Hear hear! Down with Vancian casting! From what I've seen, this is the way it usually works out at most tables. Most GMs don't want to keep track of daily spell lists, and most players assume this is how it works anyways. It's just easier and more fun to play it that way.
1. Kiss - Destroyer (Yep, first one. Such cheese)
I had a couple K-Tel albums before that, but I can't remember which songs were on them. I had a stack of 45s as well. First concert: Rush w/ Cheap Trick in '77. Good times!
...and surprising, THIS is also a combat feat and qualifies for Martial Flexibility: Intimidating Prowess When you need to be the biggest bully in town: Your physical might is intimidating to others. Benefit: Add your Strength modifier to Intimidate skill checks in addition to your Charisma modifier.
You can also buy the PDF, print it and put it in a binder with sleeves to allow for "double-sided" pages. That way you have the reduced PFD costs, and can still have a hard copy in front of you for reference. Heh, I already purchased the pdf, and we have a colour printer. I could print it out and make do. That's likely what I'll end up doing. But I'd still pay good money for a (new, not overpriced) quality printing. Even after purchasing the pdf.
Voted for Bard. And Occultist for the occult classes. I love classes that have a ton of versatility: 3/4 BAB martials with some spellcasting, special abilities, and loads of skills. Fortunately, there are a lot of classes out right now that fit into that general framework: Inquisitors, Alchemists, Bards, Magi, Hunters, Skalds, Unsummoners, even Oracles and Shamans. I want to play them all. :)
I'm currently running a Snakebite Striker/Knifemaster Rogue (level 3), and I have to say, it is an impressively vicious build. I'm not sure I'd bother with Two-Weapon Fighting, though. If you're regularly using your move action to feint, you aren't going to be able to full attack. You get Brawler's Flurry at level 2 anyways, so if you need to, you can TWF without it just fine. And by the time you get to Improved Two-Weapon Feint, is it even worth it? Yes, you'll be getting more attacks, but with extra minuses to hit too. Most of your damage will be coming from sneak attack. Me, I'd rather spend the feats elsewhere and be able to hit more reliably. P.S. Check out the Mask of Stony Demeanor. It's only 500gp for a +5 competence bonus on Bluff checks to feint. :)
Yes definitely. Aside from the game balance issues, not being able to take an Extra Vigilante Talent as a feat just means that this class will be far less flexible when compared to its peers. For a class that was designed to cover so much broad territory (warrior, arcane caster, divine caster, etc.), building in this added inflexibility seems counter-intuitive. Re: the balance issues. As many have pointed out, a lot of Extra Hex/Extra Revelation type options are also more powerful than feats. Simple solution, just balance the Vigilante Talents with those.
Actually, I think it might come up long before then. I mean, how is the secret identity going to survive ...shopping? We've pretty much accepted that Ye Olde Magic Shoppe is a standard fixture of the game. What's everyone going to think when the mild-mannered social persona shows up to buy wands and potions and that really sweet +2 Agile Rapier? Especially in the smallish adventuring towns, people are gonna talk. That's how rumours get started!
The spells are arcane with no call-out, so they suffer ASF, as usual. We've been jotting down ideas, and Logan told me he's liking the idea of putting ignoring light armor's ASF into a talent though! Personally, I'd rather see the Warlock Vigilantes play out more like Bards or Magi: That is, take away the Med armour proficiency, but let them continue to cast in light armour w/ no problem. Both the caster types (Warlock and Zealot) strike me as being already fairly heavily taxed on their Vigilante Talents, just to keep up with basic spellcasting. As a player, I'd rather spend my Vigilante Talents on cool and colourful options, rather than just trying to keep up w/ the other base classes.
