Gildur Anvilfist's page

Hmm. Ok, thanks. That Oracle thing sounds like it'd be insanely good, I'll think about it. Not sure though I'd probably do it after gaining a few levels so I get the hang of things before throwing myself into multi-classing.

Another question, if I were to not use my favoured class bonus on skill points what would be recommended? Just going for the HP? Or should I take either of the Half-Orc or Human options?

Fey Foundling looks good but sadly it doesn't work at all with the backstory I've already handed in to my GM.
The more I think about it though, the more I like the Sacred Tattoo+Fate's Favoured thing. Not only does it give me even better saves (which I love for some reason, no idea why... the idea of having totally insane saves just makes me giddy) but it also means my character has a tattoo, which I think could be kinda cool.

I've took what y'all have said about ability scores into account and I switched them around a bit. I'm still pretty much adamant about starting with CHA 18 (because saves and stuff) and I'm still not sure if I'm comfortable dropping my wis to 7 so this is what I was thinking now:

STR 17
DEX 10
CON 12
INT 12
WIS 8
CHA 18(with the racial)

Thoughts?

I'd recommend straight paladin or oath of vengeance. Mechanically I like marshmallow's ability scores although if you decide not to dump wis so much I'd recommend dropping to 12 con. Considering you have lay on hands this perfectly safe to do.

There's also an argument that UMD is better than unsanctioned knowledge. Paladins don't get many spells per day and the paladin spell list is pretty awesome anyway especially if you're oath of vengeance.

I gotta ask, what is "UMD"? Remember I'm sort of a newbie here so I don't know all the abbreviations and stuff yet.

Also, I think I'll probably stay away from Unsanctioned Knowledge mainly because I find dealing with the paladin spell list as it is to be overwhelming enough so I'mma try to get the hang of that one before I go into anything more advanced.

As for the intimidate related feats that marshmallow mentioned... I think they're kind of cool, and they're probably really good but they do kind of clash a lot RP-wise with how I've imagined my character (and also how I've described her to my GM, not sure he'd like me changing stuff at the last minute). I have however started giving some thought to maybe skipping survival and picking intimidate up as a skill, though I'm not a huge fan of the Extremely Fashionable trait.

In terms of future feat picks the ones I've looked at a bit are the cleave line and I've also considered getting the surprise follow-through feats though I'm not sure how useful they actually are.

Edit: Wow, I just looked at the Sacred Tattoo/Fate's Favoured combo and I'm really tempted to go for it. The only thing I don't like about it is losing Orc Ferocity and thus losing the ability to LoH myself while on the brink of death... Hmm...

Thanks for all the responses, it's really helpful. I got some more things to consider now. Not sure about dumping my wis to 7 though, I think the campaign will be pretty RP heavy and my GM will probably expect me to roleplay that WIS 7 to justify that much dumping.

So next week me and my group will be starting a campaign and it's the first time that I actually play Pathfinder or any other d20, unless you count CRPGs like NWN 1 and 2 (which I don't), and I would be really grateful if I could get some help and pointers on my build.

The build I have gone for is a THW Half-Orc Paladin, and I know that neither THW nor Half-Orcs are optimal choices but I really like Half-Orcs and I didn't feel like being an archer or a tank.

Everyone else in my group managed to roll insane ability scores, I counted the one who got the "worst" rolls to be worth 28 points, and since my rolls were horribad our GM gave me a 25 point buy instead.
I went for:

STR 16
DEX 10
CON 14
INT 12
WIS 8
CHA 18(with the racial +2)

I took Power Attack as my feat and for my traits I went with Hunter's Blood (picked survival a class skill) and Strength of the Sun. Not if those are actually any good but they seem ok and the RP stuff is pretty cool.
Skill Point wise I went with Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Survival and Knowledge (Religion) (used my favoured class bonus for an extra skill point).

I've sort of envisioned her being very anti undead and her family's had some big-shot undead slayers so I was considering taking the Undead Scourge archetype. I'm just not sure losing the immunity to charm is worth it, to me it seems like a pretty big thing to give up (also don't vampires have a bunch of charm spells and spell-like abilities?).

Any kind of pointers or input would be awesome, especially any advice you can give me on the whole Undead Scourge thing.

Bard:

Level normally as a Rogue.

