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Samurai Misconceptions: Shigh..The link to samurai archives makes some VERY dubious statements: "In fact, the Japanese were using guns more effectively than their European counterparts by the sixteenth century, as well as producing more accurate, durable varieties" Unless presented with prove, I call fanboyism. "Instead, the ashigaru were simply too disposable to teach them anything more complicated" I dont know if he means the guns are very easy to use crap.
A wikipedia read shows that the false nature of the tales is doubious I also find suspicious the claim that "she never questioned our histories", there are MANY problems with other items in that list, as others have said before.
Another dead a NPC but still (Grand total: 3 NPCs dead,4 PCs dead) CHARACTER:Alek Certival (Aristocrat 1/paladin 9)
The PCs saved Alek from Nabthotoron, and carried him over to Occipitus.
I really hope they don't. Over the last decade the game has been getting more and more politically correct towards the monstrous races, which I think is pretty ridiculous. By the time we saw 4th edition, kobolds were nothing but poor victimized bufoons and goblins were more misunderstood than they were evil. Paizo has made the monsters monstrous again, and personally, I'd like to see them stay that way. And I really hope they do, the entire race=evil, is too simplistic, and dont make a lot of sense.
In D&D death happens, if you limit the resurrecctions, players will just roll a new character, I personally will continue with the same characters from start to the finish of the campign, than have a new character every other sesion, and none of the original characters alive at the end, wich makes nosense to the plot, continuity, logic or anything. In short I will take the revolving door of death any day over the factory of churning out player character sheets. If you relly want dead be meanigful, make the character to come back with a "guest", but remember that this is for fun/roleplaying potential not as a way to punish the player for have his character dead.
For me the current pace is perfect, my only complain is the lack of downtime in most sdventure paths, as it is most adventure paths take 1 year to 2 years and a half to complete, thats a huge time investment,so slowing the pace dont seem like a great idea, making the adventures end at lower levels doesnt seem very clever either, business wise, given the complains at the APs wich have ended at lower levels and the cries for higher level AP.
No, it's a game about math. The fact you ignore the math, in favor of some ROLEplaying fallacy Ok, I quit, you ignore opinions you cant answer, make outrageous statments as a matter of fact, wich by the way never bother to support, and play a game so different to the one that most of us play that I cant even recognice it, yet you insist that everyone that doesn´t play it that way is doing it wrong. Unsupported opinions get tiresome and your numbers are pretty much unseen in anyone game, so I think that you are not worth of anymore time. Have fun, just dont tell me that I´m doing it wrong, or do, but dont expect me bothering.
And then a Pit Fiend casts Unholy Aura on itself, which is always on by the way, and it's already broken that. Because as stated and proven many times, those guidelines are not consistent or accurate with themselves and are therefore irrelevant. And for being always on you mean that he needs to cast it every 3 minutes for all the duration of his life... Have to love those powergamers.
1) Wise old sage who really doesn't do a whole lot of magic
The D&D wizard falls under the second. Which is bad. You have made very good points in your post, about how casters are playing a different game than non-casters, but I have to disagree to some extent with this one, the diference is not so steep, it can be if there is ilimited time (or a lot) so casters can research spells, craft magic items, learn spells, etc (by the way what are fighters doing all this time?), all this arguments about how Uber casters are always put casters in the most favourable position, and then presents the non casters as hapless victims. But one thing is true, what have bothered me the most is the auto-win nature of some spells comprehend languages not gives you a bonus to a skill check; is autowin; same detect secrets doors. I enjoy the diferent power of casters and non casters, but if you want to bring them more in line you have two options: nerf casters: 4ed did this boost noncasters to bring them to casters power: Bo9S did that. If you refuse to do so you should accept the growing chasm between casters and non-casters. The noncombat monopoly of power is harder to bring in line, in setting circustances, getting rid of the autowin spells, push spell levels a bit up, or changing the magic sistem are possibilities, but in the end it only delays the unavoidable. I´m okey with the difference, and I think that the difference is not so big in real play as potencially big (but in most games doesn´t materializes).
Mine dont go up so fast: 1-4:irrelevant, perfect unknowns, the characters are mooks at this level 5-8:somewhat known at local level, they start to go on their own 9-12:well known, established forces at local level, adventures start to affect at regional level 13-16:now things scalate pretty fast, they are forces at regional level,plane travel could happen 17-20:forces at planar level, albeit pretty weak ones. 21-21+:Now we get serious. No demigods at any rate pre-epic, although a campaign like this sounds cool, you could make all kind of crazy s*@~. EDIT: I cannot say s#%~? S-h-I-T. XD
You've just called one of the most expensive to boost stats, and one of the most ineffective stats one of the cheapest things to raise. And even if that were true, instead of the exact opposite of the truth all you've done is convince enemies not to attack you. Quite the opposite; armour, and shield enhancements are the cheapest of the game, and you can get armour
on the othe hand to attack
weapon (double than armour cost) strengh bonus (double than weapon, four times armour wich you can get twice) Thats it. So every point to attack cost you more and more since you cant split them (besides costing more for starters). Gameplay have showed me that is easier to pump your ac to untouchable levels. Also about the weaker healing of the tome of battle feat you only need a pair of easy combats to heal yourself, at least at lower levels it works really great. But this is derail the thread, again the thing is that casters are not as much overated as melee classes underated. I also got the impresion by your posts that the game you play has nothing to do with the game that most of us play, so how useful are your opinions to most of the people in the boards? You keep saying that melee tipes are useless like a mantra but thats not what I see, or what I read on the boards. Hell, I even have read about a somewhat succesful truenamer, hardly I can believe, and my personal experience also tell me so that non-casters are useless.
