test him that way. For some reason, God needs to prove to Satan that Job can't be broken and he tells the Adversary to do his worst.

The challenge was to make a character so useless as to be worse than a normal npc expert.

You don't need to gimp stats or class features to do that. All it takes is bad play, and there's always plenty of that around.

So it is not banned just frowned upon. The reason I asked was I was challenged to optimize the most useless pfs legal character. Turning wizard into a commoner woukd make that easy.

We get people opening new threads about 7-8 int wizards about once a month or two on the average. Your idea doesn't even have the virtue of originality.

If you plan on doing this... do it with a PFS table that has your friends on it that will tolerate this bit of whimsy until you get it out of your system. Otherwise it's a great way to antagonise strangers.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

_Ozy_ wrote:

GM Rednal wrote:

As a good rule of thumb, though, stuff shouldn't exceed the power of things in the CRB unless it's deliberate and you have a good reason for it. XD

To wit: Why wouldn't everyone else then try to get +20 bonuses to their primary stats? Hello, casters with far more spells and drastically higher DCs...

Well, because nobody could afford it unless the GM was already breaking WBL bigtime. So again, if someone is running 'that' sort of campaign, we may as well give him the rules that would govern such an item.

The fact that it would break any conventional Pathfinder scenario or campaign is a given, not sure how many more people need to chime in on that.

Obviously the OP's GM is not running "that sort of campaign". The problem is that the OP's GM is under the unfortunate impression that they have to justify their decision barring the item by rules text, forgetting the cardinal rule of GMing.

"My Table, My Rules. The books don't run the game, I do."

Well, since I can't quite read the GMs mind myself, all I can do is offer advice based on the facts given, which was that the GM thought the item couldn't be crafted because of caster level prerequisites, which is incorrect for multiple reasons.

Where he simply could have gone for the much simpler explanation that +6 is the cap.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

I think an Athetics skill is a terrible idea, because the people who would most naturally gravitate to it would be the people whom it fits the least. Frontline fighters and whatnot don't have skill points to burn, but my weedy little wizard has a million skill points per level and can/could easily end up out-benching the fighter.

Feats aren't much better; while fighters have feats to burn, they've also got some still competition for what to do with them (which would you rather have, another +1 to hit with your primary weapon, or the ability to bench press more?) Paladins, rangers, and barbarians just don't have the feats to spare.

You make some valid points. A way to 'fix' it might be to make it an automatic 'skill' based on BAB. In addition, instead of making it a straight replacement of strength rolls instead give bonuses to a strength roll based on the DC made like +1 per 5 DC or something like that.

Thing is... I'm not sold on the need for "fixing" because I'm not sold on the skill itself.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Melkiador wrote:

If you start this practice in a millennia old culture that's been entombing their dead the entire time, then you will already be sitting on generations of material.

However lacking modern preservation techniques, only the more recent corpses would be intact enough for use.

Mummies are thousands of years old. Skeletons can last for thousands of years if the climate is arid.

And are the beneficiary of extremely sophisticated and expensive preservation techniques. Which in the mummy's case include the removal of much of the internal organs.

So here is the issue. We recently had an encounter with a snake like creature the our DM refused to tell us what was. It grappled with our horse and our witch tried to cast cause fear on the snake, but we are unsure of how it would effect our horse. How does a non-attack spell effect a creature that is grappled with another creature? As well as can someone further explain grappling to me in general? Our whole team is having some issues understanding the rules of the grapple.

The grapple rules don't apply because the witch is not being grappled. The issue is concentration due to violent motion so the appropriate Concentration check needs to be made to get the spell off. If the check is made then the spell is cast normally.

Edit: due to the situation, I'd also mandate a Ride Check at DC 20.

GM Rednal wrote:

As a good rule of thumb, though, stuff shouldn't exceed the power of things in the CRB unless it's deliberate and you have a good reason for it. XD

To wit: Why wouldn't everyone else then try to get +20 bonuses to their primary stats? Hello, casters with far more spells and drastically higher DCs...

Well, because nobody could afford it unless the GM was already breaking WBL bigtime. So again, if someone is running 'that' sort of campaign, we may as well give him the rules that would govern such an item.

The fact that it would break any conventional Pathfinder scenario or campaign is a given, not sure how many more people need to chime in on that.

Obviously the OP's GM is not running "that sort of campaign". The problem is that the OP's GM is under the unfortunate impression that they have to justify their decision barring the item by rules text, forgetting the cardinal rule of GMing.

"My Table, My Rules. The books don't run the game, I do."

@Drahliana Moonrunner: You're correct in that German display pride regarding achievements of their culture; at least now they do (late 90s/early 2000s was a different topic), but when it comes to pride in the country as opposed to the individual achievements etc., things tend to become a bit more strained...though admittedly, that has improved during the Merkel-years and the mostly positive feedback we received during that time.

The time I was referring to was mainly in the 79-84 era. Keep in mind that the period you're thinking of was one of stress and a lot of self-evaluation.

Not only is your GM right. Your GM is totally within their purview to disallow ANY item even if the rules allow it, if he feels said item is inappropriate.

The GM runs the game, not the rulebooks. Remember this credo.

And I'd label this item inappropriate even if the campaign was starting at 20/10.

By RAW, No. there's nothing in the text of the magic item that allows for this.

But it IS Samsung's fault if they send me a phone update, it ruins the phone and can't be reversed.

Are you using the Note 7? Those phones were recalled, and there actually was a destructive update purposely sent to brick the phones to keep them from being used.

Other things aside, I do hope North and South Korea find a way to reconcile in the nearish future. ...Mind you, I'm not terribly optimistic about this actually happening, but it would be nice to see that particular conflict ended.

As long as there is a fratricidal nutcase with delusions of godhood running the North, that's not likely.

Also a big downside for me is WotC dropping Gen Con. I know there are third party events being run, but it saddens me that all the seminars/previews/releases for D&D that used to happen are no more. It seems like a big step into obscurity for the company, while Paizo has basically picked up that mantle. To me, that's a big plus in the Pathfinder column.

I don't think that Paizo is going to be increasing it's GenCon presence. What I do think is that Hasbro is tightening the belt on D+D's discretionary expenses.

I know you have to split resources like Hit Dice, Skill Points, Feats, Evolution Points and so on between them. Oh well, I'm thinking of just going for the regular Summoner as I found fatal flaws in my hastily thought out idea.

Now I must plan out how to build my Eidolon for the regular summoner.. Hmm..

Why not just go for a centaur like model? choose a form that's a quadraped and then add a head and arms, or go biped and add legs as you get the points.