Level as a wizard in the Divination, Illusion and Enchantment schools

Level minor buffs and Heals as a cleric.

Level the one handed sword and crossbow as a fighter.

Should be more than enough to keep you busy.

Hehe, reminds me so much of this.

Anyways, I really hope they add Ranger as one of the first new class concepts.
To me they're very much part of my idea I have of a standard fantasy line-up, we have the fighter, the rogue/thief, the magician, the healer/cleric and the ranger/archer. Right now it sort of feels like it might be hard to get a ranger right with the options we know of so far though.

I love this idea. It opens up so many cool scenarios besides just things like NPC Diplomacy and race specific guilds.

I could see the higher ups of guilds learning some obscure language that they use during secret meetings and such so that even if they're being spied on the spy probably won't be able to get anything out of it anyway.

I love this idea. Sounds like it could be really cool.
As you mentioned above I think that each such day should have some sort of special event tied to it too you mentioned demons, troll invasions and zombie apocalypses, those all sound fun.

Another cool addition to this idea could be to have special rewards that are unique to each such event. Each event should have at least one for participation (ie logging in during that event) but there could always be a few rewards that you could get for completing certain task or something like that.

I've been told it's because they're "fat." I love them. (I have three, but the other two are heavy-armor wearers, and I like my plate wearers to actually be wearing plate. My rogue, on the other hand, just finds armor too restrictive for sneaking.)

When female pandaren were first released, there were a LOT of complaints that they were "fat" as well.

*sigh* People are silly. I've never thought of the female dwarves in WoW as fat, that'd just be absurd. And yeah, I love 'em too. It's a bit sad that there are so few of them.

As for the Pandaren (not that they're fat either)... They're walking bears! Did people expect them to look like blood elves?

Yes! I'm all for this. It just brings more flavour to the world and makes the game more fun for everyone.
Especially when we get obese paladins!

Kusuriurite wrote:

Hahaha skimpy armor+ugly= hilarity. I Definitely would like for it not to be tied to a stat particularly charisma.

Oh, it's totally worth it - you should see the reactions my female dwarf rogue in WoW gets, and she's only in a low-cut shirt/bodice plus full-coverage leather pants!

Also, agreed on not tying looks to charisma. Chiassa will likely have a high charisma, but I really don't want to play her as a beautiful flower - just a charming, gotta-love-me type.

I never really understood all the flak that female dwarves gets in WoW. I think they're quite pretty.

If you don't like "sexy" armor then don't wear it. I have yet to see a game where multiple options are not available. But taking away the options for others is never a good thing. Live and let live, don't try to control how other people want to play.

I've actually played a few games where the only option for female characters in terms of heavy armour were quite skimpy. Especially compared to the male versions of that same armour.

But I agree. There should be options for both. I just think that most of the armour should should be of the practical kind rather than the other way around but that skimpy armour shouldn't be that much harder to obtain.

Well ,there are ways to bend the proposed escalation sytem to repopulate areas like Leperkhaun describes, or there should be.

Take the mountain range he describes filled with goblins as an example. If it is an entire mountain range, then I would expect it to be peppered with goblin camps, maybe a dozen goblins each, and unless it was completely cleared (a major, multi-party offensive should be required for that) then in the least accessible, most heavily fortified area should be the Chieftain's camp. The goblins there would all be veterens but population growth in it should be lower than a normal hex's escalation setting.

The way to clear the area of threats, to where it would take a long time to regrow, would be to take out that fortification altogether, slaying the goblin chieftain along with the bulk of the individual camps all over the mountain range.

If the fortress is levelled by players then it would trigger a timer counting down before the Chieftain respawned under a different name, and when he respawned the normal goblins there would start rebuilding the fortress. When the fortress was complete, the goblins who rebuilt it would become veteren and remain in place as servants of the Chieftain, his personal guards.

But if adventurers only cleared a few outlying camps, those camps would stay cleared until new spawns in the fortress reached a maximum population threshold, which would then start a daily single goblin spawn, setting the new goblin to wandering behavior.

The wandering AI routine would govern the behavior of the wandering goblin. He might stand still talking to himself, saying evil things and doing idle evil things or picking berries from bushes if any were nearby. After a timed duration his AI routine would pick a random direction and distance and the wanderer would hed off. If he came to one of the scattered campfires and there was an empty space he would join that camp and take up his role. If that camp was full, no available role slots, he would resume wandering until he...