I find that training up class levels kinda grinds against the idea of self sufficient adventurers. In reality, people often had training and teachers because they couldn't go out and learn by doing. Exactly this. Back in the day, I used to require level training for each new level as an AD&D DM (according to the very exacting training rules chbgraphics posted above). At least, I did for a time. I eventually gave up on it because: a) It was incredibly cumbersome. Basically, it required the PCs to go back home (or wherever) to train after each level. The idea of the adventure being a journey got tossed out the window. And... b) It destroyed any sense of immersion/story verisimilitude that the PCs had about themselves being the heroes of the tale. I mean, what was the point of them needing to rise up and take on the BBEG ...if there were literally dozens of higher level characters locally available who could do the whole thing much more easily? The whole thing encouraged murder-hoboism/adventuring-for-adventuring sake, rather than playing a principal heroic role in a story arc. I houseruled a whole lot of things way back in 1st edition. That was one of the first ones, and I never regretted it or looked back.
9. Movement and Multiple Attacks: You could move your full speed and make as many attacks as you were entitled to back before 2000. (Different classes, of course, got attacks faster than others, but there were only eight and a half classes in the Rules... 12. BAB and their iteratives: While we're at it, let's get rid of the whole idea of iterative attacks altogether. If I get multiple attacks in a round, why should each attack get progressively suckier? If I get a second attack (or a third attack), those attacks should also be at my full/highest BAB. Also, this applies to Fighters only, although other martials (Paladins, Rangers) should also get extra attacks to a lesser degree. Giving iterative attacks to Clerics/Bards/Rogues etc. didn't happen until later editions and was totally unnecessary.
Exactly right. I first heard this term in the mid-early 90s. Our little Warhammer group joined up with a larger society of miniatures-based wargamers who met up once a month (we took over pretty much the whole upper floor of a community center). They were all playing carefully orchestrated reenactments of civil war battles, Napoleon battles, WW II battles, etc., all with literally thousands of gorgeous hand painted miniatures. Now THOSE GUYS, those were the grognards!!!
I started playing AD&D in 1980 and generally consider myself to be a grognard. That said, this list misses me by a country mile: I can't stand playing with GMs who don't know the rules and just make up whatever they want. I think the game should be challenging, but only in that it makes the players think. A soulcrushing grind down to your last hit points is never fun. I prefer that the rules are set in stone. PFS's attitude towards the RAW suits me just fine. Character deaths make for interesting stories. A game without any chance of meaningful death or failure is boring. There is a name for GMs who ignore the dice. That name is cheater. But if you REALLY wanna see me get all crotchety, just show up with your Catfolk Summoner and constantly derail the game talking about what a special snowflake you are...
I have a question, mostly for GMs on here, about CR and encounter design. I’m referring, of course, to the APL/CR chart in the CRB. When designing encounters, is an Epic level encounter (APL+3) the cap for your toughest boss fights, or do you customary to go beyond that? Do you find this to be a good metric for gauging encounters? And if you regularly go beyond Epic, just how far are you willing to dial it up? At what point would you consider it to be unfair to your players?
I can just imagine a girl who normally has a 6 in her charisma score, some how got a hold of a Headband of Alluring Charisma +8, ending up with a +14 Charisma. She finds a Fabio, and after a while of courting, they begin the ritual of coitus. He gets his long flowing hair stuck in the headband and as he pulls away, the headband comes off and is confronted with an ugly smelly hickbilly girl... ...or maybe after she marries the dude and gets pregnant, she takes the headband off to see if he truly loves her or will stay for the sake of their child. (see: Merope Gaunt)
You gain one additional hex. You must meet the prerequisites for this hex. If you are a shaman, it must be a hex granted by your spirit rather than one from a wandering spirit. I'm going to disagree with your interpretation on that. If it just said, "it must be a hex granted by your spirit.", then yes you'd be correct. But it doesn't say that. Rather, it says "it must be a hex granted by your spirit rather than one from a wandering spirit"(Emphasis mine). The second part changes the sentence, showing that it was never intended to be a global statement. The 3rd sentence simply modifies the 2nd sentence about prerequisites. If you're a Shaman, you don't meet the prerequisite for Hexes from your wandering spirits. It's worded poorly, and hopefully we'll get some clarification when the long-awaited ACG errata/FAQ finally comes out. But I don't think RAW requires that a sentence fragment taken out of context need trump reading out the entire sentence or its meaning within the passage.
