Glord Funkelhand's page

I had built my solarian as best as I could: Strength 18, Dexterity 14, Heavy Armor Proficiency, Weapon Focus (advanced melee weapons), a tactical pike, and hidden soldier armor. Unfortunately, this left me with exactly 1 Resolve Point, and made Black Hole and Supernova nigh-unusable. This means that for all intents and purposes, my character was a...

Sorry to ask: You didn't put any points in your main stat, yet are saying that you made the character as good as you could?

Basically, you gimped your character, because you had the idea that the two stats you pushed "should be" more valuable. And got proven wrong.

Gisher wrote:

Haladir wrote:

Perhaps we should shy away from referencing real-world religious figures when talking about game mechanics.

Just sayin'.

This game is thoroughly riddled with mythology: titans, angels, elves, gods, etc. I don't see why references to this particular mythological being should be different from those to any other. Would you have the same concerns about other demi-gods like Hercules or Perseus?

Just sayin'.

Possibly because for some of the people dwelling here what you reference as "mythological beings" are real figures and they might be offended by your comparisons?

Btw I believe your comment could possibly be a good example of int vs wis...

Treating all the religions alike is the best way to handle this.

You shouldn't treat one different than the other, just because it's your preferred faith, or if you believe it's the preferred faith of other visitors.

If you believe in one religion all the other are just myths.
So, for a person believing in the aesir, both Christian and Greek mythology is just that: Mythology.

Back to the original topic:
Int helps you to learn and remember. That's why skill points depend on int (that's the learning part=. And why knowledge is int based (that's the remember part).

Wis helps you to see the current state of things, make immediate connections between stuff. WIS is the connection from the World to you. How you percieve things. How you catalogue and register stuff.

Cha is the connection from you to the world. How you communicate stuff.

What do you want to play?

While you can min/max, normally you would start by getting an idea for the character you want to play, and then continue by choosing spells that would work for the character/ character concept.

Well, the first thing that happened in my game was somebody talking to the sphinx in draconic. Guess what languages Ika doesn't know? Right. Sphinx and Draconic.

With regards to the "attraction" - well, I am not from the US. Naked bodies are not really taboo in Europe, so naked breasts are way more common here and are not considered raunchy unless presented in a "sexy" way. So, TBH, it didn't even cross my mind, that simply "being" would be enough. And I had a hard time imagine a sphinx doing a sexy dance in the tent.

I like the idea of portraying her like a sexy Hanibal Lector.

Another problem occurs if the PCs get the "The sphinx is with us on her own agenda and has her own private wagon" story. Esp. if they want to talk to her in her private wagon, since I don't think, there actually is one. I was winging it last time, and it worked out, ok-ish, I guess.

What does the Sphinx actually do to be considered an attraction? She's "performing" and "breaking free" when in the main tent... but besides that? It's hard to imagine a creature like a sphinx doing stuff a lion would normally do... that doesn't seem right.
What does she do when she is in her cage?

Also, what happens if the players want to talk to the Sphinx outside of the normal schedule? What do the carnival people tell when asked what the Sphinx is doing when she's not on display?

Hexes don't have a "target" in their description.
Unless LoS is specified as part of the hex, it's not needed.
You can run, but you cannot hide.

There are even stranger things going on, like single creature hexes referencing spells with an area target, etc.

We have a hex that requires LoS (evil eye). For others, it's enough to know that the creature is there and within range.
Some hexes are even passive.

Scar and evil eye are pretty good examples, that if there is a requirement, it's listed. You need to touch somebody to scar him. You need to see him to give him the Evil Eye- unless he's scarred. If somebody is scarred, I can use every hex on him, if he is within a mile of me. In theory even hexes I could normally only use on myself. An if I have split hex, I can also target another creature with 30feet of the scarred, as long as I know it's there...
Because magic.

Hexes are pretty strange. Powerful yet limiting. Which makes them interesting. Cool. Frustrating.

For both sides (GM and players). This includes gms recommending to cheat when it comes to hexes ("my bad guy will always make the save").

Just note that it doesn't give you proficiency with the weapon, so even if you do create an exotic weapon, you are at a -4 unless if you can grab proficiency from another source.

It does give you proficiency with the weapon.

You create a melee weapon sized appropriately for you from opaque force.

You are considered proficient with this weapon, which acts in all ways as a masterwork weapon typical of its type. The instant weapon has hardness 20 and the same number of hit points as a typical weapon of its type. As a force effect, it can strike and damage incorporeal creatures. If the instant weapon leaves your hand at any time, the spell ends at the beginning of your next turn.

The tool is awesome.
Just compare the number of chars with the small amount of bug / usability issue reports.

I've spent a lot of time using this tool already, and most of the time, I was happy like an elf on a tree.

Hm.. can one use "Sleeves of many garments" for a transformation effect?

I am not really sure how the sleeves would behave with armor.
A hat of disguise (tiara of disguise) might be another option.

Hm... you think giving the "You are evil, because you do evil stuff, and in the name of the moon, I will punish you" speech counts as "inspire courage"?