I really like this idea but I think it'd be cooler and feel more dynamic if it wasn't necessarily goblins who repopulated the goblin camps.

I think it would make the world feel a bit more alive if it wasn't always the same kind of creature that occupied a certain area but instead a random, similar monster type of about the same level were to take the other one's place.
'Cause even with a chief with new name goblins are still goblins and finding them and wiping them out in the same place every other day/week would start to feel a bit odd after a while I think.

Other than that it sounds awesome, though.

Why respeccing when you can learn all the skills you want? It just takes time, some money to buy the new skills and you put in some more time to train them.

Basically you can do whatever you want in a sandbox whenever you want it.

I totally agree.

Also it doesn't make any sense in a game like PfO that someone spends years maxing his druid build and suddenly one day he just forgets everything about being a druid and suddenly becomes a wizard instead.

I'm hoping (If I play) I can get Ttam Sirrom. I had a Jedi in a Star Wars game and everyone thought it was a cool name. (Think about it for a minute)

Simon Tam?

I wonder how they'll do with surnames. Will more than one person be able to use the same one?

Being, I really like how you've put it. Seems like a great way to do it.

Just one thought regarding:

So... exiting the character creation process (and an introduction to game options like video settings, etc.) the screen ultimately resolves to the player standing in a village with a few meager possessions, no weapons, no food or water, no skills, nothing but the clothes on his back and whatever might be in his adventurer's pack.

How do you think things like daily deals and class packs should be handled?

I concur. Of all the things that should be available for play at the outset, races tops the list. Mounts/Fast travel doesn't affect my initial choice when beginning to play. pNPCs (personal NPCs aka Pets) have no real affect either, though it would be preferable to have pNPCs an available option for those classes which have them as integral class features. Still, because it is a classless system and 'class' skills and features are based on skill choice and progression, the game design can be updated in a more modular fashion and pNPCs can be folded in to the skill tree easily enough when it's added. The available pantheon definitely has an impact on beginning play choices, but not as big of an impact as available races. When the expanded pantheon is added, it is feasible to include an option that allows a PC to change the deity it follows, as long as it is within one step of the current alignment, or some sort of game mechanic that allows for a change. It is somewhat awkward, depending on how it's implemented, but not nearly as awkward as not5 having all of the core races available at the outset. With the other options, you can continue playing the same PC you've started with, but with races you'd have to start over with the new race. Your PC can't simply change to another race when another core race becomes available.

Having all of the core races available at the outset is far more important than any other crowdforging option thus far presrnted.

This basically sums up how I feel about this issue.

Awesome, I wished I'd seen this during the KS.

There is always going to be the fact that groups will generally overwhelm solo players in PVP. That soloers will simply not have the strength to enjoy some types of content.

That being said I hope this game doesn't make it so every type of content requires working in a group. Even players that belong to large organizations are sometimes just going to want to go exploring and doing things on their own. And that needs to be an option.

I hope this functions like most other games where you can solo most of the time but grouping up gives you access to the coolest content.

Considering the fact that most of the content will be player made/generated I think it's safe to say that there'll be enough cool content to go around for both solo players and group players. From what I gather there won't be any (or at least very few) "raids" in PfO so the "endgame" is what we, the players, make of it.

For example, while it may be more dangerous to travel alone due to bandits it also has the benefit of being more stealthy.
Since I think many solo players will have to focus on survival and stealth skills I can see scenarios happening where people like merchants hire solo players to transport or smuggle smaller but valuable items quickly and quietly from one town to another.
While that alone might not sound all that much fun I personally think that the fact that there will probably be bandits in the areas you go through and, if the stakes are higher, maybe even thieves or bounty hunters who either are out to take the item for themselves or might be hired by some third party that managed to hear about the smuggling taking place.

This is just an example of how I think solo gameplay could be in PfO and something I thought could be pretty cool.

Unless you take solo to mean no player interaction at all, of course.

I wonder how stealth will work? Will it be a 'skill', or will the game engine only render you if the opponent's perception beats your stealth.

If the latter is the case I can see a race to the top of the stealth/perception trees really quickly....it will be a very valuable skill for thieves, assassins, rangers, etc. But if you don't build in that kind of mechanic, a lot of those roles lose some of their appeal when you are simply using a weakly disguised 'invisibility' skill for 10 seconds.

