Erato's page

OTOH, having land be worth vastly more than can possibly be earned from it in a lifetime of farming is nonsensical. At least in an agricultural economy. If I have a choice between earning say 200 gp a year from my land (not counting living expenses and the like) and selling the land for ~10000gp, which would be enough to live on for 50 years?

AFAIR, some people did just that. Only, they weren't farmers (since few farmers owned land), they were mostly kings (since kings usually owned lots of land). It worked like this: King goes to war, king needs extra cash/troops, king sells/gives land away to rich nobles in exchange for money and military support, and a few generations later the crown is in dire straits because of a lowered income and a dependence on a powerful aristocracy. Historically speaking, giving away land for temporary benefits have been among the biggest mistakes a monarch could make, and most only did it in times of extreme need.

Part of the issue is that you're you're operating within the timeframe of a single generation. For you, losing a source of eternal income for a huge amount of cash is worth it because it's worth it for you, and maybe your children, and you figure that anyone after that can just go out and get work to support themselves. But if you do that in a medieval style world, your grandchildren were likely to end up as beggars, so people at that time operated within a completely different timeframe. Perhaps you don't have things like medieval or renaissance churches in your area to take your example from, but plenty of those took the better part of a century or more to build. They were started by people who knew, without a sliver of doubt, that they would not see it finished, and neither would their children. But they did it anyway. It's simply a case of Reality is Unrealistic (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic) because most of us are used to thinking only of ourselves.

Simulationist vs. narrativist? I think you mean Sim vs. Gamist. I don't see how Narativist enters into it really. And D&D games have largely gone on the gamist side of things, because that IS the origin of D&D; wargaming.

In fact, this is a pretty poor example of Simulationism. Because as you adequately demonstrate the Crossbow is largely HARDER to master than the Bow, when it should be EASIER. Not simulationist at all.

It's more gamist, because the Crossbow is a simple weapon. That said, it's not all that great at that either (since the difference is one feat, yet not quite catching up requires more than just one feat).

So it's kind of the worst of both worlds.

I think you misunderstand. Crossbows are not so much supposed to be easier to master as they're supposed to be easier to learn the basics of. Look at it this way: Crossbows are easier to learn to use (represented by them being simple weapons), but they're also less effective than bows in most cases, since they can't be fired as fast, and (from what I've read) don't have significantly longer range or precision to make up for it. Getting a crossbow up to the effectiveness of a bow is next to impossible, so it makes sense from a simulationist perspective to have it require more resources (or not be possible at all).

Whether it makes for good gaming is a completely different matter.

Seconding Glitterdust as a spell. As for feats, you could ask your DM if s/he allows Ability Focus for a Witch. It's a monster feat, but it doesn't have “monster” as a prerequisite, and there are no actual rules about monster feats being off limits to players. Otherwise, Extra Hex is one of your best options. The Flight hex is pretty good, getting you out of harm's way once per day, but it doesn't reach maximum efficiency until level 5. Fortune is also a good choice, but you may want to wait until you have the Scar hex.. If your group needs healing, the Healing hex effectively gives you as many extra 1st level slots as you have wounded allies.

You're confusing MAD with AAD (All Ability score Dependant). Monks don't benefit especially from high INT and CHA, so dumping them gives the player the option to raise the needed stats (STR, DEX, CON, and WIS) higher. Every one of your arrays gives a monk less points to put in ability scores that matter than a 15 pts. array with the option to dump would. And as has been mentioned earlier, you're setting up a trap for inexperienced players because your weakest arrays cost the most points, making them look appealing on the surface, just like a Monk's good saves and huge array of special abilities do.

And I have to second the question what it is with people and their aversion to low scores? Plenty of heroes have had tragic flaws and glaring weaknesses. I find playing a character whose great strengths are hampered by great weaknesses to be a lot more fun than just bland mediocrity. Why can't I make Raistlin, or Brienne of Tarth, or Tyrrion Lannister, in a Pathfinder game?

Last time I checked, you can only cast the spells you mentioned a finite amount of times in a single day. Not so with slumber.

Slumber can only be used once per enemy, so if they succeed on their save once, you're out of luck. That's a different kind of restriction, but depending on the campaign style, it can be an even more limiting one. I've rarely run out of spells with my sorcerer, but I have experienced being unable to affect enemies with slumber multiple times.

Why ban ice tomb? You're encased in ice. Helpless, sure, but it specifies when you break through the ice, they're free. It's up to interpretation of the GM as to whether a coup de grace is an option or not because the RAW is poorly phrased.

Slumber also only requires someone taking a round to wake up the sleeping enemy. Plus, a lot of enemies are immune to it, plenty of the tougher enemies have strong will saves, and it's harder to increase the DC of hexes than spells.

Exhausted usually isn't that serious a condition, it's almost negligible for spellcasters. If the OP insists on changing the hex, I suggest ruling that enemies immune to sleep but vulnerable to exhaustion are hit with the exhaustion effect if they fail their save instead. That way, the use of the hex is broadened to make up for the nerf, but it's no longer capable of taking the strongest enemies completely out of the fight.

I have been reading a bit of these comments and wanted to throw my thought into the mix.

Reason is simple: I could be that rogue.

I have played D&D since early 80ties and have had my share of "ROLEPLAY" more the "Rollplay" which the term use to be. Since 3.0 came out things turned more and more Rollplay than Roleplay, with 3.5 going overboard.

However have said that does not mean I am against it, just stating the facts. Along with the shifting of time came computer games where more and more learned to think in mechanics and it became accepted that was the way to build characters. It is.... for some!!

I could quote your whole post and object to practically every single paragraph, but the issue here is a lot more simple. What you're doing right now is the equivalent of saying “But I think it's cool that you negros are so musical and good with sports. Not everyone can be an academic, it's totally fine to be like you are.”. The problem here being that the 'negros' in question most likely aren't offended that athletic and musical ability is not given the same value as intelligence, but rather that the speaker (in this case you) just assumes they can't be intelligent too.

Many, if not most, optimisers also see themselves as roleplayers. Brushing that aside with a condescending “but it's OK not to be a roleplayer” is in many ways more insulting than trying to make an argument for why optimisation detracts from roleplaying, because the person making that argument has as least acknowledged that it's an opinion to be argued. What makes you think it's OK to accuse a large part of the roleplaying population of not roleplaying without any evidence? And what makes you think that what the people you're insulting really want, is for your patronising approval of their lack of roleplaying?

I personally think Roleplaying (the capital R kind) tends to detract from roleplaying by breaking suspension of disbelief (as well as causing people to be generally unpleasant due to their narrow-mindedness and lack of respect for others), by making people do stuff like going “My friends are in mortal danger, how am I suppose to react? I know, I'll try my best to be of as little help as possible, because that's how my character is!”. It's simply not a believable way of acting for anyone but a psychopath, and I would have a lot of trouble playing my character if the DM and anti-optimiser expected her to put up with it. But anti-optimisers can fall so in love with the idea of a cowardly character that they don't care how it comes across in actual game.

Well actually, I don't think I would even have a big problem with an actual cowardly character, who sometimes panicked during combat, if it was played right. I've played a low wisdom character whose defining traits included both curiosity and cowardice. She'd much prefer to stay in the middle of her group, but if they took too long to get going, she'd start wandering off alone, only to come hurrying back with a trail of enemies after her, screaming for her friends to save her (but since I'm an optimiser, I guess that can't have been roleplaying). But I expect some reason for it, and I expect some shame, remorse, or excuse after the battle for why the character didn't help.

