Grimshado's page

Its a quality of D&D that they choose poor names for game terms, and this is an example. If they had called it 'florentine' or some such it would not cause nearly as much confusion.

-James

If they had called if 'Florentine' I'd be looking for Spinach and Pasta :)

They should've called it something like 'Pressing the Attack' and made it applicable to any weapon and changed up how it work just a bit (Still get the Extra Attack, but offset it differently) to represent the 57 or so 'scholastically recognized' methods of sneaking an extra strike into an attack sequence.

But, hey, they gave us TWF instead.

To the OP: Yes, you can make an attack with any weapon in your hands, in any order, so long as you take your attacks in descending BAB order.
If that's not 'official,' well, it's how my gaming group has been playing since the inception of 3rd Edition.

This is being Apocalyptic Support.

You are not to be using broken glass on Zombies, or you are to be egging without deliberation.
Please to do the needful.

^^ This, FTW.

My opinion is this: The opponent isn't defeated until he's no longer an immediate/short term threat to the party.

Example 1: Capture the Evil Priestess of the Goddess of Ultimate Evil(tm) and pack her off to Jail in an Antimagic Zone: Defeated. Yes, she may escape and come back to haunt the PCs later, but not really an immediate concern.

Example 2: Evil Negotiating Mind Flayer looking to use the PCs to do his dangerous Work: Knocked out and left for dead by PCs: Not Defeated.

That said, I think the Characters should earn XP for the second situation, but I look at it as a combination of 'Story' XP for advancing the Plot and a 'Thank You' gift for handing me another Villain/Plot Line I can drop in the player's laps at a later date (Angry, Purple-Skinned Cthonic Psions make great recurring villains...)

I'd call it, in total, about 1/3rd to 1/2 the XP of a Challenge equivalent to the Party's Average Level.

I have been searching all over the net trying to find a program that can help me do my maps. Between real life and gaming I don't have alot of time to dedicate to learning how to make a program that work for me.

My personal advise, based on the statement above is: Work with hand-drawn maps. Generally you will be able to make them more quickly (for large areas that do not need tactical-level detail) and the results will be more satisfying.

That said, I do not want to discourage you from trying mapping software. However, mapping is a very complex subject.

Mapping programs with the versatility to handle anything you can throw at it are very time consuming to learn for anything by the most basic things (landform shapes, roads, and city locations). It is possible to make very pretty maps (as though they come from a Paizo product) with these types of software, but only after investing a lot of time learning to use them.

Mapping programs that are easy to pick up and use are not usually very versatile. Dundjinni used to be, essentially, an electronic 'Dungeon Tiles'. The maps may be visually appealing, but they only fit together in certain ways.

Which mapping program you decide to use ultimately depends on what you want out of the tool. Do you want quick, easy, pretty maps? Maybe Dundjinni is for you.

There are other products out there, as well, worth exploring. Play with Demos if they're available, and see what kind of results you can achieve in 5 mintues, 15 minutes, and 30 minutes. That will help you decide.

<added in an edit>
Since this is a thread on the Fractal Mapper product listing: please, try it and see what you think. I've never used it, but I know people that love it and claim very good results with it. I also know people that hate it for various reasons. It's just like anything.

In my experience, the two most versatile mapping programs are Campaign Cartographer and <Your Favorite Drawing Program>.

CC has a very high learning curve and can be frustrating for beginners to use, so I respect it is not for everyone.

Your Favorite Drawing Program can make beautiful maps, but they won't scale to any level of detail cleanly - and unless you're using something fairly heavy-hitting such as Photoshop, editing any individual element on the map can be difficult.

Dundjinni was okay, so long as tiles that fit what you were trying to build already existed. The maps looked pretty, but could really only be printed at a few very limited scales without pixelating. I haven't used it in a while, so it may have changed.

I've never tried Autorealm.

There was one other one I'd tried, but I can't remember the name of it. It worked similar to Dundjinni, though.

I'm not sure what others are out there.