I'm in favor of a contest-based stealth skill system, but make environmental factors very strong in the equation. Moving should be (like in F2F gaming)a huge negative to stealth. Once someone locks onto you it should be very difficult to re-stealth unless you can break LOS first, etc.

I bring this up because it has such an impact on solo play. As Being said, moving stealthily through the woods is a very druid/ranger thing. If stealth is simply a combat mechanic then it becomes a lot less useful for those roles.

Heh, I just imagined this scenario where a solo druid player is spotted by some hostile players and he like runs for the tree lines, breaks LoS and transform into a forest animal and like blends in with a flock before the bandits can re-establish LoS on him again.

Would be really cool to be able to see something like that. It would require the game to not have nametags, or maybe just remove or change them for people who are disguised or shapeshifted. Unless, of course, the other player has the ability or appropriate amount of ranks in a skill to be be able to see through the deception.

I honestly think this game will have as much potential for awesome solo gameplay as it will have for group/guild/kingdom gameplay.

I'm looking forward to trying out both to some degree.

...but rest assured that it will fund; but sadly the project will limp across the finish line as opposed to doing so with flying colors.

Nice to see someone so confident. I myself am getting a bit nervous at this point.

On topic: I personally think that they'll announce an add-on for people who missed some of the Daily Deals sometime very soon.

So under the "if its in the books category" we can expect:(from looking through the player handbook)
-Spurts of realistic blood
-Graphic wounds
-Dissolving in acid
-Libs being ripped off graphically
-Female clothing that leaves almost nothing to the imagination
-'Beat up and bloody' look
???

Outside of tasteful/appropriate nudity(humanoid wildish), that covers most of what i'm looking for in realism aspects that would fall under any content approval.

Heh, if we can get these in PFO I'm happy. I don't really feel the need to see arms, legs and heads flying around when I'm fighting anyways. As long as there's blood to some degree and as long as you can tell that a character has just been in a pretty intense battle and is quite wounded I'd say that's enough realism for me at least.

BlackUhuru wrote:

I think numerous instances kind of goes against the sandbox design philosophy, separating players or taking them out of the game probably isn't a good idea.

Actually the numerous instances thing that I'm talking about is to specifically keep players in closer contact with one another... without setting your video card on fire when 1000 show up in the same place at the same time.

They all share the same broadcast channel, partied members coming into the "zone" default into the same map instance, and anyone who needs to change instances can do so easily and painlessly with a couple clicks of the mouse on the map controls.

This sounds like it could be really immersion breaking and, frankly I'd personally prefer to have more servers if 1000 people showing up in the same area at once becomes a real hazard.

I really believe it's not either-or.

The way I envision it, there should be lots of shops where players can sell whatever they want at whatever price they set. Having a really good location for your shop should have benefits. Having information about your competitors should give you benefits.

There should be something like an auction house, that gives buyers easy access to the shops that are easily accessible (the ones that are paying a premium for the best locations). A lot of players should be content with that.

In addition, there should be a Knowledge(Markets) Skill, preferably localized for each market, that gives you information about the less-accessible shops in that market: what they have for sale and at what price. The higher your rank in the skill, the more out-of-the-way shops you have information on.

The merchant who is paying a premium for that nice location will want this skill to keep an eye on his competitors, and make sure he's not making it worthwhile for all his buyers to get that same skill.

I really think it needs to be localized by market to ensure it's not just one of those skills that everyone picks up.

Hmm, I was thinking something similar although it kind of morphed.

I was thinking that for each market there could be an information broker(or a number of them) that you pay a sum of money to get information about the local shops. The amount of information and "coverage" (or something) could depend on different factors. Like, say, location of the shop, amount and frequency of advertisement, things like quality of the items sold (I mean if a shop is known for selling "the best" or "really good" of anything, you usually tend to hear about them), how long it's been around, maybe even the decor could factor to some degree (could be fun that for people who like decorating their shops) et cetera, et ecetera.

I'm not saying all of these should be used, they're just things I think could be fairly reasonable. Maybe you could get different amounts of information depending on how much you pay the brokers.
Aaand a thought that just hit me while writing the last sentence is that the brokers could actually be player employed.