But the rogue doesn't seem like a coward. Reading from a scroll during combat takes more discipline than waving a sword around to defend oneself. It seems to be a deliberate choice on the rogue's part to not contribute with much. It's not even that the character is not built for combat. I played a character with no magic and little combat ability once, but she still took up a bow when the party was in peril, because she didn't want to die or see her comrades die. She didn't do anywhere near the damage some of the the other characters did, and she relied on the rest of the party for protection (while they in turn relied on her for her social connections), but at least she gave what little support she could. Total rollplaying, I know.

Also:

Currently I am an sorcerer in PFS that choose the Undead bloodline. Already there people that goes for mechanics starts to grow grey hair.

Seriously, there are no armies of optimisers out there just waiting to unleash their fury on everyone daring to play anything non-optimised. Believe it or not, most of us don't care. Most of us even play less powerful concepts ourselves, we just try not to be total asses about it.

Aranna wrote:

SKR himself (on his own 3e website) said you can't take 20 on disguise checks... making him wrong either on his website or now in this forum post.

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/take20.html

I think that in his website he is discussing a ruling, but on this board he was discussing a preference(how he would like it to be.)

I think that was Aranna's point. She(?) was arguing against Jiggy who wanted to treat the SKR post as Word of God.

Imo, if SKR believed it was not allowed to take 20 on disguise checks in 3E, and the description of the disguise skill in Pathfinder hasn't changed in that regard since 3E (which it seems like), then it's a pretty good guess that the old interpretation still stands, and that Sean was expressing his personal opinion in this thread, not the wording of the rule.

Personally, I'd rather give people who take an extra long time to hide or disguise themselves a bonus on their roll, say, +5, rather than letting them take 20. Their maximum performance when taking their time is probably higher than if they were in a hurry (hence the bonus), but there is still the chance they made a critical mistake (hence the chance of rolling low). But that's just my opinion.

Why would roleplayers (assuming they're even a category separate from optimisers) automatically be fine with the DM sending tougher monsters than they can handle against them?

To me (and according to the 'roleplayers' on this board, I'm definitely not a roleplayer), the best game is a like good story, with an interesting and fleshed-out world, plot-twists and intrigues, exiting battles, and well-written (or spoken) dialogue and character interaction. Death is supposed to be a real risk, but not something which happens nilly-willy.

A full party making it all the way through alive doesn't make for a bad story. The death of a single protagonist is poignant and significant to the story. The death of 3-4 protagonists can help cement that this is a tough world where no one is safe and bad things happens even to the heroes. But much more than that, and the story will have to be a sweeping epic with loads of different characters (in the vein of George R. R. Martin) for so many deaths to not ruin it, and games like Pathfinder are ill suited to those kinds of stories.

When PCs die too often, especially if it's for stupid reasons like the DM going “So you want to optimise? Well, I'll just optimise this monster so it'll kill your characters, lol”, it ruins the story. Character development cut short, plot hooks abandoned, callbacks to earlier events becoming meaningless, and the existence of a group where new people show up to join every time someone is killed, but somehow never before that, seeming more and more like a contrived coincidence. So of course I'll get angry if characters are killed off for reasons so stupid that the DM (in this case RunebladeX) is willing to describe it with a “lol” at the end.

I realise I'm not being a very good roleplayer, focussing so much on the story, and caring mostly about what happens in the game, instead of all the things which take place before the game, but that doesn't mean my way of playing is not legitimate, or that killing off my characters just to make a point is somehow acceptable behaviour (although I'm sure it's good roleplaying, since I've only ever heard of this kind of behaviour from self-identified roleplayers).

Go punch out a cop and then see if his buddies ask why you did that instead of beating you down and arresting you.

If I saw my buddy punching out some chick because she put her hand on him and said something lecherous, I wouldn't go "good for you!" and high five him.

Arguing that these actions were LG is insane. What would the CG, CE and LE actions have been then?

A violent, lethal and destructive action like that is the definition of CE in all groups I've played in.

1: If the cop wasn't at work, he's not acting in his capacity as a cop, and was just a drunken thug. If he was acting in his capacity as a cop at the time (drunk and harassing strange women in bars), he would be a disgrace for the whole police force.

2: If the other cops were also drunk (which the first guard to attack was) but trying to act in their capacity as cops anyway, it's cause for disciplinary action. Even more so if they were at work, but nevertheless attacked a suspect without any warning, despite how the last action they would have seen would be the suspect defending herself from a drunk trying to grab her.

3: Punching out 'some chick' for putting a hand on is not comparable to the situation at hand. Punching out a most likely muscular woman at least the same size as you, who flaunts her status as a cop despite being drunk and off-duty, and who starts grabbing and insulting you after you've already rejected her advances would be closer.

4: Most fantasy worlds are not highly organised industrialised societies, and doubt this was either. The town guards are corrupt and give themselves leave to act in the capacity of town guards even while drunk (which is highly immoral), and bar fights are most likely part of everyday life.

I know it's a slightly different genre, but I haven't heard anyone call Conan the Barbarian evil for getting into fights with random thugs in bars (the whole “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women” is a different matter).

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

Oh come now Ravingdork, he's given you everything you need to find him with a scry spell. The bag of wooden nickels that belonged to him. Now do what a munchkin caster does best: NOVA like an adventuring day lasts 15 minutes.

Sorry to pull it off topic a bit but, NOVA? What's that?

To nova means to expend your power quickly, such as a wizard casting a lot of short duration buffs before an encounter and then spending 6 of his or her highest level spell slots in the first 3 rounds of battle (3 normal spells and 3 quickened spells).

And you don't understand that all he has been saying is 'you don't get to dictate my character to me'.

Funny, since that's pretty much what anti-optimisers do all the time. Just saying....

Read the second sentence in both of these carefully.

Sorcerors don't get 'spells per day'. They get spell SLOTS per day (i.e. casting slots). "Spells per day" are a class effect exclusive to prepared casters.

Rings of Wizardry are thus restricted to wizards. Yes, spontaneous casters are much put upon, but that's by design. There were some items put out in 3.5 to compensate for this, things like Knowstones, but not enough.

==Aelryinth

Where do you get that from? The entry for the sorcerer class quite clearly shows its spells per day, not spell slots per day. Also, under the entry for preparing spells for a wizard, it says: “When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots.”, which indicates that wizards also get slots per day.

So the sorcerer gets a certain number of spell slots per day which can be used to cast her spells known, while the wizard gets a certain number of spell slots per day which can be used to fill up with spells to cast later. Both of these are called “Spells per Day”.

I want the odd elf or dwarf that doesn't fit this racial average to be able to be constructed without having to take a penalty to the stat. That makes it easier to have dwarven bards, oracles, or sorcerers (or anything else which relies on cha) or elven front line fighters.

I suspect it will have the opposite results. Instead of opening up the possibility for more dwarven bards and elven front-line fighters, it will just diminish the chance of seeing dwarven clerics or elven wizards.

+2 to a character's primary ability score is usually too good to miss out on. There are exceptions, such as half-orcs in D&D 3.5 rarely being used, even as front line fighters, despite being the only core race with a strength bonus, but that was because of its abysmal class features and extra penalties. Otherwise, almost anyone with optimisation in mind will aim to get an ability score bonus which matches their class, unless they have a very specific concept in mind.

If you're thinking less about what your players will choose and more about the NPCs in your world, remember that NPCs generally don't have as good stats as the players. A dwarven bard with a charisma of 16 will still be considered exceptionally charismatic. Granted, not as charismatic as someone with a charisma of 18, but then again, no dwarven, elven, or gnome bard will be able to match the potential charisma of a human or hybrid with your current rules.

*Scratch*

My fighter's Intimidate is based on Charisma?

*more scratching*

I have since come around to acceptance but that was my initial reaction back in Beta.

