Fake Healer's page

All weapons function as written because Paizo hasn't said they don't. There is no mechanic for suits leaking so they don't.
If you are looking for true science in your space opera game you really aren't playing as the game is intended. It is more fun if you suspend belief and play like you are in a Star Wars/Trek/fantasy world. Just as in regular Pathifnder, if you want to have true science it wrecks the game.

Ok so let's all start at level 2 or 3....then that can be all of our first levels. maybe then we can rename and reorder that level and all subsequent ones to reflect that being our first. but then we all start at level 1 again.....

Mekton Zeta?

No clubs are obtained for no money, not bought. The rules list them as costing 0gp because you can make or find one easily if you spend enough time to make an uneducated craft check. Looking around an area with wood...construction area, trash area, wooded area...for a bit will get you a usable club with a check. Without the check you have done the same thing but either in a rush, or you weren't knowledgeable on the harder woods, or you picked a badly shaped piece of wood that slips in the hand or is difficult to swing because the balance is crap. If you want to buy a fancier one in a store that is pretty then you can, and the DM can assign a cost or the PC can say "I want a nicer club, something that has a leather wrapped handle and some carvings on it" for 1+GP depending on their desire for fanciness. I constantly have people in my group asking for custom weapons that are less than masterwork but better then minimalist. They tell me how much they want to spend and what they want it to look like and I tell them if it's possible at that price.

I don't really post as much these days. Forums just seem not so great anymore. So I just stick to Starfinder and maybe gamer life, as well as my google+ crowd.

I stopped posting a while back also...I was encountering harsher, ruder posts from people and it seemed like most threads lasted about 6-7 posts before someone was letting fly with some sort of viciousness. There is enough of that around in the real world so I didn't feel like hanging with it virtually. I drop on every couple days, look at a few posts, see if anything new is going on and very rarely post except on videogame or movie threads (they seemed the safest). Frequency has been declining again lately though.

It looks interesting, but not $299 or more type interesting.

Maybe a $99 or less type interesting to me...at this time.

If it had backwards compatibility (it doesn't), that might raise some of my interest.

Right now, however, it has some interesting ideas, but nothing that I would spend a lot of money to obtain or utilize.

How the heck can you even say $99 with a straight face for a console? The 3DS is more expensive by almost double and games are running $60 a pop. It makes it hard to respect your opinion if you are going to just spout nonsense.

The answer is simple. Hillary has these two things on her chest. Too many people those two things are not something that can be compatible with behavior we expect from the half of the human race which lacks those two things. Because when we see those two things on a person, a different set of perception filters slam into place so that the same behaviors trigger different responses.

I love that because I don't want to vote for a wholly corrupt politician that supports many policies that I hate and has made a career of lying, getting caught, and magically getting free, I MUST be sexist.

Large ships-
Yamato, the ship from the original Star Blazers cartoon...link
Battlestar Galactica, the original from the first series on TV...link
Romulan Warbird...link

Small fighters-
Buck Roger's ship from the tv series in the 70s? link
Hawk's ship from the same series link
and the Colonial Viper from Battlestar Galactica original series link

DeathQuaker wrote:

wall o' text

Granted, a LOT of mods are crap. But there are some modders who've become staples of the modding community, and people look for and anticipate their contributions.

They do it because they LOVE doing it, and take pride in their work. They tell you which other mods or dlc are required. In short, they do a professional level of service out of love for the game and their love of modding.

I'll probably only use a dozen or so, maybe twenty, mods when they come out. On console, I can't improve the detail of meshes, etc., too much because of the limitations of the hardware.

But what I've experienced in the past (Oblivion, when I was on PC) is that there are modders who do better work than what comes from the publisher themselves. It always makes we ask: Why didn't the publisher do this with their product first? The improved textures, skins, animations - all were better post game release by the modding community. Shouldn't the publisher be bringing out the best stuff, generally?

If Bethesda was just getting started, that's one thing. But now that they're established, I feel they should raise the bar on themselves knowing that the modding community has done better in the past. They should be trying to better the best mods that came out on their last game when they release a new one.

I know - "should". The real world doesn't work that way, but I can still hope.

I believe a lot of it is about trying to get a product out in a timely manner. If I have to make the choice to wait several months longer for a game to have photo-realistic graphics or I can have it earlier with a step or two down thee graphics ladder, I am gonna probably choose to dine earlier. These games are made to hit a time-table, often revolving around some sort of holiday, for their releases. I really appreciate excellent graphics but I also want to not have years in between releases of the franchises I like because they want to have arm hair on the characters react to wind.