I appreciate all the work you've put into this. I've been looking into this as well for a melee Shaman. (Shamans with the Shapeshifting Hex can use Alter Self as a Su ability, starting at Level 2.) Have you considered also the Sewer Troll (from the Monster Codex)? It's one of the few humanoids w/ the giant subtype that fits the Small/Medium size requirement of Alter Self, but I believe it works. And look what all you get: Darkvision, Low-light vision, Scent, and 3 natural attacks. Some pretty juicy stuff.
Oh, and there's also the Spellsong feat: Spellsong You can blend the power of your performance and spellcasting. Prerequisites: Cha 13, bardic performance class ability, able to cast 1st-level spells. Benefit: You can combine your bardic performance and your spellcasting in two ways. First, you can conceal the activity of casting a bard spell by masking it in a performance. As a swift action, you may combine your casting time of a spell with a Perform check. Observers must make a Perception or Sense Motive check opposed by your Perform check to realize you are also casting a spell. This uses 1 round of your bardic performance ability, regardless of the spell's casting time. Second, as a move action, you can use 1 round of bardic performance to maintain a bard spell with a duration of concentration. You can cast another spell in the same round you are using bardic magic to maintain concentration; if you do this, your concentration on the maintained spell ends when you end the bardic performance the spell is part of.
I actually thought that was one of the coolest aspects of Psychic Magic presented in the Occult Adventures playtest. Unlike Divine and Arcane magic, psychic spells don't have verbal or somatic components. Instead, they have Thought and Emotion components. Your concentration check becomes a bit more critical, but otherwise it's much easier to cast spells incognito. That's a huge advantage in some roleplay scenarios.
Yep, it's perfectly possible to do both. I like to plan out my characters, but will readily adapt my build to a) the needs and weaknesses of the party, and b) the style of the GM. For example, if I have a GM who never has the bad guys take a 5 foot step, there's no point in adding Step Up to my build. Might as well go with something else.
How about a Warpriest of Torag with the Artifice Blessing? Full of sundering, robot-smashy goodness! Crafter's Wrath (minor): At 1st level, you can touch one melee weapon and grant it greater power to harm and destroy crafted objects. For 1 minute, whenever this weapon deals damage to constructs or objects, it bypasses hardness and damage reduction. Edited to add text.
You know, playin' in a comic shop offers a lot of disadvantages. First one bein', you're playin' in a comic shop. I greatly prefer home games, mostly because the atmosphere is generally more relaxing and considerably better: better lighting (not sitting under fluorescent tubes for four hours), less noisy, can get up and move around and get food and drinks as you like, can play music or have access to all your game books and materials, and most importantly, ready access to bathroom, something a lot of local comic/game store venues lack. There is also the aspect of character/group development and story continuity. Characters within groups develop a certain dynamic over time, learn to play of each others' strengths and weaknesses. I enjoy this process and the social aspect of gaming. That's why I play tabletop RPGs, rather than just sitting at home doing video games. That said, home games generally require a bit more commitment. I don't have a problem with that, but I've seen enough home groups go south for one reason or another, whether it's a problem player or people's schedules or whatever. PFS lets you change it up pretty regularly, which isn't a bad thing. Also, the rules are fairly set in stone, which is also a good model for home games, I think.
Errm, why painted like a bee? That's just silly. I think the Calistrian Warpriest works rather well. You already start with whip proficiency and Weapon Focus: Whip. A human warpriest could then add Weapon Finesse and Slashing Grace at level 1. Being a Dex-based character, you'd probably want to go a little lighter on the armour as well. Whip Mastery is an easy grab at Level 3, and depending on your GM, you could probably just use a scorpion whip til then.