That's funny, because people insisting that strength should be used to modify intimidate makes me scratch my head more than almost any Pathfinder rules does (barring the ones about swimming in heavy armour, and the cap on falling damage).

Erato: It is nice to disable opponents before they can act of course, but sometimes that comes at the cost of moving up before your allies do, leaving you unprotected from the monsters that you did not disable. It can definitely go either way, but it doesn't feel that special to me. I like being useful out of combat as well of course, but I feel that I am already. Between the Oracle of Lore and me, we have social skills and knowledges well covered.

What evolution would you buy a familiar? They all seem mostly combat focused, the only ones to consider really are Skilled or a resistance to energy.

There's not much in it for the familiar you've chosen (good choice btw). Normally I'd suggest Skilled in perception or UMD, but as you've said, your familiar can't use wands or scrolls, and you're counting on lifesense to detect things for you. Skilled in sense motive can make your familiar a living lie detector, but the usefulness of it depends on the campaign. At low levels, +8 to a knowledge skill can come in handy, but at higher levels, you're almost certain to make the roll no matter what). Otherwise, Scent would have worked for a familiar without lifesense, and Unnatural Aura is most useful at low levels.

I'll second people here recommending the Misfortune hex, but that's probably because my current DM is very fond of big monsters who're often immune/resistant to sleep and mind affecting effects. But if you don't have a problem with enemy resistance, your choice of hexes seem fine. I can't think of much else besides Extra Hex unless you're specialising in specific types of spells.

Improved Initiative is always useful, and even more so if it helps you put opponents to sleep before they can join the fight. If your DM rules that Ability Focus works with hexes (I recall a staff member saying it did), this is also an excellent choice, just remember it must be taken separately for each hex. Improved Familiar is not just flavourful, many of the options are also very useful and have spell-like abilities which add versatility to your witch. Evolved Familiar can make it even more useful. Toughness is good if you roll low on your hit points or want to prioritise other ability scores higher than CON.

Otherwise it depends heavily on your play style. I sometimes take Extra Traits to get certain class skills, and the +2 to all knowledge skills from Breath of Experience is almost too good to resist if you qualify for it, but then again, I like my characters to be versatile and useful outside combat. Another option could be to see if any of the abilities gained by the witch archetypes were of interest, since most of those come at the cost of a hex which you could compensate for by taking the Extra Hex feat.

#1 - Summoner: I hate casters that summon stuff. It's an absolute nightmare to have all the various summonable monsters' statblocks available and, moreover, even more annoying to have the summoner's player spend half an hour declaring the movements and attacks of his upteen-thousand summoned minions. This is doubly problematic with the eidolon, as it has a mutable statblock and can be altered on the fly with evolution surge and similar spells. Ugh.

With the exception of the master summoner archetype, the summoner can't use its summon monster ability while its eidolon is present, and even then, it can't have more than one of those summons active at a time. And the bonuses given to the eidolon by the evolution surge spell are no more complicated than what most buffers can do.

In my group, the inquisitor takes up at least double the time of the summoner to figure out all his bonuses from judgements, mutable teamwork feats, domain powers, and various buff spells, not to mention trying to figure out whether to cast a spell or attack, and how to make best use of his temporary bane ability. The difference is not in the class, it's in whether the player has taken the time to get to know their abilities before using them.

1. Oracle – It's a divine version of what the sorcerer should have been. I love spontaneous casting (or rather, hate vancian casting), and the versatility of the different mysteries, the extra skill points compared to most full casters, and the flavour of the curses all provide a lot of interesting options without being too complicated.

2. Summoner – Spontaneous casting with a good spell list, very flexible, interesting new mechanics, and makes summoning viable and (relatively) easy. It's not for everyone, and you need to make sure you have the mechanics well enough in place to not slow the game down, but it's good at its job, and I happen to like what it does.

3. Witch – The hexes make it the class most similar to the 3.5 warlock, and they make the vancian casting is easier to manage because they're always there to fall back on if you prepared something wrong. It also makes it possible to use most of your slots for a variety utility spells, or very situationally useful combat spells, and rely on the hexes for normal combats. Being INT-based is a definite plus.

Honourable mention: Sorcerer – Full spontaneous casting class with perhaps the best spell list of them all, and interesting class features as a bonus. Didn't make the top three because it's too similar to the oracle, and I find the latter to be the better class.

How about we skip the beefcake and just get some good-looking guys instead?

I don't think there's an exact optimal number of classes. Concepts that can be made using minor tweaks to an existing class are superfluous as base classes, while classes which make certain concepts considerably easier to play are always welcome in my book.

I still think Pathfinder is at the stage where certain concepts would be easier to play with a new base class, but that doesn't mean such a class is absolutely necessary. For instance, one of the things I miss the most is a warlock type of class, with magical/supernatural abilities usable at will. So far, I make do with a witch with the extra hex feat who mainly uses spells for backup utility, so technically, I don't need a class like that, I just really, really want it.

I used to love prestige classes, but archetypes and good base classes with actual class features (hello sorcerer!) has made me realise the annoyance of not being able to play your concept from the start. I think new prestige classes should either be setting specific, only fit higher level characters, or made for dual-classes that are too much of a niche to make into their own base class.

I personally think that if you have that much trouble understanding the rules, you should either stick to simpler characters or put more effort into getting it right.

In my current group, we generally give people the benefit of the doubt, but if someone continously use their abilities incorrectly, the DM will start demanding that they show the ability they want to use (such as a spell entry) in the book or on their labtop before they're allowed to use it. I suggest the same for this player.

Treantmonk wrote:

What about SR? Do you consider that "fringe" too?

No, that's something you're going to have to cope with. But at least it hits god wizards and blasters about equally hard, since both have about the same difficulty getting through it and both might have to use no-SR spells instead.

SR doesn't affect buffing and summoning, which, as I understand it, are god wizard staples.

Erato wrote:

ciretose wrote:

Even a 3 point buy indicates you are giving someone 3 points more than "average"

Not if the average is 10.5, which is the average you get when rolling 3d6. If you want to use some other bellcurve, you're welcome to it, but the OP appears to be talking about a time when 3d6 was the norm.

As I have said, many times, adventures are better than normal people.

A wd point buy is could mean avearge stats as high as 12.8, meaning a +1 in every area.

Adventurers are better than normal people.

And before they were better than normal people, they rolled 3d6, which indicates that this the norm for normal people. And for an average of 10.5, 3 points is the norm. Therefore, the NPCs with 3 points are not better than average, they're exactly average.

There has been an outburst of topics using the terms "Optimiser", "Min-maxer", "Roleplayer" and "Rollplayer" regarding their various behavior during character generation and development and wether they are mutually exclusive or not.

However many people seem to use these terms rather differently and thus some fruitless discussions have cropped out.

So should we try and define the terms?

I don't think it's possible with the way many of those words are used as slurs. It's a bit like nigger (black person), b$&~+ (female dog), and slut (a girl who has a lot of sex with different people and is apparently considered mainstream enough to not be censored on this board). Some people try to reclaim them, arguing that being black or having lots of sex are not bad things, and that, as animals go, comparing someone to a female dog isn't that that insulting. But in the end, it only works under certain circumstances, mostly in small groups where everybody knows each other well enough to know when something isn't meant as an insult. That being said, my definitions:

The optimiser
Pretty much like your definition, someone who tries to create a character that fills its role in the most optimal way. Is typically interested in and knowledgeable about the mechanical aspects of the game.

The min-maxer
Has two meanings. The first time I heard the term, it referred to the strategy of minimising your weaknesses while maximising your strengths, but today, it's mostly used about taking penalties to a character's secondary skills in order to be as good as possible at the character's primary focus – the best example being Minmax from the Goblins comic, who traded away his ability to read, write, dress himself, start a campfire, and rhyme on purpose, in return for a 22 strength score at level one, knowing 38 ways to kill people using only his thumb, and various other combat related bonuses.

