Drip Do'Urden's page

I bought the first two volumes of Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio (the same Phil Foglio that did What's New with Phil and Dixie for Dragon magazine). I'm really enjoying the series so far. You can read the entire series online. The third volume was not available on Amazon, so I picked up the Vol 1-3 Omnibus (B&W) to get it. The omnibus is pretty cheap, a little more portable than the color volumes, and nice because the end of vol 3 makes a better stopping point than vol 2.

Several situations add hit points of damage to a DC, which makes many checks impossible at higher levels when enemies do higher damage:

1. Spellcraft check to avoid losing a spell when taking damage
(DC = 10 + points of damage taken + spell level)

2. Fortitude save to survive a coup de grace
(DC = 10 + damage dealt)

3. Combat maneuver attack roll to succeed in spite of damage taken from the provoked AoO
(DC = 15 + the target's CMB + damage taken)

At high levels, damage dominates the DC equation, making other factors like spell level insignificant. A first level character can be dropped from full HP to 1 HP and still hope to succeed, but a higher level character who loses only a third of their full hit points is faced with the impossible. Since HP are abstract, there should be enough scaling so that enemy damage potential does not outpace character save and check bonuses.

I propose that instead of damage, we use scaled damage: Divide damage by one plus one fourth total character level (or hit dice). I think this bit of complexity is a fair trade for the degree of brokenness it fixes. So at 4th level damage is divided by 2; at 8th level damage is divided by 3; at 12th level damage is divided by 4; at 16th level damage is divided by 5; and at 20th level damage is divided by 6. This doesn't change the amount of damage taken, only the effect it has on DCs. I'd also like spell level to play a greater role in situation #1 above, so I'd use (2 x spell level) instead of spell level.

For example, if a 12th level caster takes 28 damage while casting a 4th level spell, the DC to avoid losing the spell is normally 42, practically impossible. Using scaled damage (28/4 = 7), the DC is 25, much more reasonable in spite of doubling the spell level.

The rule for difficult terrain doubling the cost of movement is very intuitive and clearly stated on p.145 of the Beta:

Double Movement Cost: When your movement is hampered in some way, your movement usually costs double. For example, each square of movement through difficult terrain counts as 2 squares, and each diagonal move through such terrain counts as 3 squares (just as two diagonal moves normally do).

Then we get the following clutter:

If movement cost is doubled twice, then each square counts as 4 squares (or as 6 squares if moving diagonally). If movement cost is doubled three times, then each square counts as 8 squares (12 if diagonal) and so on. This is an exception to the general rule that two doublings are equivalent to a tripling. (emphasis mine)

What good is this exception? I can't think of a situation that isn't better handled with the general rule. If my move is the usual six squares, doubling twice under the general rule allows me to move two squares, while the exception only lets me move one square.

I don't know what specific case this exception was supposed to address, so I'll put it as a question: Why bother? We could save word count by simply deleting the paragraph about multiple doublings, and at the same time simplify the rules.

The "Recent Posts" link in your personal page is extremely useful, and I find myself using it a lot to link back into current discussions. Sometimes I'm reminded of something I posted a long time ago, and I'd like to be able to find it from my personal page, no matter how old it is. It would really be great if I could enter a search term and the search would be limited to my own posts.

Similarly, I'm often reminded of other people's interesting posts, especially when I want to reference the crunchy bits of someone's good idea for a game mechanic. I sometimes click on the person's avatar in that case and see if I can find the mechanic in their recent posts. However, some people with a lot of good ideas are prolific posters, so by the time I access their page, the post I'm thinking of has scrolled off the bottom of their list. Again, an archive back to post #1 would be great, and a way to search only within that person's archive.

The Abjurer and Evoker 20th level school powers may be the worst capstones in the game. Immunity to one element? On top of being passive, the ability has to be overly specific in terms of when it's useful? Why not let the abjurer choose immunity to any one element at a time at will? That would be a worthy capstone. A 20th level draconic sorcerer gets immunity to a single element plus blindsense and immunity to paralysis and sleep.

The evoker's capstone is only useful against creatures with energy resistance. Why not instead make their spells generally more damaging? Doesn't a 20th level evoker have access to spells with a variety of energy types? Why does he need an ability to pierce energy resistance? Why negate a fire giant's fire resistance if you can cast cone of cold? It just feels wrong negating a fire giant's resistance anyway. Immunities should be respected. For example, no one should design a sleep spell that ignores elven immunity.

Finally, why should the evoker's capstone trump the abjurer's capstone? It should be the other way around, to balance the fact that the abjurer's ability is passive.

Since enhancement bonuses of projectile weapons and ammunition do not stack, making your arrows +1 is no benefit once you have a magic bow. This is a problem with magic ammunition in general: finding it is no longer exciting once you have a magic bow. It's an unfortunate problem, and I can't think of a way to fix it.