PT.B=The Devil wrote:

Tormsskull wrote:

In that method, rolling an 18 was very rare. Even when it switched to 4d6b3, an 18 was still fairly rare. So having an 18 put a character in an imaginary little elite club.

When people started using PB and buying an 18, that imaginary little elite club became a free-for-all that anyone and everyone could enter.

People use to tell stories about that one time Bob rolled an 18 - it was an event. No one tells stories about that time Bob bought an 18.

My players reminisce about the time they played a ranger who became a city vigilante. They talk about the time their Bard became Baron of a small wilderness country. They talk about fighting dragons, old ones, and beholders. They never ever talk about their stats. Ever.

This.

This so so so so so much.

Ah, got it now...someone talking about getting a good stat through rolling is badwrongfun. I wish someone would just put a list together of all the badwrongfun so I can reference that and learn more on how to ridicule others for doing things on that list.

lemeres wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Kahel you are literally the least fun person on this thread, and that's including lemeres the dead bird on a stick.

Hey! Are you implying that I have a stick up my bum?

Because I clearly have a cloaca. Or...y'know...the rotten remnants of one. Anyway. Completely different.

Let's not drag cloacae into this.

This post sponsored by "I know how to pluralize obscure words and you need to see it". Sorry I read that and literally that is all I could think of afterward. lol.

I have 2 guys in my extended gaming group that have published their own game system based on a D5 system and was very impressed with how professional the books they had made looked and the quality of the end product. Perhaps you could talk them through their site and see if they feel like giving some first-hand knowledge on doing EXACTLY what you friend would be trying to do.
Shroud of Ancients, Randy or Rod will most likely be ready to tell you anything you want. They are pretty cool dudes with a ton of knowledge on the subject and a very nice finished project to show for it.

I finally got around to paying a visit to the Glowing Sea, safe inside my Mark VI X-01 power armor modded out with leaded parts. That is one cool, disturbing place.

Also, having had a few run-ins with them, the Children of Atom can all just die. Hate those guys.

I came over one small hill in the Glowing Sea and got to watch a really awesome little battle between a Deathclaw and a Radscorpion it was pretty epic until I mini-nuked them both....lol.

As an aside, there is some really funny, kooky stuff in the world....I walked into a bar and was looting behind the counter/bar and noticed 2 teddy bears wearing hats with cigars in their mouths set up to look like they are playing checkers on the shelves under the bar. Stuff like that is really cool to find and makes me almost laugh aloud as I play and there is little stuff like that all over the place. I appreciate the extra time that went into something like that.

Oh my, Mr. Swan, what big....everythings...you have.

Oww, almost forgot my awesome assassin snails (black and yellow banded cone snails that kill and eat other snails), I have them in all my tanks to keep pond snail explosions from happening (little buggers come in on the plants, hard to get rid of).

What do they eat when are no snails around if I may ask?

Also to contribute, I currently have no odd pets except for my 2 rescued dogs that are just not right in the head. The one (Irish setter/Golden Retriever mix)has horrible separation anxiety and the other (Cockapoo) has a bum leg and seizures about every other month.
I used to have a beautiful iguana that REALLY disliked his reflection and busted 2 mirrors with his tail trying to attack the "other iguana". I would walk him on a leash and he went with me most places, usually perched on my shoulders.
Had several snakes but nothing really exotic...mostly garter or rat snakes that I had found and kept.

Aelryinth wrote:

Main problem with slingers is how long they take to train to become accurate.

At that same range, with the same targets, likely an archer could have hit two to three times as often, and a crossbowman more often yet.

And while slings are great on bombardment, they don't work as well against rigid armor (but can still break bones on lighter armor and with head shots). Mechanically, the simple fact is you can reach MUCH higher concentrations of force with the use of bows.

Not that slings can't be awesome in their own way, of course.

==Aelryinth

It was either here or on the old WOTC boards, but I read one of the typical threads that came up once about medieval weapons (you know the ones, where everyone has a black belt and practices with slings or longbows or whatever 4 hours a day).

But I went through a lot of the links and did some reading.

Not sure if something like an English Longbow would be included, but the sling is just as lethal and accurate at the same range as most bows.

The caveat is what you said. The proficiency thing from hardest to master to easiest is something like sling -> bow -> firearm.

There were some slingers from some islands off the coast of Spain (Balearic Slingers?) that trained from childhood with the sling, and the Romans found them utterly lethal and dangerous to face in combat.

I guess I could google and find some of that on the web somewhere. And I won't swear I don't have one of my facts wrong.

But the Romans had a very, very healthy respect for the slingers I mentioned. (And as most here will be aware they were using "bullets," not random stones from the ground.)