The roleplayer
Technically speaking, everyone who plays a roleplaying game is a roleplayer. But if we're trying to use the term in a narrower sense (which I don't think is necessary) I would say someone who puts a lot of effort into portraying their character at the table. For people who make a big deal out of how much of a roleplayer they are, the term usually means spending a lot of time outside the game making up stories about one's character while taking mechanically weak choices – but we really need a separate word for those kinds of people.

The rollplayer
A slur mainly used by the people mentioned above, whom we need a new term for. As such, it's pretty meaningless, except in regards to what it tells about the speaker. I suggest a new dichotomy instead: People who're mainly roleplayers, and people who're mainly not rollplayers. The first are interested in playing the game, the second are more interested in how people create their characters than in how they play them.

On a slightly related note, I'm sad to see that, thanks to the "You decided to make a witch because you liked the mechanics? You obviously don't roleplay!"-crowd, it is becoming increasingly common to talk about optimisers, powergamers, min-maxers, and munchkins as if they were the exact same thing. Imo, it's like people who think that it's unnecessary to distinguish between the words gay, rapist, and hooker, because they all fit the definition "sexual deviants who're going to burn in hell". It's just insulting.

Stealing/damaging a spell book is no more "screwing over a character" than sundering a weapon. But, if I were GMing a new player, I wouldn't do it either. It is something, as you gain experience, of which you should keep mindful.

Actually, there's a reason newer games are geared more towards not destroying the PCs gear than older editions, the designers realised it's usually not as fun. Also, sundering a weapon in combat is a tactic which will make the fighter immediately weaker, and give you valuable time as your opponent looks for a spare, while taking the spellbook is mainly advantageous if you're not in immediate danger from the wizard.

It's two different situations, one of the which can come up in almost all fights, and another which will only be relevant if a long-time enemy has studied and spied on the party for a long time, in which case said enemy should easily be able to also steal most of the party's other equipment.

Even a 3 point buy indicates you are giving someone 3 points more than "average"

Not if the average is 10.5, which is the average you get when rolling 3d6. If you want to use some other bellcurve, you're welcome to it, but the OP appears to be talking about a time when 3d6 was the norm.

The frame of reference I was taught (and how my group plays) is to use IQ as a reference to Intelligence scores.

A 70 IQ = a 7 intelligence. Anything less than 70 IQ is mentally retarded, however the normal range of IQ goes from 80 to 120. There is a difference between someone with an 80 and 120, but they all fall into the "normal" range.

First objection: That doesn't fit the bell curve of 3d6. According to this, over 9% of the population would be clinically retarded (>7 INT) using random rolls.

Secondly, d20 INT is not directly translatable to IQ in the first place. Even discounting the heavy controversy about what exactly IQ tests measure, D&D intelligence is about different skills than those typically used in IQ tests. The guy I know who seems to have the highest IQ in my surroundings (the rest of us either don't measure our IQ or don't talk about it as much, but I doubt any of us could measure up to his genius even if we tried) is also rather stupid. In some cases, this can be explained by low WIS, but sometimes, it can't.

For instance, he's a fast reader, but he seems to have trouble comprehending what he reads, and often misunderstands a text, or remembers only what he wants it to say, not what is actually there. So even though he reads a lot, and talks lot about how smart he is and all the things he knows, he often gets the facts wrong. Furthermore, despite all his talking and reading, he doesn't have a large vocabulary, and he's prone to using words wrong. He's also terrible at learning foreign languages, and doesn't seem to be able to use his knowledge of one language to reason out the meaning of another – for instance, if a word is identical in the two languages he speaks, but he only knows its meaning in one language, it doesn't occur to him that they could be related.

In real life, his skills at math and his ability to quickly figure out the connection between various geometrical figures makes him an IQ genius. In D&D, his lack of bonus language, terrible linguistic skill, and low knowledge modifier despite many ranks (i.e. training) indicates a below aware intelligence score. However all that is secondary to the fact that if the Pathfinder bell curve is 3d6 (which has always been the D&D tradition), meaning that over 16% of the population would have an INT score of 7 or below.

And of course, adventurers are exceptional. That wizard with an 18 intelligence is probably as smart as the smartest person a commoner has ever met. The fighter as strong, the bard as charismatic, the cleric as wise, etc...

The chance of getting an 18 on a roll of 3d6 is 1 in 216, or 0.463%. If the commoner has met 300 people, it's pretty likely that one of them has been equally smart. The 18 INT wizard is exceptional, but not unique.

Now in my job I deal with IQ scores a lot. And I know from my field that in order to be excepted into most behavioral modification programs, you have to have at least a 70 IQ, because below that you probably won't be able to understand what they are trying to teach you. They aren't smart enough.

So do people with below 70 IQ exist in the world. Absolutely! Will some adventure? Sure! Will the fact that they are clinically mentally retarded at that point impact how they are perceived and things in the game.

Of course!

Similarly a score below 7 would be the equivalent of being mentally retarded in that skill set. And that would be as evident to those around them as it is evident that someone is mentally retarded if they have an IQ below 70.

And I assure you, it is evident.

Again, this would mean that almost 10% of the population would be clinically retarded. Since this is largely unworkable, it leaves us with two choices. We either decide that ability scores for normal NPCs should no longer be simulated with 3d6, or we decide that the idea that IQ score=intelligence times 10 (or that IQ=Pathfinder intelligence) is wrong. I vote for the latter.

With a 5 Cha, as I understand it, you're in the bottom 5% of all characters ever made, everywhere. You'd have less charm than the village idiot. Considerably less, per pg 308 in the GMG, that slobbering monstrosity has got a 10! In fact, with a 5, you'd probably have to Take 10 just to say hello without reducing someone's attitude about you. How does your PARTY stand you, let alone stop the local village from burning you at the stake?

Let's not get carried away. Whether we're talking about INT or CHA, I doubt 1 in 20 people are village idiots. Even with special needs kids away from the regular school, statistically speaking, most of us should have been in at least one class with at least one student with a 5 or less in any of the ability scores.

Furthermore, why should charisma be special? If the player rolls for stats and a 5 comes up, they have to put it somewhere, and charisma is as good a place as any. If we're talking point-buy, you can't go below 7 unless you have a racial penalty, and in that case, the bell curve for said race would different.

By the way, a Cha of 7 makes you less socially able than 84% of the people you meet. That's heroic? Even taking this up to an 8 makes that 75%.

Heroism is not about being charming or confident, heroism is about heroic acts.

As an aside, I'd wonder what the bell curve looks like for Pathfinder characters.

Back to the question - does the curve still exist and is it supposed to impact how we depict our game worlds?

As a bonus question, aside from impacting skill checks, does Charisma actually do anything at the typical table these days?

There's no reason to assume that, theoretically, the bell curve exists just like it does in the real life, but with the following exceptions: PCs, and adventurers in general, are more likely to be on the fringes of the bell curve, most NPCs will be suspiciously close to the middle (because many DMs don't bother with more), and racial bonuses and penalties should be taken into account.

In regards to charisma, it has very little impact on anything but skills, but it governs several class features. Bards, paladins, and sorcerers depend on it for efficiency, and clerics make good use of it. In my group, it's not dumped significantly more than any other ability. Even some of our wizards would rather have better social skills (and UMD) than carrying capacity.

Picking a character concept that is combat-based isn't optimization. Picking a character concept that isn't combat-based isn't role playing. Neither role playing nor optimization deal with creating your character concept.

Making the concept a mechanical reality is optimization.

Bringing the concept to life in an interesting way at the gaming table is role playing.