Anyway, Enhance Arrows addresses the problem by juicing your arrows with other benefits like flame, frost, and shock. Pretty fun stuff. At 9th level, you add anarchic, axiomatic, holy, or unholy to your arrows, as long as you don't choose one that is opposed to your alignment. Since you choose once per day, the ability favors neutrality, because a Neutral character can choose any of the four.

Is it really the intention to give more utility to neutral characters? Shouldn't there be something to compensate non-neutral characters in that case? I was wondering if this could work like a cleric's channel energy, so that if an arcane archer is neutral on a given axis, she has to choose once forever which side of the axis will benefit her arrows. That way all archers have a choice between exactly two of the four alignment-based properties. For example, a Lawful Good archer can choose each day to make her arrows holy or axiomatic. Maybe this seems nit-picky, but the designers clearly felt this utility was significant, or they wouldn't have limited the choice to once per day.

Which makes me wonder, would the added utility really be all that unbalancing if you could choose the properties every round? The ability seems designed to frustrate the way it is. If you're Lawful Good, you can't fire a holy arrow at a devil just because you already chose axiomatic earlier in the day?

I assume that the alignment properties stack with the flame, frost, and shock properties, since it doesn't state otherwise.

Does anyone else think that the language system Pathfinder inherited from 3e is lame? For one skill point, you go from not knowing a language at all to being perfectly fluent, seemingly overnight. Maxing out Linguistics is just silly, because at about 12th level, you know more languages than there are in the game. Any dolt with nerfed Int can do it just as easily.

How fun is this? I'm not asking for hyper-realism, but come on. Anything to represent different levels of fluency would be better than this. For example: when you take a point of Linguistics, you distribute 2d6+Int mod fluency points among the languages you already know and up to one new language. All languages start at zero and reach perfect fluency at 25. Communicating successfully or understanding something overheard in that language is a check against DC 25 modified by your fluency score. At perfect fluency, checks are no longer necessary (any more than they are in your native tongue). If you miss a check with an odd number on the dice, you make a Wisdom check against DC 6 (up from DC 5 to account for power inflation in Pathfinder); failure indicates that you misinterpreted what you heard or said something different than what you meant to say.

With this mechanic, a 12th level character with average Intelligence who maxes out Linguistics will likely be perfectly fluent in four additional languages, with a smattering of a fifth. The system reflects the notion that opportunities to learn new languages are unpredictable for adventurers. Characters who want to focus on languages can take a feat to boost fluency or level dip as a Linguist. Some fluency may be granted at first level. The system makes fluency in unexpected tongues more noteworthy, because it is not achieved effortlessly. Knowing a language ought to be impressive.

Otherworldy tongues like Celestial and Infernal could have a DC of 30 rather than 25.

After toying with some ideas in the Paladin - Some Defensive Options thread, I started to think of the paladin's defensive role more as a rescuer, since that offered interesting offensive possibilities that could help make up for the paladin's perceived shortcomings in offensive capability. At the top of the [Design Focus] Paladin Upgrade thread:

(Note that the paladin should not, generally speaking, equal the fighter unless the circumstances are favorable to the paladin).

I started thinking about circumstances that depend on the paladin's allies. I think most people's paladin concept includes something like the knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in distress, so I wondered if the paladin could get circumstantial boosts triggered by the distress of others.

I realize that this idea is a little odd compared to what has been discussed so far, and coming this late in the paladin discussion, any merits it might have are unlikely to get hashed out, but for what it's worth, I thought I'd post a few ideas as amateur examples of what might be possible.

Hope of the Helpless (Su): Beginning at 1st level, while an ally is helpless (bound, sleeping, paralyzed, unconscious, or otherwise at the mercy of an enemy coup de grace), the paladin gains a +3 heroic bonus* to all attack rolls, saving throws and checks, +1 to movement (+2 mounted), and the ability to activate a smite evil as an always-on effect, as long as the paladin's actions are directed at rescuing the ally from the helpless state as soon as possible, and while there is any hope of reaching the ally within three rounds. If the ally dies and the paladin becomes aware of the fact while the bonus is in effect, the heroic bonus ends immediately, and the paladin is stunned for one round and shaken for another, unable to smite evil or maintain an aura. Any optional smite effect that can normally be activated by the paladin may be kept always-on while the bonus is in effect.

* A heroic bonus stacks with bonuses of any other type.

Indignant Defender (Ex): Beginning at 11th level, a paladin is allowed an immediate attack of opportunity in response to any attack against an adjacent ally from an enemy within range of the paladin. If a 5-foot step would put the paladin in range, a 5-foot step is also allowed. The paladin's counter-attack is resolved before the enemy's attack. If the paladin's attack hits and the enemy survives, the enemy still must succeed at an opposed charisma check or the attack on the ally is negated. The paladin can apply her shield bonus (including magical enhancement) to the check. This ability counts normally against the paladin's available attacks of opportunity in that round, and is not possible if all such attacks have already been spent. The paladin may add smite evil or the effects of divine bond to the attack as usual.