Adventures / Scenarios still follow the same format they have for decades.
And I wonder why.

The typical room/ encounter reads like this

"You look into a room with a certain shape. There is stuff there and over there. You can see a shelf standing there."

Now follows some text. And then: "Creature: One really,really big dragon is in the room. Right behind the 12 multi tentacle monsters. ... Tactics: Before the fight the evil sorcerer hidden in the closet in area 4b casts darkness over the room"

And while it's ok if you prepare well, and I think I spend a lot of time preparing, I still make mistakes at the table. And I have witnessed other GMs having the same problems.
Having to add stuff afterwards. Having to back paddle, etc.

I understand why room descriptions are there, and when wandering monsters or random encounters have been a really big part of the game, that might have made total sense. Read room description, roll on table and tell them what they see.

But now, esp. with PFS scenarios I don't see why this is a good thing anymore.
I'd love to to see scenarios written in a way that actually make prepping the game less time consuming and running it less error prone.

A lot of this simply means switching the order of some things around slightly.
Add a GM Info before the "read aloud box."
The GM Info should contain
- information if the encounter is optional
- information on stuff that might change the room (monster tactics like darkness, create pit, etc)
- information on loot, things that can be discovered via perception and are not listed in the read-aloud box
- if the monster in some tiers has a magic item that can do cool and unusual stuff: note that here. Quote source (page number would be awesome as well).
- other stuff that should be fresh in the GM's mind when presenting the room.

Adding monsters / doors to the read aloud box has some implications
- you might need different texts for different tiers
- optional encounters need a different texts for the enemy free room

The good thing (TM) about that would be, that you can concentrate on the thing that the story focuses about. Sometimes, that might be the environment. Sometimes a monster. But it gives you the choice.

It would be absolutely great if the different tiers could get different chapters in the adventure. Having fought against higher tier version of certain encounters because the GM had scrolled to the wrong stat block (and sometimes even switched between two versions because the stat blocks of the monsters were printed on different pages and he had to page back and forth a lot) , that's something I'd really appreciate (though I can see why it would be a problem for the print versions).

Which brings me to another small thing: please, don't interrupt monster stat blocks with page breaks. Esp. if you're on a "right page."
Don't let the text flow around your (really amazing) art. It makes the stat block hard to read, eats a lot of space (which might lead to the stat block being split and placed on two pages).

And yes, I know that prepping the adventure is fun, and that part of hat fun is to look stuff up.
But, if you're just given the name of a magic item, and you have to look it up, and search through several books until you find it, and then you have to create stat blocks for the stuff it can conjure up, it can really mess with your prep.

And finally:
Please note all source books needed to run the adventure on the back of the cover AND in the description of the adventure on the site.

*sigh*

Sorry for the long post and the bad English :(

Had a lot of fun running this.

Part of my fun caused the game to run too long, though.
I made notes I passed to the players (after rolling a couple of dice behind the GM screen), like "you think something moved in the shadows to your right. But upon second look, nothing is there...", or I gave a player notes like "this room really feels like a grave" - "what happens if the ziggurat slides back, and we're stuck in here" - "if you get stuck in here,who would you eat first to stay alive?" or "after you read this, cackle and place the note in your pocket"... and sometimes "Make a perception check" - with a "you see nothing", "there is nothing hiding in the dark, as far as you can tell"... if they detected magic I told them the auras looked strange as if something is tearing at them, sometimes tentacles seemed to swirl around just at the outside of their cone of detect magic, or they had the impression that when they detect magic, something is also able to look at them.
I also told them, that this is completely unlikely. The wizard also told them (after getting a note from me) that they don't need to be afraid, there is no way detect magic or other spells could have a negative effect on them... paranoia started pretty soon.

I wasn't able to make it creepy, they were too much goofing around and the first encounters were too "normal" (neither the constructs nor the skeleton were strange enough to freak them out, no matter what I tried... the first two rooms are too much like"night at the museum" or "monster squad" to be taken seriously.

And while that worked, it also made sure they took their time, had lot's of IC discussions, etc.
It was fun, but time consuming ;)

Just wanted to point out:
You guys are awesome!

Whenever I start to think about the pure amount of data involved, data that's cross connected, including special rules and exceptions, I get cross eyed and start to drool...

:)

Keep up the good work! I really love the way it works and it makes character generation so much easier.

From a UX point of view: I started opening another website with traits and spell lists, because the current implementation is not really useable. So I basically look through the spells on another site and search for them on TTG to select them.

Are the "spell lists" cached, or is really a query over all spells for a given "class" and "level"?

With regards to the ability submit button:
The code reads
<input class="btn btn-primary" id="submitButton" type="submit" value="Accept" disabled="" style="display: none;">
After enabling it and making it visible I was able to change my attributes.

Why does a high ability score not grant bonus level-0 slots?
A witch with 20 INT can prepare 2 additional level 1 spell slots per day, but cannot prepare additional cantrips.

My level 4 witch can now prepare 5 level 1 spells (due to bonus spells) but only 4 cantrips (since they don't get a bonus from high attribute values).

This seems odd.