I know I'm a bit late to this thread, but QFT. I know people who can easily make pages of background story, and yet never roleplay their characters in a convincing or memorable way. Obviously it's not always their fault, just like it's not people's fault if they have a bad grasp of tactics or trouble understanding the rules, but these people are not that fun to play with, and yet they're often praised as superior roleplayers by people who don't know them, based solely on what they write on a piece of paper.

Some of my least fun characters had background stories and were made by choosing the concept first and building the character after it, only to find out it didn't work in the actual game. In contrast, my current character is shamelessly min-maxed – I chose the class based on what I wanted to play mechanically, and her race, traits, feats, skills, and choice of spells were made pretty much exclusively based on mechanical advantages. Then I made a hasty and pretty vague background story and managed to come up with a name (or rather, shouting "Quick! Someone give me a human female name") literally seconds before we started playing.

But the character was great fun to play, she had memorable quirks, and hit the right balance between having personal flaws without being (too) disruptive, as well as both drawing (positive) attention to herself on one hand but also giving other characters a chance to shine. When I retired her because of in-game reasons, the other players said they understood it made sense, but that they were really going to miss that character. And this doesn't just go for my characters, the best roleplayer is my group is also the best optimiser, and the player who does LARPing and is all about intrigues and style over power tends to make characters the rest of us forget are even present.

To quote a very often used line from 3e, "You don't need to be the Assassin PRC to be an assassin." You don't need to have Skill Focus: Baking to be good at baking. I think people get REALLY caught on names and not on what sits behind the name. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. A pile of human waste called "A rose" does not smell sweet.

So the big conflict as I see is between optimizers who make a character idea and build mechanics around it, and people who make a character idea and choose mechanics that sound like they should work. In an ideal system, there would be no difference between those two people. When player traps exist, there is absolutely a difference.

This, in my experience, is one of the two big mistakes the “I'm a roleplayer not a rollplayer” kind of people tend to make. The other is being so focussed on their character concept that they end up acting as if their character exists in a vacuum (e.g. keep making bad tactical decisions because it's 'in character' even though the stupidity of said character, and their failure to learn from their mistakes, strains any reasonable suspension of disbelief ).

Sometimes I can't help wonder of the cult of True Roleplaying(TM) isn't doing more to damage roleplaying than even powergaming does. When there is more focus on whether a player made a background story first and then added the mechanics, or vice versa, than there is on whether the character is believable and fun to play with in the actual game, and when it becomes more important to have the right 'flavourful' names on your character sheet than it is to have the character's actual abilities match the character concept (such as your example of choosing an archetype which makes the character worse at its intended focus), the game tend to suffer from it.

I don't see why the wizard doesn't just keep his spellbook in the fighter's bag. No one ever steals rifles through the fighter's stuff. Also spellbooks are heavy, so it's a load off the wizard's back. The wizard should keep a journal written in another language as a decoy though.

Because an enemy who has observed the party for months would know where it was and steal it from inside the fighter's pack. Granted, why said enemy shouldn't also steal the fighter's stuff is beyond me, but obviously some DMs play that way.

Brian E. Harris wrote:

Erato wrote:

It seems to me most attempts at removing/destroying a spellbook would be metagaming on part of the DM.

I just felt the need to point something out:

The DM's job is to metagame. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the DM metagaming. If the DM doesn't metagame, then there is no game.

I think the "GM not metagaming" statement means that NPC's should not be using information they should not have access too.

It's more than that. Most of the time, an enemy will not have a plausible ingame reason to go after a spellbook instead of a PC (or the PCs' wealth in general). So the DM is likely to be thinking in terms of enforcing balance (like the OP) by making the wizard overpowered at some levels and underpowered at others, punishing a player over for not playing the game like the DM wants it to be played (like investing an implausible amount of their resources protecting their book), or railroading the story in a specific direction.

I play with a DM like that right now, who doesn't bother making the enemy's strategy make sense in terms of resources or motivation, because putting the PCs in the kind of peril he wants is more important. I tend to see the game more as a collectively told story, so I'm obviously not a huge fan of that DM style.

There is a risk vs. reward thing to consider. Spellbooks are expensive (potentially -very- expensive), easily portable, and easily sellable. That is to say, they offer a high reward for anyone willing to take the risk of trying to steal it. That is to say a higher reward than other similar risks might offer. The bigger the potential reward, the bigger the risk the thief is going to be willing to take.

A spellbook is more easily identifiable than practically any other item, meaning the risk of getting caught later is bigger. As for being easily sellable, that's far from given. They're only usable by a single class, and a spellbook is likely to contain several spells a potential buyer will not be interested in, narrowing it down further. In contrast, plenty of people are likely to be interested in things like rings of protection, and gold and gems can be sold at full price and are far harder to trace.

All that aside, I'm still having a hard time seeing how it's even physically possible to steal something from an inside pocket of a closed robe. Or search through a bag of holding tossing away gold, gems, jewellery, and unsold magic items in order to get to a book. And these are two most common locations for spellbooks I've heard of.

Try watching Dam Busters, or any other war film or documentry. There were soldiers fighting during WWII while the bombing goes on.

I know that, I just haven't heard of any battle where the foot soldiers and the bombers are fighting the same enemy while the bombers do nothing at all to target the people and machines that are killing the soldiers.

In a Pathfinder setting though, sending out multiple minions on differing missions is something any reasonable high level NPC enemy could do.

So the PCs get attacked by two seperate groups who know each other but don't attack together?

As I have already said, if the NPC has the opportunity to get at the spell book then they probably would. Opportunity, to me doesn't mean having to go through, face off and put yourself in the line of fire of the danger that you are trying to circumnavigate by destroying the book.

Again, if you're not targeting it in battle, then you have to either pick-pocket it, or take while the PCs are asleep.

In the first case, all the characters' wealth should regularly disappear, if their enemies have pickpockets that good. A party which has just earned a load of money are on their way to becoming more dangerous, so it makes sense to steal it. The same goes for weapons (and unless the weapon is huge, stealing something from a sheath at someone's belt should be as easy as stealing a book they carry around on their person), not to mention equipment (skilled pick-pockets can take off people's rings without them noticing). And in the second case, someone who can sneak up on the party while people are sleeping should be able to steal much more, as well as slitting some throats.

In my replies and posts to you only you have suggested that ONLY the wizards spellbook would be a target. I have been suggesting that it would be ONE of the viable targets, and that it should not be ruled out on the grounds that YOU don't like the idea.

The OP was about only wizards, and since I don't believe for a second that no one else complains when their equipment disappears or they get killed in their sleep, I'm taking the liberty to conclude that the OP considers a spellbook an unusually easy and obvious target. Especially because he's describing it as part of the class' special weakness. And that's metagaming.

Erato wrote:

Ingenwulf wrote:

Almost every bombing raid is a real life example effectively weakening the enemy while keeping the soldiers on the ground, with the enemy right in front of them, safer.

Bombing is about targeting something from afar. And while I'm not a military buff, I haven't heard of any instances of an army sending soldiers in to fight while bombing a bunch of targets that aren't an immediate danger.

You are right, you aren't a military buff.

Every conflict that has involved bombing involved bombing of supply lines, or production centers.

I know that. What I didn't know was that it was common for armies to meet in the field, and for the people with the bombs and the missiles to not support the soldiers getting killed, but aiming for the supplies behind the army instead.

Almost every bombing raid is a real life example effectively weakening the enemy while keeping the soldiers on the ground, with the enemy right in front of them, safer.

Bombing is about targeting something from afar. And while I'm not a military buff, I haven't heard of any instances of an army sending soldiers in to fight while bombing a bunch of targets that aren't an immediate danger.

I think I would agree with someone who said something like...