This. Love it. This is now my favourite 0 level spell. I would cast this all day long. :)
Sorry, but I'm with your players on this one. I recently had to leave a group I loved because of the GM's son. He also started playing with us at age 12. But see, here's the thing with 12 year olds: they eventually turn into 13 year olds! *gasp* What started out as him being a somewhat amusingly unfocused and easily distracted player turned into him being an easily bored and frequently hostile player who spent most of his time trolling the game. I tried talking to the GM about it, but that didn't go well. Having to talk to parents about their kids is never an enviable task. Your players have spoken. If it's a longstanding group, I'd even go out on a limb and say it's pretty unfair and uncool to be foisting your kid on them. You are also showing that you're not terribly open to their feedback, which is not a good sign. In my own situation, I had to realize it was only going to get worse before it got better, where 'getting worse' meant tolerating increasing passive-aggressive behaviours and 'getting better' meant either he or I left the group.
Yup, exactly! A standing rule we used to have (back in ye olden days) was that any evil characters/PvP immediately becomes property of the GM, to be used as NPCs. So yes, the players can have their very satisfying battle royale against the diabolically evil sorcerer. And the offending player can even join in the fun, as a newly created, good-aligned PC.
It sounds like your fun game has turned not-so-fun, and I'm not sure there's a path to remedy that. I hate playing with evil PCs. All too often, it's just an excuse for all kinds of in-game douchery, which is what you're being subjected to now. It's not going to change and will likely to worsen the more you try to confront it (cuz hey, I'm just playing my character, man). Also, there's definitely collusion on the part of the high school buddies, but probably also the GM. They all seem A-OK with this behaviour - this is your problem. Your monk/magus isn't Lawful Stupid, so he should probably also be able to recognize when he is hopelessly outgunned. If the GM is a friend, I'd talk to him about it. If that doesn't work, your options are to either suck it up or seek out another cabal. It's not what you wanted to hear, I know. It sucks. I recently had to walk away from a group I loved, because one player (the GM's son, aka "special snowflake syndrome") was making the game unfun for everyone. I've since found another group that I like, who are quite happy to have me. :)
I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned it yet, but I think the ACG could do A LOT to revitalize the Fighter and Rogue. New combat feats, new rogue talents, new archetypes, new weapons, new traits ...we could be getting a whole new take on some of these "weaker classes". It's not just the playtest classes, we were promised a lot more with this book. Think of what the APG did for the core game, that's pretty much what I'm expecting here.
When I play I make it clear the place for rules lawyers is not my table. Smart, tactical players who know the rules =/= rules lawyers. At this point, I think we've fallen back to the Stormwind Fallacy. Just because someone knows the rules and enjoys a smart, tactical game doesn't mean they don't know how to roleplay. And vice versa. The game was designed to incorporate both perspectives, and good GMs and players will know how to do both well enough.
... I'm just saying there was a lot of stuff in the old AD&D that was arbitrary as heck and was nearly impossible for a DM to judge impartially. That's why even back then we were adding additional rules to govern miniatures and movement and stuff. I'd rather play a game system governed by rules. *shrug* You know what, maybe I'm the wrong one to talk about it. The "essence of AD&D" wasn't all that great when you think about it.
So the essence of AD&D was a bunch of hullabaloo? It's a cute example, but it's a bit of a straw man. In the latter example, there's no way the player would need to go into such detail. Most GMs already know how acrobatics or reach weapons work. The player would simply need to move into position and announce any further actions (draw a weapon, ready an action, etc.). Any additional explanation is optional. Likewise, in the first example, the player moves into position and ...well, nothing! If the passage is wide enough, I'm not sure there was anything in the old AD&D rules that would allow Brian the Black to stop a foe or even take a swipe at them as they ran past. Although colourful, the player's description doesn't really accomplish much of anything in the game. Once again, any additional explanation is optional. Yes, there were DMs who would allow a detailed description to translate into real game effects, and of course they'd be more inclined to do so if the description were colourful and in character. Or if they were friends with the DM. Or if they had brought the pizza. Or if they were a girl and wore something tight or low-cut. Or if they were funny and knitted up their eyebrows at the DM in that really cute way that puppies do. See, that was part of the problem.