In the sense that a lot of the books are broken (spell compendium in particular) YMMV I havent had such a problem, spells like close wounds help to avoid deaths (wich I hate), lesser vigor helps with the 15 minute adventuring day, and most others help with not playing again and again the very same spells, making spellcasters feel diferent to each other, that said conviction, mass, could a problem although it helps with the players not diying, it also makes saves very easy very fast in the adventuring career.
Uh, 0% of those things are in Pathfinder. In core? I know, my point is that when you get past the 15 minute adventuring day spellcasters are indeed weaker, also a maximized armour class character also works, I dont know in pathfinder, but in 3.5 armour class was one of the cheapest things to maximize, and there were many different bonus, if you are hard to hit you are protecting your hit points, our melee characters grew more powerful when we realised that the best place to put our money was in our defenses be it armour class or saves (which were also cheap).
I have noticed that also, welcome to the new journalism! Where every source is only a mouthpiece for their favourite/aligned with/debts favours political party, here in Spain you wont find any independient mainstream news source not aligned with a political party, and completely despising the oposite group, its not good I tell you.
I have found in my games quite the oposite, kill the 15 minute adventuring day and casters wich have to hoard their spells grow less powerful. Well, right. The point is just that the "Spells run out, but sword works all day!" meme doesn't hold up if you think about it at all. Unless you are playing a tome of battle character with the feat that gives you your level+3 hit points each combat, or even better a crusader or a hellreaver or a psychic warrior with claws of the vampire or ,somewhat less useful, vigor or the second level psionic healing power, just of the top of my head. All this helps a lot to keep going, in that gameplay, casters have to hoard their spells, wich is just what my players casters do, or take spells less powerful but with ongoing effects, wich help them to contribute with little investiment. What usually happens is that warriors dominate gameplay with the casters going nova in the tough fights and overcoming obstacles with magic (fly, teleport, polymorph self whithout cheese just in a umberhulk to excavate).
I seem to understand that the moniker "caster edition" means that pathfinder favours casters more than previous editions, pathfinder casters are king but no more and arguably a little less than previous editions (if you use only pathfinder core of course), so the moniker "caster edition" as something specifically pathfinder is not true, the difference in power in castershave been always there. That said...I enjoy the difference, I dont like the 4th edition take of utter equality, but I disagre with the common asumption in some boards that non-casters are useless because that isnt true, dont happen in my table,and dont happen in the campaing journals that I have read, less powerful? sure, but not useless.
Ahhhhh...you just remembered me that I hate them SOOO MUCH, they all deserve not to die, but to be erased retroactively from history to not be remembered by anyone never, anything gnome related destroyed,burned,and anihilated, until anything in the earth that have anything to do with gnomes is destroyed forever...that said Pathfinder gnomes are ok.
In my game there was real roleplaying in all this, I suspect that direct facestabbing as the only/best way to answer to things has a lot more to do with the players involved than with the campaign.
In RHoD those things don't happen. They don't exist. They can't happen, because the adventure has a maximum time limit of around six weeks or so. Keep in mind this is an adventure you'll gain 5-7 levels in. 6 weeks. And since that's all we're talking about, that's all that matters. I loled, seriously there is a whole part completely dedicated to roleplaying(1), at least other in which is important(2), other can be resolved without combat as you point out before(3), the players are given several options about what to do, If you didnt chose anything other than mindless combat thats your choice, if you keep saying that those are irrelevant to the plot, I´m tempted to think that for you anything that doesnt translate to mindless combat effects is irrelevant, but even that is not true as your roleplay has effects in the climatic part of the campaign latter(4) RHoD:
1) the elf village 2)the planing on the defense of Brindol, and of course you can also do other things not covered in the campaign like call for help in the nearby big city, my players went to enlist the help of the dwarfs clans, there are others, like the giant encounter and plenty more, capturing the aranea spy... 3)The lich encounter, my players negociated his help in the final battle instead of fighting him 4)all this sums up victory points in the Brindol siege if you think that if not translated to combat effect is irrelevant. But seriously all this boils down to if direct damage spells are good or not, and i have provided examples from published campaigns, wich I think that shows the point that they arent as bad as people seem to think (not everyone, I have read, just what I´m saying in some guides, but some people seem to like to make a joke of "evocation is irrelevant lulz!!1!", wich is just a not very well thought simplification.