Here is a great site on slings, crafting them, using them, and history of them. Slinging.org They also do a good comparison of ranges and accuracy and such in comparison to other stuff like English Longbows and stuff...

To answer the question....no. People don't think they are mutually exclusive. Here is the caveat though. People who look at the game and tend to be into number crunching and trying to "win" aren't usually putting the roleplaying in a high priority. There are always exceptions to the rules and there are shade of grade all along the scale also. It isn't an either or proposition, it is that everyone has a sliding scale for numbers and a separate scale for roleplay and unfortunately enough people slide up the numbers scale and don't focus on the other and vice versa that it makes some absolutists decide it is an either or state.

Co8 is mostly about fixing a ton of the bugs in the ToEE game....it adds some stuff also but it is mostly there to make the game run well.

I like it, they more or less emulate emotion and behaviors that have been taught to them to try to remain inconspicuous. Lots of RP-able stuff there and good fodder for integration into plotlines.

Seth Dresari wrote:

That Bounded Accuracy thing sounds cool, but it also takes the uniqueness out of certain items, traits and/or feats that provide bonuses to certain skills, including but not limited to circumstance bonuses.

Those things are gone, too. And let's be honest: in a game where the math is a pile of +1s and +2s all adding up to be a level-appropriate total, there's nothing "unique" about those individual pluses. By contrast, in a game where the math is your stat mod plus a binary yes/no for adding your proficiency bonus, the small handful of things that actually further modify the math are far more "unique" than any given brick in Pathfinder's mathwall.

In 5E, the fact that the rogue can double his proficiency bonus on a couple of skills is actually special. In 5E, the fact that some bards can add half their proficiency bonus to every skill they're not already proficient in is actually meaningful. In 5E, bless can be your math-changer for the whole game, instead of fading into insignificance around 4th level or so.

The pluses you accrue in Pathfinder aren't unique. The pluses in 5E are.

Exactly my thoughts. I love the simpler math instead of the "I have a +8bab, +4 from strength, +2 for flank, +2 from weapon, +2 from spell, and...damn, missed..." next round: "crap, I missed last round because I forgot about my X bonus or I would've hit last round".

5E makes any bonus into something special and makes magic items mean something again instead of just a bonus that needs to be worked up level appropriately just to stay viable in the game.

That said there isn't really anything I would shunt over from 5E to PRPG. They are 2 different beasts that behave totally differently. Change one minor thing in PRPG and you may find you need to revamp entire areas of the system that are effected.
I liked Pathfinder but I love 5E and since I switched I really don't miss it. Prep is a breeze, combat is fast and easy to follow, adding in homebrew classes, races, backgrounds, etc.. are simple to do.
Pathfinder to me is it's own thing, as is 5E. Trying to shoehorn elements of one into the other is not a great idea IMO. Just play whichever one suits your group better.

Why not allow Fly to work as burrowing also? I'll answer, because it's a dumb assumption. Air is gas, Water is liquid, Ground is a solid. The three are vastly different and there are rules to govern each. Flying does not give a swim speed just like walking doesn't give a burrow speed. There are different rules for the different modes of travel and if you are using a spell to give you a different mode of travel then it is specific to that mode of travel. You don't fly through water, you don't burrow through water, you don't climb through water. You also don't climb through the ground, swim through the ground, or fly through the ground.
Come on, common sense. Fly spell. "Can I swim with it?" is just a ludicrous question from someone wanting to make a spell do more than it should.

Every badDM has a bias or personal preference.

Fixed that for you.

So you genuinely don't see the difference between making a personal PC that the DM takes control of and has personal vested interest in vs giving your players the ability to call upon allies made in game to work with them on their own terms?

Because the former only works if the DM is really, really, good at avoiding personal bias. In my experience a lot of them aren't. I'm conscious of it being a problem, and still would rather avoid it by putting most of the power there into player hands rather than maintaining direct control. Games where the DM insists on running their DMPC isn't...

If you show me a DM who runs a DMPC badly with personal biases and such I would place a bet that the DM also is one of those that has his favorite Big Bad Evil Guy escape at the last moment no matter what the PCs do, and somehow combats last exactly as long as the DM deems it to despite whatever damage the PCs have done, and NPCs seem to always survive as long as he decides they do, and the PCs will be knocked unconscious and taken prisoner when he decides that is what he wants the story to do.....This is all bad DMing. It isn't about a certain aspect of the game being wrong, it's about a DM's inability to properly use a certain aspect of the game fairly without bias. If a DM is gonna lay favorites with a DMPC he is gonna do it with NPCs and BBEGs also. Part of being a good arbitrator(which is what DMs should be) is being unbiased. I roll in the open so the PCs can see that I don't "cheat" rolls for effect. I do not adjust HP on the fly to make things more harrowing. I do not play favorites with BBEGs by making up a last minute way for them to survive the encounter. If a monster is fighting 2 PCs and needs to attack one and neither has stood out as the more imminent threat, I roll to see who he attacks. Fairness. That is what DMing is about and if it isn't done well then the problem isn't in the tool (the DMPC) it's in the user of the tool.