For me, It is mostly Thought and Intent that Determine Alignment.

The Road to Hell, they say, is paved with Good Intentions. Action also is part of alignment. You can *believe* in freedom, happiness, etc as strongly as you like, but if every action you take pushes some other agenda, then do you really believe in those things?

In actual game play, however, the group I have been consistently playing with for 10 years views Alignment as a sort of 'Choose your Own Adventure' for which spells will really screw up your day. (Monks really, really hate 'Protection from Law')

Eh. Nice Concept but I got really tired of certain elements of the game.

I mean, really, for the love of Allah - I got so tired of climbing towers and jumping into haystacks.

Got half way through the game and put it down in favor of Fallout 3. I plan to go back and finish it, because the story interests me, but game play bored me.

Of course they can. And they did. CMB/CMD, many spells changed, more bonuses, ...

Your Experiences will, of course, vary. But what I've found is that CMB/CMD isn't such a fundamental altering of the rules. It looks different in a stat-block, but really it's just a streamlining of the existing rules for grapple/trip/etc. The games I played in before CMB/CMD, no one ever used Combat Maneuvers, because no one could remember the rules. Now they use them all the time.

Of course, that's not really the point of your post, and I digress. I apologize for that.

Changing some of the iconic spells is more fundamental, I'll give you that.

The d20 Ruleset is not my favorite ruleset. In fact, one of the things I hate most about the rules is the damn d20. This is because I do not like linear probability scales. In general, however, I think the PFRPG is the cleanest implementation of the ruleset. Which doesn't make it perfect. And errors will always creep in. Sometimes they are errors that were caught during proofing, but somehow didn't make it into the Print Master. Other times, it's that proofreaders know what the rule is supposed to be, so when they read the rule in the editing copy, their mind automatically sees the RAI, not the RAW. (This is why professional authors never do final editing on their own books.)

I also agree that, for my personal tastes, loosing some compatibility is not necessarily a bad thing. However, for a large portion of Paizo's customer base, it is. For the group that I currently play in, compatibility is a huge issue. We have one player in the group who refuses to play PF because she has 'neither the time nor the inclination to learn new rules.' And, while the base rules have not changed, enough has been tweaked that, for her, it is really learning a new rule set. So, in that game group, most of the characters are built using the 3.0 Rules, but the GM is allowing those of us who want to build characters using the Pathfinder rules. The catch is that we use all of the rules. We take any benefits the PF rules give us, and suck up any penalties the rules give us. This works in our game group, but it would not work in everyones.

So: Posting Rules Questions is good.
Politely Posting Rules Questions is better.
Constructive Discussions of Rules is awesome.
Flame Wars Suck. They always have, they always will.
Flame Wars, sadly, are inevitable. But if we all remember that Politeness is Awesome and Flame Wars suck, maybe there will be fewer flame wars.

And if there are fewer highly passionate "I'm right, you're wrong" posts, then there will be fewer 'Dude, that topic has been beaten to death' threads, because newcomers to the forum won't give up reading an existing thread on the first page.

And, maybe, I'm a hopeless idealist ;-).

...forgot that the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is supposed to be backwards-compatible to the 3.x ruleset of the World's Oldest RPG.

This.

In many respects, 3PPs have more room to play with Paizo's product that Paizo themselves. Paizo wants to keep their Core Product usable with 10,000,000,000+ (intentional hyperbole) existing products published under the OGL. They can tweak, enhance, and clarify, but cannot fundamentally alter the Core product while still keeping things compatible.

LPJ, SGG, 4W, and all the other guys can fundamentally alter the core product. The degree to which they can alter it depends on how strongly they want to be able to slap a 'Pathfinder Compatible' logo on it, but still.