Luckily for players (and gamemasters!) everywhere, the rules of the game are nowadays much more well defined, if you see people posting many things about rules is because this is the common ground for players to speak. Seriously I dont see my games as less imaginative than in other editions all this good old days is just nosense.
Edit: No, I don't mean metagaming. I mean anything other than mindless combat. The adventure runs 5-12. I don't recall a single enemy, at any point in the adventure having any defense at all against scry and fry. We were not equipped to do that, but if they were I guarantee you we could have skipped half the module. I have the feeling that most people enjoy mindless combat the most, and few people scry & fry even if they can, not adressing to a very specific tactic, and catering to what most people I think enjoys the most is hardly a fault at my eyes. That said, what I really miss more is less combat centric adventures (and I dont mean combatless) and more centered in character interaction, non combat obstacles and the like, and given the sucess of prince redhand and sixfold trial there must be a big market for that. Red hand of doom is a good example of this tough with a good share of non combat challenges and character interactions.
I have yet to see a single published module that takes actual creativity and options into account That sounds pretty much to metagaming, I dont have that impression I must say, options and creativity are by definition limitless, is imposible to take care of everything characters can do. Things twisted in unexpected and hilarious ways happen a lot in my games.
.. which was an illegal operation right from the start. Internal diplomacy cables? not so much. I see a rightful purpose in exposing illegal operations by governments. But just embarrassing the nations diplomats for the sake of it? I really don´t see what is gained by that, other than more difficulties in diplomatic dealings. Not every information is "news" in its own right. And what if the leak had showed that the US goverment promotes illegal activities in democratic countries? Would justify the leak that? Because thats just what the leaked cables show.
They are not so bad, the problem is that they are worse than it seems. Is worse empower spell than spell focus?, I dont think so they provide a small bump in power over a similar level spell, at higher levels they grow worse, though. Quicken spell- Because it gives you the ability to do something that otherwise you cannot: cast two spells in the same round. The cost is steep though in the number of high level spells you can cast. Metamagic feats are way better for sorcerers with wich really shine as you can metamagic an offensive spell to a level in wich you have only utility or defensive spells known, and can cast them metamagicked on the spot. Several 3.5 feats are also good Ocular spell
I have found that even metamagicking a fireball to obscenous levels is not as good as casting Maw of chaos.
That's in the level 4 part of the adventure, so... you're not really fireballing that I´m currently DMing Shackled city, TotSE at the moment, hillfolk and alleybashers are the mooks at 5 level (end of chapter 3). I will say, though, that anyone who thinks the first part of Shackled City is a meatgrinder would be killed twice over and then humiliated if a Jason Bulmahn era LG adventure even looked at them funny. There you'd be expecting to fight elder xorn at level 5 -- and you wouldn't even consider that a meatgrinder encounter. Just go to the obituaries, funnily people tends to die almost always against the same enemies. Shackled city:
The mimic, Kazmojen,the hammerer automatons,Tongueeater,baboons, Triel, Tyrannosaurus skeleton, Tarkilar.... If you find adventures wich are usually considered as meatgrinders easy, thats you, not the norm, so you shouldnt think of your personal experience as the usual standard by wich all things should be considered.
One of the old posters Mary Yamato complained a lot about this, I suspect that the drop in difficulty in second darkness could have something to do in this. As it is, RHoD has some of the worst stat blocks I've ever seen. These results aren't even unique. Another group I knew regularly optimized every single meaningful encounter, with complete rewrites of most of them, and raised boss CRs by 2 or 3, and their group still plowed it. The only time anyone died is when they forgot that melee characters were not supposed to melee real threats, so they'd try it and get full attacked down. And they had healbot Clerics, so they were automatically non optimal. Still another group two manned it effortlessly. One of the two characters was a Warmage, which is perhaps the worst full caster you could possibly play. RHoD is a total joke to any half decent group For this campaing I had the most optimized characters I ever DM, we had only one death (to a lucky max power attack critical at the start of the campaing) and I improved the challenge of some of the enemies (only two wich were medium size wich I found underwhelming and make them large, JUST AS THE ADVENTURE ADVICE). All this was perfect to me I dont like characters deaths, the players feel challenged, not every combat needs to be a near death experience, and several parts were near TPK. The only campaing journal that I read before running the campaing ended in TPK just in the toughest point for us. As I said to Dire moongose if you find almost all adventures too easy maybe you have carried optimizing too far. Not anything bad if you are enjoying that, wich in your post does´nt seem, but dont hold the uber optimized party as the normal standard for all games
I personally started to encourage Minmaxing on my players after a TPK in Age of Worms, after that gameplay improved a lot, no more 15 minute adventuring day, no more meatgrinding, the characters are heroes just as they are suposed to be. If you start considering playing a dragonwrought venerable kobold or using monster guides as the spellbook for your druid, or taking aberrant bloodline feats you have gone too far.
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