Would greyhawk inspired adventures for 5e be of interest to anyone? I can't do Greyhawk itself, but I can certainly make adventures that would fit will in Greyhawk.

Absolutely, maybe with a section in front of the adventure advising what area(s) would be a good sub in Greyhawk.

I personally love Greyhawk because it was the default for a long while and some of the best old adventures were set there. There was never a feel that the world would end if the PCs didn't do there job which always seemed more believable to me. A world that could end every couple years if the right group of heroes doesn't come along in the nick of time to save it just isn't something I find attractive or feasible.

So, question - for those of you who think a GMPC can be done right, do you prefer built before game so it compliments their needs without outshining anyone, or introduced as a regular NPC who may or may not join and evolved naturally into a companion?

Say you had a party of an aasimar oracle (undecided mystery thus far), tiefling unchained rogue, half elf bonded and white haired witch, human gendarme cavalier, and dwarf zen archer monk, what would you toss their way?

Can you maybe tone down the "one part from each book" characteristics and make the list into something easily digestible? Many of those characters could be played to cover different roles.

If you have every played in a module or AP that you had previous played either as a GM or player, do you play as if you always have the answers and make the other PCs bystanders? Why or why not?

I have run The Sunless Citadel twice for different groups and played in it once afterwards and each time it was 3 totally different adventures besides the areas and creatures being the same. I had intimate knowledge of all the encounters which according to some in this thread would ruin the game for me or make me act in a manner that showed partiality to the knowledge I have. To those I say, Roleplaying. That is part of the game's name and it involves immersing yourself into a character including knowledge that the character has and removing knowledge that a player has.

The whole argument breaks down into 2 sides: People that are good at running or have DMs who are good at running DMPCs and People who are not good at running or have DMs who are bad at running DMPCs.
There is no absolute "DMPCs are BAD/WRONG" or "DMPCs are TEH AWESOME" because their usage is based on the DM doing a good job at running them. If the DM can't do this, whether due to inability to not metagame, desire to play the Lord of the PCs, lack of time and effort to put into the roll, lack of fairly applying the rules across the whole table including his own PC, then a DMPC is gonna be a failure.
Mine are successes and my groups have agreed to the point that several people who were skeptics to the idea have switched sides on the issue. Long story short: DMs define whether the DMPC is going to be a success in the party or a failure by their ability to DM impartially and fairly without metagaming.
If you can't do that that doesn't mean everyone else can't also. No absolutes. I can do it as can many others on this thread. If you can't perhaps you should look to improve your skills and see this as a chance to broaden your skills or accept that there is some shortcoming in this area that effects your ability to play a DMPC but doesn't make you a bad DM.

DrDeth wrote:

Ashiel says he always runs one. Ashiel says he always runs one.

Actually, I said "pretty much every time thereafter" referring to that specific group. Sorry if I was unclear. Perhaps amusingly enough, it began at their suggestion and then continued by their request so I assume that it's not merely conjecture that it was being done in a way that was good for the players.

One of the benefits I've found for GMPCs* is that it provides a roleplaying opportunity for players in virtually any situation. It can make dungeon crawls less of a crawl, for example. It's also really spiffy for dropping bits of lore into the game that would otherwise be overlooked, such as the character commenting on things or asking characters questions about themselves.

I have the same sort of experience with GMPCs. I use them a lot and the group(s) have all liked them because they are basically followers that are there to fill a role that no one in the party seemed to want to fill (like a locksmith/trapfinder or an arcanist). Their personality is more of a background character and i usually build them to be a totaly average PC but if there is some cool story element to get to the PCs I can use the GMPC as a delivery method or a sudden inspiration. I don't outshine anyone else with them and if the GMPC happens to land a final blow to a mook then there is not a jealous kill-steal moment.