[Added in an Edit. Because I clicked 'submit' instead of 'preview'.]
On the other side of the coin, the desire for compatibility does not excuse poor editing and fact-catching. In a recent thread, a question came up about an ability and how it scaled. The designer of the ability replied that the RAW is not what was intended. The author used specific wording piggybacking on another ability to reduce word count (which, unfortunately, is a publishing reality, no matter what you are publishing). It is not necessarily this author's responsibility to know that piggybacking the ability breaks the scaling - but someone on the editorial review staff should know enough about the original ability to at least catch that. I say 'should' because everyone is human, and everyone makes mistakes.

But, yeah, civility is important. It is also very hard to maintain on any internet forum. Some Sociology or Psychology major could probably have a field day with this as a thesis subject.

That. Is. Hilarious.

Thanks for putting up with our crap, James.

Actually, perhaps the real culprit here is not that the Paladin must be of one specific alignment, but rather that such a thing as 'alignment' even exists.

Sure, it makes things like 'Protection from *' and 'Detect *' easy to adjudicate, but I really think it causes more problems than it solves.

Nearly every group I've played with in the last 10 years or so pays very little attention to official 'alignment' where PCs are concerned. It's a House Rule thing that works very well for us. It may not work at every gaming table.

Being a 'Divinely Inspired Holy Warrior and Paragon of *' should be an exacting road that is easy to fall from no matter what your faith.

I think one of the basic assumptions the designers of 3E, and thus the subsequent iterations of the game, is that all Player Characters should be FANTASY HEROES. Not 'Hero' in the Greek or Literary sense, but 'Hero' in the hyperbolic four-color monthly publication sense.

The design philosophy of Players are Good Guys rather obviates the need to design an 'Evil Paladin' or 'Neutral Paladin' core class. It still doesn't necessarily explain why the Paladin must be LAWFUL good, rather than 'Any Flavor of Good'.

Of the Core Classes with Alignment Restrictions, all but the Paladin are very broad.
Barbarian: Any Non-Lawful
Cleric: Must be Compatible with Deity's
Druid: Any Neutral
Monk: Any Lawful
Paladin: Lawful Good

That's a hell of an alignment restriction, and the benefits for adhering to such a narrow path are not commensurately greater than those for playing any other class without such a restriction. It's cool FLAVOR, but should rules enforce flavor? Support - Yes. Enforce - Perhaps not. Flavor should be SETTING specific. It's all well and good for developers to say that 'In Golarion, Paladins must be Lawful Good, because the only Deity's who want them are X, Y, and Z'.

Back in the Olden Days, before 'Class Balance' was such a huge issue, the rewards for playing a Paladin were really greater than for other classes. This is why they had such tight restrictions and a slower XP progression than almost every other class.

The Discussion about it can be enjoyable, but in the end, we either have to accept that the Developers of the game believe Paladins should be Lawful Good, and no other Paladin Types should exist; we can modify the rules for our own gaming table; or we can create our own Paladin Alternatives; or we can, politely express to the developers that we, as their customer base, really believe there should be alternative paladins. If the developers receive enough polite, well thought out pleas for this, maybe they will eventually show up in something like the APG 2 or APG 7.

20. Once per campaign, enemies who target the family of the PCs.

Wait... what is this 'Family' of which you speak? I thought all PCs were wildly wh*ring orphaned only children with no love interest that doesn't include a three Silver-Piece up-front fee.

Okay, so that's not really true, but it often seems as though it is

Because I am both Bored at Work and Easily Amused, Grimshado Theater Presents:

I understand James' comment about a Paladin of every alignment detracting from how special the Paladin is. I don't agree with it exactly.

Why should any class be inherently any more special than any other class? All PC classes, pretty much by definition, are already special, and above the norm. Why is an ethical extremist with a capacity for laying the divine smack-a upon his enemies suddenly more special than a studious bookworm capable of laying the eldritchally manipulated smack-a?

That said, why does the 'Paladin' from the Order of the Ambiguous Treaty have to have the exact same Hit Die, BAB, Save Bonuses, and Spell Progression with some 'equivalent by differently flavored' Special Abilities?