"If an enemy with lots of expendable henchmen knows a character is a wizard that can't be killed but somehow their spellbook can be targeted from under their robe or inside a bag of holding the wizard is carrying, then it makes sense to send a squad with the purpose of destroying the spellbook."

Yes but why would the book be so much more vulnerable than the wizard? Do books in your campaign suddenly grow wings, fly out and start glowing while screaming “Destroy me, destroy me!”? The book in most cases is on the wizard.

The hypothetical situation of it being possible to destroy or steal the book while somehow leaving no opportunity to steal or destroy any other equipment or kill the PCs.... well I guess it's possible somewhere, I have just never experienced it, or heard about it anywhere. DMs who target a wizard's spellbook always turn out to be the kind who think wizards need some big weakness, something to potentially make them useless for several levels to make up for them being overpowered for the last couple of levels. Not my idea of balance, or plausibility.

When they want to cripple you for the NEXT BATTLE. That's why we bomb airfields. Attack supply lines. Enforce no fly zones. Search people at the door of dodgy clubs and confiscate harmful objects. Most NPCs should expect to live to fight again, or else they would all be suicide squads.

The reason supply lines are attacked is also that they're usually not as well defended as the actual army (given that the army is, well, the army). When someone has the choice between attacking a soldier who's about the to kill them, or targeting something which can make said soldier worse off in the future, I have never heard of anyone choosing not to try to kill the soldier, if for no other reason than they want to live.

I guess if an enemy with lots of expendable henchmen knows a character is a wizard that can't be killed but somehow their spellbook can be targeted from under their robe or inside a bag of holding the wizard is carrying, then it makes sense to send a squad with the purpose of destroying the spellbook, but I've just never been in that situation and I can't recall any instance in real life when someone has attacked the equivalent of the enemy's food supplies when the enemy is right in front of them, and in regards to stealing it at night, I'm very surprised someone who's able to sneak up on the PCs like that wont try to kill them in their sleep, or steal some magic items.

it is a legitimate strategy that a real flesh and blood person would employ in the same scenario. it is up to the player to safe guard an achilles heel, like for instance the core feat that allows the players INT in saved spells that dont require a book. this is one of the BEST feats for any level 10+ wizard to invest in.

When? Seriously, when have people deliberately gone after something their enemies don't use in battle, IN BATTLE? I mean, it's one thing to attack an army's supplies to weaken it, it's completely different to be engaged in a battle with said army, and stop targeting the soldiers in favour of trying to get to the supplies. An in regards to stealing it, why specifically steal a spellbook and not the warriors' weapons?

If your whole group has a set of house rules that you all agree on then the OP you quoted here is not aimed at you.

The posts LT mentions, and those in my post usually consist of a player trying to gain support to overturn the decisions of his "unfair" GM who ,against all reason, enforces the rules of the game.

We don't play with houserules, we just don't like jerkass DMs who break suspension of disbelief by having NPCs target a wizard's spellbook just to screw the character over.

there are three seperate topics in the forum right now which show that it's possible to optimize beyond min-maxing

Those topics are

1.) Allowing characters to take Charisma as a dump stat, but not penalizing them for it - after they use it as a dump stat, they ought to be able to say that their character is attractive and, thereby, gain positive modifiers to social encounters

Of course everyone should be able to say that their character is attractive regardless of charisma. Attractiveness is a fluff issue, someone who's attractive but has low charisma is still attractive, but they can come across as weak-willed, easy to bully, arrogant, unsympathetic, and inspiring jealousy rather than admiration. These things happen even to pretty people.

So while they might get more positive reactions from some of the people who could be sexually attracted to them, and have an easier time exchanging sexual favours than equally uncharismatic people who don't have their looks, they're also more likely target for sexual harassment, jealousy, and dismissal on the grounds of their looks. Everything has an upside and a downside. I have yet to see any DM just straight up give bonuses to people who say they're attractive. When have you experienced that?

2.) Allowing a Wizard to collect a god-like spell book without having to worry about keeping it safe

Should fighters have to take special measures to keep their weapons safe? After all, it's far easier to take something which is kept out in every fight than something people store under their robes. Seriously, why would anyone target something in battle which their opponent will have no use for until after the battle? And if they're stealing it out of battle, why not steal every other useful piece of equipment? It seems to me most attempts at removing/destroying a spellbook would be metagaming on part of the DM.

3.) Allowing a character to optimize towards big weapons and never have to worry about the down side of when those weapons shouldn't be usable (due to space requirements)

Other people have already answered this better than me.

In all three cases, rather than min-maxing, the character maxes and then demands that the GM sweep the min under the rug where it will never be seen.

Where have you seen all this? According to people like you, my group is a bunch of optimising non-roleplayers who desecrate the game with their very existence, but I haven't experienced any of the things you complain about.

the rogue sounds essential for performing duties necessary to adventuring that are not combat oriented. You mention yourself that he's an excellent trapfinder.

That's one function, and from what the OP mentioned, he hasn't done a very good job at it, nor has it been very necessary. And that doesn't excuse not trying to do his best when his comrades' lives are at stake.

Do your other 5 combat-optimized party members even really NEED his assistance in combat? If he has found his place to shine in non-combat situations, maybe that's the best for all of you concerned. If he turned his character into a flanking, backstabbing machine, maybe he would end up stealing the spotlight from you or one of the other PCs who delight in their contributions to combat (but not so much to other in game situations).

To the point: if 5 of you already have combat covered, why is it so important to you that #6 also jumps in (when in my perspective, he might just step on your toes)?

The OP mentioned that several other characters have already died, and that the rogue has been asked to help out several times but has refused. So he is, in fact, already stealing the spotlight by turning himself into the centre of a conflict about whether it's fair he asks others to risk their lives so that he can have fun from the back.

Also, merely being a decent combatant will never be enough to steal the spotlight from any moderately optimised combat focussed character. If the party was strolling past encounters with no trouble and no danger, it would be excusable to stand back and not contribute in combat, but no matter, merely contributing is NOT stealing the spotlight.

Now, that being said, I don't know what your adventures are like. The games I tend to play tend to be 50-70% exploring, trap-finding, skill-using, and roleplaying; and only 30-50% combat or similarly immediate-danger/damage dealing situations. So in one of MY games, the rogue would have a LOT to do and would definitely be pulling his weight (and indeed, someone who designed their character purely around combat might feel bored if I or another GM wasn't careful to make sure he had stuff to do).

Even if your campaigns are over 15% traps, which would be required for a character whose only contribution was trapfinding to do his equal share, it's considered only fair that everybody contributes in the fights. 6 characters wont disarm a trap better than 1, especially not if 5 of them don't have disable device, but 6 character will be more likely to win fight than 5, especially if they all know how to fight (which a rogue above level 10 definitely does).

As has been mentioned before, even peaceful scientist Daniel Jackson from Stargate carries a gun just in case, and he already contributes much more than the rogue. Jonathan from The Mummy, despite being a coward and only being in the story because he's related to Evelyn, took risks in order to help save his companions. Hell, even the freaking HOBBITS in LotR, who were basically the group's morality pets, took sword lessons in order to contribute. This makes me wonder what special reason this character has for being so deliberately useless and unhelpful. And no “It's his character” doesn't cut it, there would need to be some kind of explanation for what exactly causes this character to be that way, and why the rest of the group should be expected to put up with it.

However, if he's having fun, and he is not keeping YOU from doing what YOU want to do as a player, I am having trouble seeing the problem--so what am I missing here?