I find that I hit a slump when higher level combat starts coming around between 8th and 10 level in 3.5 and Pathfinder. A well constructed E6 (or P6 game) worked well to alleviate that feeling for a while but it came back as soon as I went back to normal Pathfinder/3.5 games. I have figured out that as I got older, my tastes are more about description and the adventures than it is about combat and tactics. I tried to find ways to simplify Pathfinder, having abandoned 3.5 totally, and kept hitting walls until I started playing games with simpler systems like Legend of the Five Rings, Castles and Crusades and a few others and I now realize that I like a fun game with simple combat rules and less focus on "crunch".
I waited to try 4e and judging by some reviews from sources I trusted and scanning through it in the store I decided it wasn't for me.
5e came out and I waited and heard some good things and some bad things...but the funny thing was that most of the "bad" things sounded like things I wanted in a game. Resting, spells being dialed back at higher levels, magic items not being prolific, etc. all sounded like good things to me. I tried it out at home with the basic boxed set running the boxed adventure for my 2 kids and I have to say I really love the system, combat is fast, neat, and fun while still being a challenge and I feel like I did back with the Basic, Expert and Companion versions of the BECMI version of D&D. The game is fun for me again.

You need to figure out what is dragging you down in YOUR game and find a game system that solves that issue. If the group doesn't want to change, then you may have to find new people of like mind to your own and make a move. The difference between playing an awesome game and playing a game that doesn't really move you is huge and makes an enormous difference in your quality of life. I walk on air for days after running my 5E campaign or when I am playing in the alternating game of Call of Cthulhu and traipsing around 1920's Tuxedo Park looking for a 3 armed lady's head that made my buddies sink their car into the local lake.
You have to really, honestly analyze your game and find out what you need to move you. It's worth the change-up.

I'm hoping that soon I can compile all of the relevant articles from the WotC site for easy reference. The site itself is not easily navigable.

I agree totally. Their site's layout is difficult to navigate and is confusing. I also find their messageboards to be the same. I wish they could work some of the confusing elements out and make their site work better.

I'll do my best to continue updating any other free resources. At some point I will also link the web enhancements so that we can just have them all in one place. Regrettably, my time has been spent on other projects, but I don't want to forget this, so bear with me.

Another 35 D&D 5E resources!

I figured I would lend a hand Lorathorn...

Where's that damn horse when you need it.

Someone called for a....oh. The other horse. Nevermind.

Are you looking at my teeth?....

Back to the original topic.....
In life I generally give a degree of trust unilaterally to everyone. I tend to take people at face value and assume they aren't actively out to screw me over. As those people perform actions in life around me I give or take away trust depending on the action. The initial degree of trust is usually rather low and grows or shrinks rather quickly.
I follow a similar method with D&D/Pathfinder GMs. When I GM a game tell the players the rule that are available and how I run a game. I tell them that I roll in the open and the dice fall where they fall. I explain that they are the stars and I am setting the stage for them to tell a story.
When I am a player I come to the table with expectations that I am part of a team of people trying to have fun and create a cool story.
I have seen GMs that after several sessions I realized that they are telling THEIR story, not a story of the characters, and there was no variation from their plotline or deviation from how they wanted things to play out. This has shown up as on-the-spot-rules to de-power a player or empower a bad guy that MUST make his showing, or in GM fiat that eliminates a player's action.
I have seen 4-5 bad GMs in my gaming life of around 34 years. I usually figure out after a few sessions what a GM is like and then I decide if I can adjust to their style or not. I have been blessed with long-term groups in the past with good GMs, and I love GMing so it usually works out well but before those and now recently I am finding that since I moved away from long-time group, there are some bad GMs out there.
Currently my tolerance level is lower than usual but I still portion out the trust and try to back that up with privately voicing concerns with GMs if there is something going on that I don't particularly like. If they choose to totally ignore my concerns then I can see that there is a gap between our play styles that either I have to bridge or I have to walk away and find a new game.

I am currently in a game where the GM is using some vague houserule for passing through ally's squares, perception checks for looking past allies into a combat and random ridiculous checks for stuff that is covered in the rules but doesn't fit his view of things and when approached about it was dismissive and showed no concern for my opinion (which mirrors most of the other player's). The group is planning to split shortly with me and another player going to alternate GMing.

I don't have a problem with the books or the movie's kink and sex parts. It is fine. What I have a problem with is outside of that...it is a story about a dude who is using mental and verbal abuse to reduce his girlfriend's mental image of herself into her being nothing but his property to do with as he pleases, not just in a sexual manner. He is imposing martial law over her entirety. If you replaced the BDSM elements with straight up beatings, punching, yelling and such you would see better the controlling abuse and mental breaking down of the victim until she has no self-worth and is nothing without her man.
Why women see this as a sexual awakening film is beyond me. I like BDSM, participated in some cool stuff and have no issues with such but is there really a large population of women in the world that want to lose all self worth and be nothing but a meat-puppet for some spoiled brat to play with? I don't think so. I think some are interested in the BDSM parts and purposely blinding themselves to the mental and verbal abuse that goes beyond the bedroom games.