I, too, have always longed for Non-Lawful Good Paladin Alternatives. By name alone, the INQUISITOR seems to fit the flavor of a Lawful * extremist more concerned with the DOGMA and RULES than with the inherent ethics behind them. This kind of ethical Extremist SHOULD have different abilities than a Paladin. I always liked the concept of the BLACKGUARD prestige class, but also always wondered why there was not a Core Class to represent this same flavor/role.

If you take away the 'Religion' aspect of it, I, personally, see 6 flavors of 'Paladin':

• The Punisher of the Wicked and Defender of all things GOOD
  
• The Doer of EVIL Deeds and Lord of the Weak
  
• The Hidebound Keeper of Tradition and Righteous Upholder of the LAW
  
• The King of Corruption and Bringer of CHAOS
  
• The Righteous Upholder of LAW and Defender of all things GOOD
  
• The Doer of EVIL Deeds and Bringer of CHAOS
  

The first four guys on the list are probably considered a bit off their rocker by the general populace. The last two guys are probably considered whack-jobs even by the first four.

They should EACH have a flavor and MECHANIC that is unique.

All of which is a really long way of saying that I really believe the PALADIN should be a Prestige Class, along with those other five guys, and that none of them should be a Base Class.

Your Mileage will, of course, vary.

I am also of the 'Clerics are the Martial Arm of the Church' philosophy. If the Cleric is simply your average every day temple priest, why Armor Proficiency of any kind? Why Anything other than a few simple weapon proficiencies? These are not talents your average church parson needs - even in a world where Spellcasting and Miracles are commonplace threats faced by the populous.

I apologise if my last post seemed abrupt, it was not my intention to insult the very notion of epic level adventures. Although also not a fan huge fan of psionics myself as...

Apology Accepted, Captain Needa!

Er - what I mean is - no harm no foul.

Your comment (and several others) bring up another good point:

Some of us don't really want 'EPIC' as in 'More Epic than we already are' - we just want support for play beyond Level 20.

Psionics are supposed to be heavily used in Vudra. So they are already in Golarion.

Ahh, well, then scratch that portion of my post. As I said, I've not actually read any of the PF Campaign Setting :)

As I said in my previous post this is exactly the kind of thing I dislike about the idea of epic rules. If you want to be able to fight Asmodeus you better be more than a level X human paladin with super powerful gear. Only 4(?) people in the history of Golarion have passed the test of the starstone and become gods. Why would anybody bother if they're just going to get slapped around by a bunch of adventurers? If you want to do those things you should need to have characters with reasons for their power level (like they've been plucked from their mortal existence and become [insert powerful outsider here]) or your breaking the setting for the rest of us.

Epic Play doesn't have to take place in Golarion. Asmodeus exists in more than one Campaign Setting. Just because Paizo produces a PATHFINDER RPG product does not mean the contents of that product must be retconned into Golarion Continuity.

I came to Paizo later than most. I did not even know about the PATHFINDER CAMPAIGN SETTING until after the PATHFINDER RPG was published. I have not purchased the original PF Campaign Setting since the revised version of the book is right around the Corner.

I imagine Psionics will be another product like Level 20+ play. Based upon what I've read on these boards, there is nothing currently in Golarion that even hints at Psionic power. However, there are a ton of people clamoring for a Psionics book for Pathfinder. Paizo can produce this book without Destroying their existing Continuity: Yes, 'Pathways of the Mind' (completely fictional example title bearing no resemblance to any other book that may or may not share that title), but there are no Psionics in Golarion. Which means this book is not legal for Organized Play, since all Organized Play occurs in Golarion.

I know people who'd buy the book anyway, because they don't care about Golarion, but the do care about good, solid, rules for Psionic Use. (I personally, could care less about Psionics, but see my previous comments about expanding Options).

Of course, when I talk about 'Epic Level' Play, I am talking only about Level 21+ play. I am not necessarily talking about Mortals who can throw down on the gods without divine intervention of their own.

I'm also the guy who'd love to see a Pathfinder version of IRON HEROES that almost completely castrates the power of Magic (I like my Fantasy more along the lines of CONAN, or LANKHMAR, or SONG OF ICE AND FIRE than Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, or Tad Williams).