has the biggest detail of AD&D been mentioned. That is, prior to the internet, basically, just about everyone played these games diferently even if they were using the same books. True that. Occasionally, you got a taste of somebody else's play style if you went to a con. Usually we walked away from those experiences thinking, "Wow, those guys sucked compared to us". lol
If you re-read the first couple lines in his post, you'll see that he says he hasn't played AD&D, but was only trying to encapsulate some of the contradictions in this thread. Overall, it's not a bad summary. The one thing it missed, and has been covered pretty thoroughly here, is that AD&D was not a simpler system. Rather, it was pretty much the same level of complexity, but with huge gaps in the rules. Those gaps were mostly found in the skills and non-combat encounters, which were often resolved without a dice roll, usually by roleplay, DM fiat, and to a certain extent, "Mother May I". Fast talking players could usually ride roughshod over an inexperienced DM with nary a skill check or dice roll in sight! I started playing in 1980, and I DM'd through most of the 80s. It was all AD&D/1E. I never bothered to play the red box or pick up 2nd Edition, and for the most part, I hadn't touched a RPG until jumping into Pathfinder a couple months ago. I can honestly say that, after years of experience playing and running AD&D, I'm not finding the Pathfinder experience to be lacking anything. True, the sprawling amount of character options can be a little overwhelming to old school DMs, but it's pretty easy for GMs to limit that, restricting players to CRB or CRB + APG only. If you think of the GM as an artist, the first thing you want to do is take control of the colour palette. If a certain theme doesn't fit the vision you are creating, toss it out. Perhaps that's a difference with AD&D DMs. Since more of the encounters and play were scratch-built, 1E DMs felt far less bound to follow the RAW. The other big difference, of course, is skills. Personally, I like having the addition of skills. I'll disagree that having skill checks makes PCs more powerful. If anything, it steps on my tail a little bit. A failed Bluff check can occasionally put an end to my ruse, whereas in 1E I would've just spitballed my way through that thing.
Finding the right group is everything. My first time out, I found myself playing at a table with a group of twenty year olds. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it wasn't a good fit. I got the sense that several of them clammed up around me, almost like they felt they were playing with their parent in the room! From what you describe, it sounds like you'd be pretty happy running a CRB-only type game. That still gives you 11 core classes and the same basic 7 core races ...that's about as close to AD&D as you're going to get. It also cuts out a lot of the cheesier options, like gun fighters and synthesist summoners. I tend to agree with you about magic items as well. Personally, I'd rather see the DM hand out a few key magic items as rewards, and cut out Ye Olde Magic Shoppe altogether.
I remember using a fairly complex set of miniatures/movement rules back in the day. It was a hex-map based system we incorporated from a game called The Fantasy Trip (from Steve Jackson games, a precursor to GURPS). We weren't the only ones using it either. Seemed a shame to have all that pretty Ral Partha pewter and not put it to good use! The biggest differences w/ AD&D I find are: a) Skill points - 1E didn't do much at all with skills. I remember playing a Fighter/Thief back in Thieves World who pretended to be visiting nobility and spread a cloud of lies wherever they went. It was a ton of fun, and nary a Bluff check nor a Sense Motive was ever made. It was all just me spitballing. b) the sprawling complexity - Pathfinder/3.5 give you a TON of options ...feats, skills, traits, archetypes, alternative racial characteristics. 1E didn't have any of that. Outside of a few articles in Dragon Magazine, you were pretty much stuck with what's in the Player's Handbook. I remember when Oriental Adventures came out; it basically doubled your options as a player (but only for that style of game). Personally, I love having so many options! But it's easy to limit your options if you're not into that. I'm currently playing in a CRB-only campaign and having a great time with it. It feels quite a lot like the ol' AD&D, actually. It seems a lot of groups around here run CRB + APG only. It's pretty much the same as old school D&D, only improved.