I will agree with the people saying Rise of the Runelords and Crypt of the Everflame, but here is an option you should definitely explore.....

Hollow's Last Hope. It is a FREE download of a Free RPG Day adventure that has 32 reviews on this site and 4.5 stars out of 5.
I thoroughly enjoyed the module and if you like it there are several other adventures set in the area that can be tacked on to create a mini-campaign, all of which are great modules. Crown of the Kobold King, Carnival of Tears, Hungry are the Dead....all modules that add onto the region of Falcon's Hollow (the main town in Hollow's Last Hope) and expand on the area and campaign. There is also the Guide to Darkmoon Vale that gives a ton of info on the region...64 pages of it!
But like I was saying....for a free, short adventure to test the waters you should absolutely check out Hollow's Last Hope. At worst it isn't what you want, at best you took a risk-free step into a campaign based around 4 adventure modules and a regional supplement book with a ton of details to flesh out your campaign.

Good luck and have fun.

No, by 'vendor trash' I meant:

"Okay, the fight's over, you search the bodies and find 20 +1 items."

"Okay, stick 'em in the Bag of Holding and we'll sell them back at town.'

In other words, extraneous low-level magic items that exist only to be sold to shops. My players seriously think it undervalues the concept of magic. They want something other than 'Diablo' or similar games where trash loot is commonplace.

So you want a game that fixes the Christmas Tree Effect and the rampant magic items everywhere? That is 5E. I don't understand where you are getting that 5E is going to be mostly represented by MMOs and boardgames...they have slowed down with the supplement books a bit from their past, but they are focusing on good adventures and quality supplements. You have knee-jerked the system based on absolutely zero understanding of how the game is progressing...hit the forums and troll around and you will see more about the path forward, unless you already closed off your mind to 5E. It really is an awesome game for eliminating the magic mart/christmas tree syndrome.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Alchemical Allocation is pretty powerful, in that it basically makes something free that would otherwise be living beyond your means (regular use of higher-level potions). I'm not convinced publishing it was a good move. Of course, now that it exists, I'm using it too.

And then there's this Elixir. I'm fairly confident that whoever wrote the elixir, and whoever wrote Alchemical Allocation, did not expect those two to be used. I mean, now that both of them exist, it makes sense to use it, but it's not likely something that the writer(s) planned. It's just an unexpected combination.

I can see how a GM would be frustrated that you bypassed an adventure. The first time, it'd be annoying but the right thing to do would be to say "well, I didn't see that coming.. you're not getting loot from the encounters you never ran into of course, but you're well on your way with your main mission". The second time, he could've been ready for it;

- You still actually need to get to the hostage. He could plan the challenge of the adventure more around getting in than around getting out.

- You might have encounters on the shadow plane. And given how you're getting there at relatively low level, that could be scary.

- Since you don't have a lot of control on where you exit, you might stumble into a random encounter on exit. That could just be a fight, but it could also be something more creative, like in the middle of a tense negotiation between two organized crime cartels. Who now both think the others hired the PCs for a double-cross, so there's this confusing three-way battle.

Have to agree with this. Part of the GM's job is to roll with the punches when your players come up with something legitimately clever.

Yup, too often GMs use "No" as their answer to rolling with the punches or they just plain ban stuff. I can understand that they don't want to be steamrolled but a good GM would find a countermeasure and use it sparingly to show that there is some risk to using a certain action....not that they should constantly use the countermeasure but slip it in enough that the PC knows that the exploit isn't free and without risks.

Another older player here. I started playing D&D in 1974. I'm 56 :) 5E is looking pretty good. For me, it's about the world and the adventure, not the perfect character build.

I started in '79 and I feel the same way...the personality I instill in the character has more to do with who he/she is than any mechanics. I love the options presented in 5E and think that they make a great base to build on. I find the game to be quick, fun and easy to play. This is a welcome relief after spending huge tracts of time creating PCs, NPCs, and customizing monsters. I haven't DMed 5e much but I find that enjoyable also.

I prefer games where you spend more time adventuring with the character than creating him / leveling him up.

Also agreed...the games I have played in 5E have awesome pacing to them and at the end of a night I feel like we have accomplished something and advanced the storyline well. In 3.5/Pathfinder I found that often a whole night was spent clearing 2-3 rooms of a dungeon and it sometimes took weeks to get out of dungeon combat mode and into some story advancement.

Laurefindel wrote:

David Bowles wrote:

I'm mostly dismayed at how much play testing and development went into 5th and that the final result is so underwhelming.