All the talk about Epic Rules and whether or not to have them makes me think of all the people on any given MMO crying out for 'New High-Level Content' versus people crying out for 'New Low Level Content'. People rallying for an Expansion to the Game versus people lobbying to Fix known problems with existing content.

The comparison is not necessarily a Fair one. There is a limited amount of Content in any online game, and by a certain point, you have experienced it all. You enjoy the game, but you want more.

In a traditional Tabletop RPG, you can roll up a new character and start over at level one, and experience a completely different game - but in an MMO, all you're going to do is experience the same content you've already played from a different perspective.

On an MMO, some people rush through levels 1 through X because they feel true game play does not begin until level X + 1. Others enjoy the trip to Level X, because afterwards they feel it's an endless cycle of Grinding for Gear.

In Tabletop, some people hate hitting Level X beause now they have to start over. There's no rules to support play beyond that point. And more importantly, they've grown very attached to the character they've been playing for the last X levels. But others... Play doesn't really begin until Level X + 1.

One group that I play with HATES low-level play. Every new campaign they start begins at level 10. And they all LOVE the existing 3.x Epic Level Rules that most people consider to be 'stupid broken'. This group of players has absolutely no interest in playing Pathfinder at the moment. However, the instant a Pathfinder Epic Level ruleset is established, they'll all run over and pick up the Core Rulebook and the Epic Rules. Maybe even the APG and GMG. Whammo! New Customers for Paizo.

If I know people like this, then there have got to be other groups that fit the same demographic.

I, personally, want to see rules for 'Open Ended, No Level Cap Play'. I don't want to see the level cap extended to a new fixed number. I like my characters, and if I've played one to Level 20, I'm not really ready to stop playing him just because there are no rules for advancing beyond that point. Not that I NEED rules, but they are nice. They allow for continued advancement beyond 'Sweet! I finally got the Tier 3 Armor Drop I've been waiting on' while also eliminating the 'So we've been playing at Level 20 for two years now and had absolutely no change in our abilities' factor.

Unfortunately, I am also pretty realistic about how hard that is to accomplish using the mechanics and progressions established during levels 1 to 20. Using the current progressions, for example, any opponent that creates an Armor Class Challenge for a Level 40 fighter is impossible for a Level 40 Wizard or Sorcerer to hit, and almost impossible for a level 40 Thief, Cleric, Druid, or Monk. Any Effect that is a challenging WILL save for a Wizard is impossible for any class with a 'bad' WILL progression.

In my opinion, any product that increases play options is a good thing (so long as the options are reasonably balanced and do not spiral out of control). I, personally, am not terribly thrilled with the APG - but it provides options that were not previously available. Plenty of y'all out there love the thing, and I am sure there will be some Paizo support for the product by way of Modules, and some APs will likely incorporate content from this book. This doesn't mean ALL content produced on a go-forward basis will focus on or even incorporate content from the APG. I would have much preferred a 'High Level Play' book to the APG. But that is, again, my personal bias.

The Bad News for ME: Some Products from Paizo I am not interested in. This is actually nothing new, as Paizo has entire PRODUCT LINES I am not interested in.
The Good News for ME: Cash in my pocket to put towards Exalted, Traveller, Star Wars, and other game products that I and my gaming group enjoy.

This paragraph added in an Edit immediately after the initial Post
Of course, the new Experience Point Level Progression Paizo added with Pathfinder Delays the true 'Need' for Level 20+ rules and Gameplay, but does not obviate it.

7) To the bonuses to Disable Device gained from Masterwork Thieves Tools and the Vest of Escape stack? My thought is no.

RAW seems to be 'Yes'.

Masterwork Thieves' Tools provide a +2 Circumstance Bonus
Vest of Escape provides a +4 Competence Bonus.

As these are typed bonuses of a different type, they should stack, unless I'm missing a line somewhere that says 'circumstance' and 'competence' type are the same thing.