Well, I'm gonna stop right here before I get any more half-formed ideas and make this post even longer but basically the original idea that I had was that this could possible act as a system that gives some form of convenience to the buyer (for a price) without breaking immersion and without destroying the businesses of merchants by having a global AH.

I would like to put forth a vote that we do not go for the WoW model, with cartoonish models.

I would also like to put forth a vote that models have a build similar to the Skyrim system in the facial features, and via sliders for the body-type. 'Heroic' (V shaped for the males, Hour-glass for the women), Normal (not fat or muscle or curves), Thin and Fat.

Isn't Pathfinder's art style kind of "cartoonish" though? I really like it and would be very sad if they went with something completely different for PFO.

As for customization I would love to see something like APB's system but I'll be perfectly happy with something in between APB's system and what SW:TOR has. And please, please, please let us customize our characters builds as much as possible, not being able to create the character you envisioned because of the game not allowing a sufficiently fat/slim/bulky/whatever body for you character is quite a big let down. Especially if you intend to RP. That being said I have faith that GW will try their very best to make sure that everyone can be happy with how their characters looks.

Well I will likely be playing two characters; one paladin type character and one bandit who will probably go down some sort of fighter/ranger path.

For the paladin I'd like to play with a religious order of some sort, preferably one who worships Iomedae. I love this kind of roleplay.

For the bandit I'd like to find a charter of people who not only wants to make it as bandits in the world but also want to roleplay them as much as possible. So that while we'll still kill you for your valuables, we also add to the feeling of immersion of the world by being bandits instead of PKers.

Gildur, the problem with Servers with "a bit of RPing when/if you want" is, that nobody will really engage in RP then except for a few hardcore players. And frankly, it's difficult to immerse yourself into the gameworld when people near you discuss the results of the newest football game. ALSO: xXnarutoXx

I guess that's one way to look at it but having done a bit of roleplaying in World of Warcraft, where sadly the roleplaying servers have been used by quite a lot of non-RPers since day one, I think that it's actually quite possible to do very nice roleplaying despite the server not being 100% IC all the time. And with a game like PFO, where charters of like-minded people will probably create their own settlements and towns, I think that sharing a server is much less of a problem than in WoW (and they manage to make it work).

I also think that the very nature of this game makes it more RP friendly by default because everyone will be interacting with the world, trying to leave their mark on it, rather than playing through the "theme park".

Edit: I would like to add that I fully support a system with non-unique first names and unique surnames. I hate it when I think of a name that I feel would be perfect for my character only to be greeted by "That name is already in use."

Personally I love how this bounty system is sounding. I'll probably be playing at least one character as some sort of bandit and the bounty system sounds like it could really make banditry challenging (in a good way) and really exciting. I mean, if I actually manage to get decent at my unsavoury trade (i.e. not get constantly killed by my targets and stuff like that) and earn some fame within the world I'll probably be having a bunch of bounties on me. That would not only make it a lot more fair for my victims it would also add to the feeling of immersion (at least that's what I think).

I mean if I could just kill people and there would be no consequences what so ever it'd just be griefing and that's no fun. This way I can, and fully intend to (to the best of my capabilities), roleplay a (possibly) infamous bandit on the run from the law and that, to me, sounds like it could be really awesome.

I feel like adding that I don't really take pleasure in griefing people in MMOs and that I'd play a bandit to be a bandit, not to be a PKer who kills anyone just for the heck of it.

A model I'd like would go something like this:

1) Standard Server: Hardcore rules, role playing heavily encouraged.

2) Non RP Server: Hardcore rules

3) Softcore Server: This is where I'd put friendly fire off if I were forced to. I don't think a server like this should even exist, but it would be something of a compromise for the non friendly fire cowards. You can think of this server as World of PathfinderCraft.

Personally I'd prefer a single server as I would like to do a bit of RPing but also be able to go OOC and maybe do some PvPing or PvEing without having to motivate reasons for it IC.

That being said I think that IF they decide to have more servers your model seems fine, only just swap it so the "Non RP Server" would be called the "Standard Server" and the "Standard" one would be called the "RP Server" or it might create some confusion for people who have mostly played MMOs since RP servers generally isn't what we tend to think of as standard (not speaking for everyone of course, just basing this how me and my friends view servers).