David, stating your opinion is one thing, trolling is another... please cut it out.

There's a fine line, isn't there?

Yeah, back about 10 pages of puking on anyone's opinion that likes 5E was the line.

David Bowles wrote:

"since your PCs aren't going to be facing creatures built using the PC rules which probably changes the analysis "

Why not? It doesn't make any sense not to fight other PC classes. PCs are not unique in the world. Throwing that out is a mistake, I think. It also ties the GM's hand in terms of fighting fire with fire when it comes to PC builds.

Whatever ones preferences, that's not how 5E is designed to work. It doesn't have the same simulationist approach that pathfinder does in that realm.

Quote:

"The classes which "lose" multiple attacks "gain" other features and it's difficult to view one feature in isolation (it's not right to consider the various class features as a change - its a different approach to encapsulating a similar concept)"

I'm not sure how anyone can claim that the cleric didn't lose way more than it gained from PF.

My point is that there wasn't a switch from pathfinder to 5E. They're two different approaches to representing similar concepts.

The risk in thinking of it as a change from the pathfinder default is you focus on one difference and interpret it as a "reduction in power" based on how that feature would work if it were imported to a pathfinder game.

I have a friend tossing up between rogue and fighter, for example. He's building spreadsheets, running simulations and doing what he enjoys with character building. The fighter gets more attacks than the rogue, yet the rogue can out damage the fighter (just) - paying for that damage in a reduced survivability. It's not immediately obvious that the two classes' DPRs are going to track so similarly. He hasn't got any interest in a cleric, so I haven't seen similar analysis - nonetheless, I'd be willing to bet there's some feature a 5E cleric gets that a pathfinder cleric doesn't which mitigates the lack of multiple attacks.

Well said and this covers most of my 5E experience so far. It is a different game and saying "allowing movement between the various attacks is powerful and uber" is flat out wrong because in 5E it is balanced. In Pathfinder it would be broken without overhauling the rules a bit to incorporate it.

i wish people would stop hating on 5E without even trying it....just go through the introductory adventure that takes you from 1st to 5th level and you will have a great idea on how well the system performs as a whole. It is elegant, fun, and fast in combat. I also love that the game gives a bit more creative license back to the DM....it's refreshing.

captain yesterday wrote:

i like the picture of the halfling in the player's handbook, makes me laugh every time i see it at the bookstore:-)

Yeap, I laugh too as I toss the book on the shelf and pass on buying it.

I hated 4E, but I gave 5E a chance and I am glad I did. If you pass it up for a drawing without even looking at it, then you do yourself an injustice and should be cursing your closed-mind. It isn't perfect but is a good game with some good ingenuity and some nice mechanics. I was staunchly Pathfinder and now I am swayed to 5E and it's elegant simplicity and a return to D&D.

I'm sorry to say this but as soon as any person says "Quit being a baby" when I express dislike of a ruling or gaming situation I am done with that person. Who the f**k thinks they can talk to someone like that without a bunch of players that don't want to play with a bully GM? Even if I was one of the other players in the game I would have been out, how dare you disrespect and degrade another player in front of everyone...I don't want to around people like this in a paying job or life in general, why the hell would I put up with that treatment during my fun recreational time.
Most of my old groups would have banded together and told him to leave. We play a co-op game, not a GM is God VS the players.

If a friend of 25 years walks out over something that had this much meaning to you then I would seriously re-evaluate the friendship and see where it actually ended, because it's been over for a while if it ever really was in the first place. A friendship is about give and take and compromise, like any relationship.

I would love to play a "low magic" magic game, but i guess i simple don't have the time for it.

I often wonder if what many GMs really wanted is a SLOWER game, where people has time to discuss the lore about that +1 longsword, or tracking over half the kingdom a potion seller who has potions of cure moderate wounds. After years and years of campaing, people deserve to be teleporting around the continent because they already been everywhere.
Some people long for a more literally game how was played back then in 1E. But nowdays everything is fastpaced, you didn't even used that 3rd level spell and you already learning the 4th.

I guess it's sad.

Yup, pcs can hit 20th level in a couple of months of adventuring. I love a slower paced game. I liked the years of campaigning to get a character to grow. Everyone seems to be on a "1-20 in as quick a timeframe as possible then onto the next PC". We used to cherish the journey and now it seems to be all about the destination. It is sad...and I have seen quite a few times where I got new shiny abilities without using the ones gained 2 sessions ago when I leveled before. I want a slow burn, lots of downtime, not gaining 2-3 levels in one adventure/dungeon. Even on slow XP rate it isn't slow enough for me. I want to play once a week for 3-4 hours each time and take a year to get to level 6. Another year to get to 12....I want to invest in my PC instead of keep wishing for more and more faster and faster until I wish my PC into retirement because the campaign was over so quick....