Obviously he's keeping the OP from having fun, or he wouldn't have started this thread. First off, losing characters is never fun. It needs to be a theoretical possibility for the danger to feel real, but that doesn't mean people are interested in playing in a party with constantly changing members. It also strains suspension of disbelief that the character is acting like a jerk and the other characters just let him. That's metagaming, keeping him in the party because he's an out-of-game friend. And if the characters are professional adventurers (which is a pretty common premise for a game), it makes little sense for them to keep a largely useless character around, even if said character is their friend, which isn't even established yet.

I don't feel that the player the OP is talking about is a role player, I just think he is trying to get a kick out of derailing the game. I would take the player to the side and tell him he needs to either change the way he is playing this character or role a character that can better be of use to the party. He needs to stray away from being a one trick pony all this character seemed to be able to do is find traps.

Hence why I said self-identified ;-)

Many, perhaps most, of the people who make a big deal about how they're ROLEPLAYERS make at least one of two mistakes, the first being that they get so obsessed with what a character is like that they completely neglect to take into account what this character's current situation is like. The character exists in a vacuum, always running by a pre-conceived script regardless of what happens, and worse, the 'roleplayer' expects the rest of the party to be completely fine with this, because it's 'in character'.

The concept of a cowardly character who avoids combat is fine, in a vacuum. But unless the character is a sociopath or severely mentally retarded, watching your companions die because you think it's more fun to try to cast first level spells from scrolls than getting some archery lessons from the fighter, and not learn from that mistake, is not considered a realistic reaction for most people, not even for a coward. And it requires a very strong in-game explanation for the other characters to just accept it.

The point that I was making is that people with charisma are people who lead people.

Now you're changing your argument. Before, witches needed high charisma in order to make the most beneficial trade with whatever entity fuels their power, now they need it because they're supposed to be leaders. What's it supposed to be?

It's kinda funky how this players lack of participation is forcing everyone else to *not* roleplay the very appropriate character action of kicking his characters butt to the curb. He's stretching suspension of disbelief beyond recognition, and that's kinda the *opposite* of role-playing, IMO.

THIS! So much this! It's my main reason for disliking self-identified roleplayers, they tend to make for terrible stories.

Is there any specific reason this guy is in the group? Even Jonathan from The Mummy, and most other useless comic relief characters, rarely just openly tag along because they can, they either get dragged along or otherwise involved in the story against their will, or their greed and/or stupidity cause them to trick the protagonists into making them go along (or they just hide in the luggage).

Also, what kind of person, after seeing several of his companions die, does not want to at least learn to shoot a bow from afar to help them? What kind of person, in a life or death situation, would deliberately choose a bad strategy? It's one thing to suck at something, it's something completely different to deliberately do something you suck at (e.g. failed UMD check) instead of something that can make you contribute (e.g. a high dexterity character using a bow). Stories have a reason for why incompetent cowards get to go on adventures, so what's the guy's?

Auto-succeed/fail on natural 20s and 1s is a horrible house rule imo. I'm certainly not wrong 1/20 of the time when I talk about something within my area of expertise. I don't fail to play a tune on the piano 1/20 of the time after I've learned it. I don't fail 1/20 of my exams. And I don't succeed in things I'm bad at 1/20 of the time either. D&D/Pathfinder was never good at simulating reality, but having about half the people who participate in Olympic hurdling fail to jump a hurdle is really pushing it.

The rule of adding or subtracting 10 is a little better, it means even people who're half-bad at something have a chance of doing remarkably well in it once a while, and true experts can perform way below their normal standards but without being completely incompetent. But really, a d20 already provides a huge variety, meaning that people who're bad at something still have a good chance of surpassing people who're markedly more competent. There's no house rule necessary to emulate even more randomness.

I was heavily in favour of prestige classes and multiclassing in 3.5, because I like customisation and believe characters are more than their class, so I was originally sceptic about trying to make people stick to one class only, especially in light of how 4E handled it. But I've become a big fan of the way it has been implemented in Pathfinder. Between archetypes, favoured class bonuses, traits, more skills, more feats, more racial bonuses, and more class features for the base classes, I've found that I no longer need to look outside my base class to get the character I want.

Being rewarded for staying with one class is also more psychologically satisfying than being punished for leaving, or even worse, forbidden to multiclass. It's also a balancing factor, since most people who multiclass tend to choose among the more powerful options. And it's not just that prestige classing was almost always a more powerful option in 3.5, it was also the more fun option, giving you a lot more flavourful class abilities. So kudos to Pathfinder for changing this without making the prestige classes more bland.

I like the racial bonuses a lot too. They're flavourful and they make the races matter. About 80% of the characters in my group used to be human, but after switching, the vast majority of the core races have been played, many of them more than once, and the amount of humans is down to well below half. Speaking of humans, the human favoured class bonuses for sorcerer and oracle are admittedly more powerful than average, but they're a godsend to those of us who like to have variety in our spells but dislike vancian casting, and so far I haven't found them to be broken.

Alzrius, whether we are talking about porn or "titillating fan service," there are sexual fantasies that promote thinking which is harmful to others. While not every man who has a rape fantasy is inherently a rapist, the fact that he has that fantasy suggests that he views women as objects to be dominated.

I don't quite support this view. I do not believe the fantasy itself is inherently harmful, any more than I believe fantasies about being evil are inherently harmful. That being said, I do agree with your latter statement that the issue is not the fantasy, but the imagery.

Basically, this idea of a woman (or a man for that matter) whose sole purpose is complete devotion and a desire to serve another is an excuse for rape (and slavery). Same as the happy slave is an excuse for slavery. I don't think these things need to be left out of every game, but I think they need to be handled maturely. And the "race" you've presented here as written (and portrayed through the images) is harmful to views of women.

Thank you for getting it. Though I was actually talking more of the slavery issue than the rape issue, I just brought up the rape issue because it's an area where the argument “It's OK because s/he wanted it” (which was used about this race) is more readily recognised as harmful.

You could take the sexual aspects out of it, and the idea of a race of beautiful, primarily female, sentient humanoid beings whose only purpose is to serve would still be sexist and have unfortunate implications. You could take the implications of servitude out of it, and the idea of a race of sexy, primarily female, sentient humanoid beings whose only purpose is to find someone to have sex with would still be immature (and pretty boring all things considered) and have sexist implications. You could remove the sexism, and the a race of sexy sentient humanoid beings whose only purpose is to serve and who got special powers from kissing their masters would still have all the other issues.

Of course the OP himself admitted he was basically disregarding all good advice about how to handle sex in games, and was pretty much just catering to the lowest common denominator. That's OK by me, but it seems like some people are saying it's actually a good way (or even just a way) to bring sexuality into a game. Or even worse, that it's a good thing for female gamers. Because the thing female gamers need the most is more material pretending that everybody is a straight man.

In answer to your first question, yes, really.

That you didn't mention the word "porn" is a semantic distinction. Your point can be boiled down to saying that there's a kind of sexual fantasy which, when indulged in, promotes bad thinking in people. That's simply not true.

Of course fantasies can promote bad thinking, I don't see how anyone can deny that. Fantasy and ideology are closely intertwined. That's not to say your fantasies are inherently harmful, just that, imo, they fall too close to certain real world ideologies for me to think they're usually a good thing to share with people who've been the victims of said ideologies. Hence why I said they were probably better for guys to wank to together than for people to just bring into their game without regard for the rest of the players.

I did, however, crack a grin from the characterization of me as a conservative (particularly in light of this entire thread). The presence of bare breasts alone does not porn make - and I never said that it did - I simply pointed out that while the source material isn't porn, it's close to it, and an example of that is the gratuitous nudity. (Though it is worth noting that nudity alone is enough to qualify something as being softcore pornography.)

Just because you might, might be considered progressive in a very conservative country does not mean you're globally progressive. I've decided I'm not going to bother being anglocentric, and by Scandinavian standards, you're very much a conservative.