If the Player is just a d***, get rid of him. If he's just playing one then this is probably a failure on his part for assuming he could play this character, but mostly a failure on your part for not letting him know the expectations before he made him. Whoa, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I would strongly advise against confronting him in front of the other players. I can see one of two scenarios playing out. Either a) the player in question feels ganged up on and the situation turns unnecessarily hostile, or b) the other players waffle and don't support you because they don't want to go against their "friend". Then you end up looking like the bad guy and don't accomplish anything. Much better to confirm privately with the other players that this guy's behaviour is a problem, then talk to him about it, out-of-character and outside the game. Give him a chance to straighten up or alternatively to roll up a new character. If he refuses to back down, then he should be asked to leave.
My take: some level of optimization is to be expected if that's the character you want to play. It's for that reason I would never, ever dump Int, and even my martial types will start out with 12 or higher. Why? Because I want to roleplay characters who are tactically smart, who know what they are doing in combat and know how to get the job done! I'm not talking about silly builds, like running around with a shield on both arms. Those I think the GM should rightly step on. But knowing what spell to cast where, knowing basic combat formations, knowing how to buff out a party and lead a coordinated assault, these are the things I think characters should excel at. Are there adventures who don't take such a thoughtful approach to the matter? Of course there are! Have you ever gone into a dungeon? Those are the skulls you see lying around everywhere.
First, there is a difference between a trait having a biologicol basis and a trait being associated with a gender based on biology. Additionally, both of those concepts are completely different from saying that a trait, or the gender of a trait, is based on specific physiological differences in the brain. From a behavioural sciences perspective, the research on gender is no more confusing than the research on intelligence/aptitudes, mental illness, child development, nor any other intrinsic human trait. Much like all of the rest, gender can reasonably be expected to conform to the same influencing factors: genetic predisposition, natural variation of the trait within the species, and further shaping of the phenotype through environmental and cultural influences. Gender and sexuality have been studied quite extensively over the last 50 years, more so than many other subjects, and gender differences in the brain were seen in evidence 20+ years ago, back when I was in graduate school (mostly autopsy studies back then, now further refined by MRI and other techniques). To argue, as you did, that there is no biological basis for gender is patently absurd. More to the point, there are exactly no human traits or characteristics that are 100% culturally determined and have no biological influence, not gender nor anything else. You have repeatedly asserted that a) gender has no biological basis and is 100% culturally determined (on the basis of no evidence whatsoever), and b) you have maintained this assertion in spite of being presented with solid evidence to the contrary (i.e. the recent Scientific American article). For someone who claims to be a student of psychology, I find this baffling. If you are finding the subject of gender confusing, I would question whether it's because you are also listening to other competing considerations, perhaps a religious belief or a political ideology. In any case, whatever is informing your views on the matter, it most certainly is not psychology, and it is not science. I'm not sure what the point is anyway. Doesn't it make more sense that gender identity and gender expression are best described as the intersectionality of biological and cultural factors, much like personality and every other intrinsic human trait? I'm not sure you've given us anything to justify taking such an extreme position. And are we really having the nature-nurture debate in 2014? I would think that any student past Psych 101 would know better. I'm reminded of the old joke we used to say about the Skinnerians, that they think that, "If a cat were to give birth in an oven, the offspring would be biscuits!".
I am a transsexual player, and no I don't find this item to be offensive. I think it's rather amusing. Somebody mentioned earlier that gender swapping is a common SciFi/Fantasy trope, and it is. How it is handled in Pathfinder largely depends on your group. For some groups, this is roleplay gold, and they can have a lot of fun with it. For others, it's just an excuse to humiliate your players and make a bunch of sexist jokes. I'd feel pretty uncomfortable in a group like that, but then I find racial stereotypes pretty irksome in roleplaying games too. Having said all that, I wouldn't want to encounter one in the game, and I would probably try to get rid of it right away. Gender transition was a long and painful process for me and not something I'd care to play out again. I also wouldn't want to feel that the DM may have singled me out for this or tried to make light of what I've gone through.
I love maps and miniatures and the mathematical precision of movement. I love line of sight and flanking and positioning. I love attacks of opportunity. I love parcelling out all the various actions: move, swift, standard, full round, immediate, free. As someone who just recently returned to RPGs after years of playing miniatures games (Warhammer, Heroclix), all this kind of stuff just makes me giddy. :) |