Great question, Ragnarok.

I started playing D&D way back in the red box days.

We moved on to AD&D, then 2nd Edition, then 3rd Edition. When 4th Edition rolled around, I and my gaming group (mostly friends from college by that point) decided it wasn't for us and liked the feel of Pathfinder more.

I guess you could say it felt like a better progression of the rules to us.

I personally liked how PF guided players away from multiclassing mayhem, beefed up some classes that needed it (sorcerer, for example), and rewrote some of the more problematic 3.5 options such as the Scout class in order to bring them back down to earth.

Today we play Pathfinder because we're still running one campaign that started about three years ago, and the other GM who is just starting out is using PF because he's most comfortable with it. The general consensus seems to be that we're getting ready to move on to 5th Edition D&D, though.

PF has just become too "bloated" for our tastes -- there are many ways to describe this, but the one that comes to mind first (because I've been doing it this week) is that it takes forever to pore over every PF book that exists trying to build characters for fear of missing some interesting or competitive option. Don't look at me like that -- if there's ONE powergamer at the table, EVERYONE has to be one or they'll be swimming in his wake the entire campaign.

So, the short answer would be -- I switched to PF because I didn't like what I saw in 4e, but I expect I'll soon be switching to 5e because I'm seeing it as a possible refinement of PF, or maybe a palatable synthesis of 3.5 and 4e, as I realize PF has grown to have lost much of what I liked about it in the first place.

I switched to 5e a couple months ago and it is refreshing....the bloat from PF made higher level games a grind and lower levels were a constant scouring of books so you didn't miss something that your character would love. I may look at Pathfinder 2 when/if it comes out but D&D 5 would have to really make some mistakes with splatbooks to lose me now.

What I want to know is, does it rhyme with "Zebu?"

And more importantly is a Zebu the same as a "Cebu?

I didn't have a Phantom Cat instance but I remember something distinctly when I was younger, around 6 or so, and we lived in an old 2-story farmhouse in South Jersey. I woke up one night, looked across my room and saw my Lion piggy-bank(Cartoony character, not a realistic lion) climb down off of my dresser, using the handles of the drawers to climb down. I was terrified and it felt like my throat was paralyzed and my body refused to move. I could hear it coming across the wooden floor to my bed. I felt the pull of the covers at my feet where it had grabbed them and started pulling itself up onto my bed. Then I heard the sound of ceramic tinking against my footboard as it hauled itself up and I finally was able to scream and I continued until my mother and father were both in the room holding me as I cried hysterically. They asked me what was wrong and when I could speak enough I said "my lion-bank was coming to get me..." they looked at my dresser and didn't see it then they looked around the room. It was lying on floor by the foot of my bed.
I slept with them for several weeks after that. I had several weird things happen in that house while we lived there but nothing that was so real and that stuck with me in such detail. I don't know if it was a creative nightmare or something else but I am open to the possibilities...

I think there's already been discussions about this.

So don't link to them or anything...just pop on and threadcrap away.

To the OP, I love what 5e has done with casters and I would just say Yes. Yes to anything and everything that 5e changed, port it all over and add it to Pathfinder....however you are going to get resistance from players that like being wizzo-gods. I took another path. My group just straight-up switched to 5e and we are loving it. The game is fast, simple and easy to play and everyone is feeling like an equal part of the game instead of one or two players with uber-game mastery or an interweb-build of destruction being the main reason the party stays alive.

Other than that, you could shoehorn in parts of the system into the existing but I doubt that many players are going to like it and you are left with a mish-mash of game rules that weren't meant to coexist. It will take a lot of tweaking to make them run smoothly together imo.

So my group is playing 5E and we are enjoying it very much. I am not seeing us using the Advantage/Disadvantage system much though and I want to figure out why.
The actual rules surrounding when they should be used seems to be mostly "when the DM determines you have one". It doesn't clearly define when to use them though.
Here are some questions:
*Is it basically a replacement mechanic for +2/-2 adjustments?
*If you are a rogue using your sneak attack do you get advantage?
*Does higher ground/lower ground trigger use of Adv/Disadv?
*How about surprise round? Does everyone participate in combat on the surprise round with the surpriser getting advantage on attacks and the surprised getting disadvantage?
*How would this work with skills?

I really like the rule but it is so vague on when to use it that it almost doesn't seem to exist in my game currently and that is really a shame. I want to rectify this.