As a heterosexual woman, I find a nice sculpted male chest far more sexually stimulating than any female breast, so the idea that bare female breasts (and it's pretty obvious that's what you're talking about) is enough to make something border to pornography, while the erotic displays I and almost half the population get turned on by are not, is conservative and sexist. Also, by the standards you're suggesting, Scandinavian public service TV regularly shows softcore pornography to minors. Just saying.

Finally, in the future, please try to conduct yourself more respectfully towards other forum members. You'll notice that I never once used hyperbole, sarcasm, or veiled insults towards you, despite you engaging in those towards me.

Yes you did. You ascribed opinions to me that I did not express, put I my posts in contexts they're weren't in before, and expressed a pretty sexist political opinion which many people take offence at (that whatever turns straight men on is somehow inherently more sexual than what turns gay men and straight women on).

This. I read the trait descriptions, and try to ignore the bonuses until after I've picked them. I sometimes end up with substandard choices, but they always fit the character that I see in my head.

I do the opposite. I look at what I want my character to be able to do (say, survival for my fey sorcerer), and then look for a trait which gives it to me. I think having a character whose actual abilities match their description is preferable to a character whose description matches some title in the book but doesn't play out in real life. In the same way, if my vision for an inquisitor is better served by using the mechanics of a monk, I'll make a monk and call it an inquisitor rather than making an inquisitor with mechanical abilities that don't match the character. Judging from this thread, I'm not completely alone in that.

One small problem I have with traits is religion traits do not make sense for an oracle even though they are a divine caster as they believe in multiple gods.

I agree with BigNorseWolf that it seems reasonable to assume most people believe in all the gods, including clerics. Most people in societies with polytheistic religions will show due respect to all gods, even if they focus mainly on one or two of them. It was also common in ancient time to worship the local gods of whatever country you were currently in, even if they weren't your native gods. So there's really nothing in the way of an oracle being the chosen, or just an especially devout follower, of one god, while still believing in all of them.

I can see some problems with the stealth skill, but that a low level rogue with no special stealth abilities can't sneak across an open area in bright daylight, while a farmer and a dog are keeping watch, is not one of them.

What?

I don't think this is a progressive/conservative issue. It's about what people see as pornography. And I've never seen anyone who was against something like Love Hina but for something like Gor, so you might want to give some specific examples. Of course, I also don't think it's fair to categorize either side of the political spectrum because of a few hypocrites. It just distracts from the issues and keeps people from listening to one another.

And since the real the issue rarely has anything to do with whether something is pornography or not, that's a problem. I don't know what Love Hina is, and looking it up, it doesn't seem to have (m)any elements of male dominance or female submission, so I don't see the comparison.

As I mentioned in other posts, there are degrees between titillation and hardcore porn. There are also examples of

For example, does the wizard truename ability encourage domination of others? How about if a male wizard gets the truename of a succubus? Or a female wizard an incubus?

How about Improved Familiar or Eidolons? Both are intelligent and utterly willing to do whatever their masters want. They can even be humanoid in shape or gendered.

Is a player who makes his Eidolon a comely female humanoid in shape automatically enacting some sort of rape/domination fantasy since his Eidolon is obedient to him? Because the situation is the same as with the creatures in the OP's article.

My point is there are shades. A bared breast does not necessarily equal porn or exploitation, otherwise the vast majority of the great works of western art should be kept from children since they are actually nothing more than filth. Willing bonded servants in fiction are not automatic happy sex slaves.

Looking at it that way, any depiction of living/sentient creatures is inherently sexual and potentially perverted. An image of a man with large muscles? He could totally use his strength to overpower someone and rape them. A woman with a knife? She could totally hold it to someone's throat and force them to have sex with her. A rogue with high charisma? He could manipulate people to have sex with him against their will. A wizard? She could conjure up sex demons, dominate people, threaten to blast them to bits.... etc. These completely normal adventurers are about as potentially sexually exploitative as as your examples.

On the other hand, a spell with the description “the subject immediately transforms into a beautiful humanoid woman who considers the caster her master and will forever after live to serve and please him. She's empowered by kisses from her master” IS sexual, and potentially sexually exploitative (as well as somewhat sexist). There's a difference between a race made with the purpose of being (and I quote here) “sexy servitors”, and the existence of people whose only sexual trait is that they could potentially have sex and/or exploit someone sexually. Also, I don't consider it filth, I consider it trash (and rude). There's a huge difference.

Yes, the whole "No! Don't! Stop! No, don't stop!" dynamic is something else. But you have to add a few layers of implications before you get to that point in the OP's example, and the source material doesn't have any of that.

The rape example had nothing to do with the OP, I was illustrating why saying “It's not really slavery, because these people live to serve and want it themselves” does not make it inherently more problematic.

*sigh* I was wondering when someone would bring up this old chestnut again.

This is another variant of the old "porn promotes bad thoughts in people" argument.

Really? Even though I didn't mention porn at all, let alone said it was bad? And even though I was not discussing explicit sex vs. no sex, but rather the implications of willing slavery vs. unwilling slavery? And this from a guy who's so uptight and conservative that he considers bare female breasts to be enough to almost push something into porn? Your prejudice is showing.

It's been around since there was porn, and it's never been proven - such "studies" that claim they do prove it are either poorly conducted, trying to twist the facts to suit a preexisting conclusion, or just don't exist.

You do not understand what I'm talking about. You have a very specific perspective and it doesn't occur to you that anyone else doesn't share it. You distinguish between sex/sexiness and lack of sex/sexiness, and measures it according to how explicit it is. Please try to understand that not only is it not my focus, it is not even a priority.

The studies I refer to did not measure the effects of explicit sex, or porn if you will, they measured the difference in reaction between people exposed to descriptions of consensual sex/romance, forced sex/romance in which the victim is clearly distraught, and the “NO!, NO, no, yes, YES!” dynamic. I even recall one of them specifically used a romance movie that was rated suitable for children. I would be interested in some studies measuring the effect of portrayals of willing and enjoyable BDSM too, to get a more nuanced picture, but regardless of that, it's still a completely different phenomenon than the effect of wanking material in general.

Also, I wasn't even talking about your wanking material to begin with, I was answering the argument that portrayals of willing slavery are inherently less problematic or insulting than portrayals of unwilling slavery, because it's an area I happen to some experience in. That's it.

I don't particularly want to retreat this particular topic, but I did feel the point had to be addressed. For what is probably the best debate on this particular topic you're going to find on the internet, I refer you to Zak Sabbath vs. Greg Christopher.

I'm not interested in your particular topic either. I don't know if you're from the USA, but generally, I don't like talking porn with American progressives because few of them appear to have any perspective beyond “Sexual services directed at (straight) men=good, everybody who dislikes anything which includes fanservice for (straight) men for any reason=nasty prudes who need to be put in their place by being told how stupid they are.”

It might just be that conservative censorship has made them all defensive, but describe a (fictive) harem filled with women who're lorded over by a patriarch and covered up completely because of modesty issues, and US progressives will fall over themselves to condemn it as misogynist. Describe the same harem, but give the women tiny metal bikinis and make it clear they have a lot of sex, and many of the same progressives praise it for being edgy and sexy (as long as the women are young and pretty, otherwise it's suddenly not edgy but disgusting), and assume that everybody who has a problem with it must have an issue with sex or porn. It's like the amount of asscheeks shown is what gets to decide what's progressive and not, and the “lorded over by a patriarch” part doesn't enter into it.

So really, I can't relate to your perspective at all (and a good thing I can't, believing my own breasts to be genitals and perceiving every instance of me not hiding them as tantamount to porn would probably drive me crazy), and until you're willing to discuss something other than nudity and perceived porn, I'm not going to consider you as having addressed any point I made at all.