Grond's page

Appreciate the help guys. I went with the corsair archetype for a fighter since this is for a nine year old trying things out. He has a hook hand and a cutlass, sounds like fun to me if I was a nine or ninety year old.

I don't understand the controversy here. Like...why would anyone be upset that a company that sells a fantasy role play game is going to have rule books based in the official fantasy world? It would be like getting upset with Palladium making rules in Rifts that are set in Rifts Earth or D&D setting up rules for Forgotten Realms.

I for one am looking forward to it. I hope the Gozreh archetype lets you finally have something that plays like the old 3.5 Stormlord of Talos prestige class.

I will throw my voice behind the Dark Knight style class, or really any permutation of the classical vampiric weapon. The idea of a martial class that heals/gets stronger the longer they fight is almost the definition of the "Hero" image... At least in my head.

TO quote my earlier post in this thread:

I want a Shadowknight class that gives you a heavy armor martial build with the ability to inflict life drain damage through weapons or touch attack, can have an undead minion or two and finally gives the game this iconic type of fantasy character.

I love life drain melee classes and still can't believe we don't have one after all these years in Pathfinder. You deal X damage, you get Y amount back as health or temporary hit points. Such a wonderful way to add some flavor to martial classes.

I found out I really like the Ulfen Guard / Furious Guardian. Has anyone tried taking it on a non-barbarian?

I went with a Viking archetype fighter. Still got rage but it made for a better bodyguard with shield feel that we wanted in our campaign. Very fun to play.

My guess is the new movie will have minimal impact and not be very good.

On the store side of things, FLGS need to adapt as businesses always have. Gaming cafe/ store seems to be the new way to go, along with a healthy supply of magic cards and Friday night magic.

This is exactly how my FLGS does it and it is doing amazing business. They have had to move locations once and are looking to move again just to have more tables for people to play.

Grond wrote:

You should buy at least some things at the FLGS in order to keep in business. This especially applies if you are using their store and tables in order to run your game. Those stores cannot stay open if everyone buys product online. I lost a very good FLGS back in the 90's in the advent of online because people thought they were being smart with their money...and it cost us all a chance to meet and play together.

The town I live in now has a wonderful FLGS that has a crap ton of people that play there but most of them also buy from the store as well. I have a Paizo sub for several things as you can see under my name but I buy dice, other companies books and miniatures from the FLGS to help keep it going and to justify my taking up valuable space at a table in their store.

Thank you for putting it better than I was able to.

You are welcome and thanks for the compliment. I have seen first hand what online only buying from gamers does to the local gaming scene. It simply kills it dead because the FLGS can't compete with those price points.

I'd rather have a place to play and especially have a place for NEW people to come in and play than save a few bucks.

You should buy at least some things at the FLGS in order to keep in business. This especially applies if you are using their store and tables in order to run your game. Those stores cannot stay open if everyone buys product online. I lost a very good FLGS back in the 90's in the advent of online because people thought they were being smart with their money...and it cost us all a chance to meet and play together.

The town I live in now has a wonderful FLGS that has a crap ton of people that play there but most of them also buy from the store as well. I have a Paizo sub for several things as you can see under my name but I buy dice, other companies books and miniatures from the FLGS to help keep it going and to justify my taking up valuable space at a table in their store.

The only thing I don't like is when you have certain races with features that lend themselves to really only doing it "one way" with pretty much any build. The most glaring example of this is fate's favored with the Half Orc. I have nothing against trying to make mechanics work better for you but it would be nice to have equally good options in different ways.

As for specific character builds I'm not a fan of one person wanting to be the DPS murder machine and essentially forcing other players to prop them up with heals and buffs and skill related face work.

I rather enjoy pretty much everything about Pathfinder: I love Golarion, I love having APs come out that let players have self contained campaigns, I love modules for shorter sessions or one off groups, I love the options and tools that new books give on a regular basis.

I also love Pathfinder Tales and frankly wish we had more. If the site did not ask for you to be an already published author I would love to write novels in the setting. It is that solid.

Contrast this with D&D: you get very little books to give you options, routinely have sweeping changes to the lore and setting and you only have at this point one novel series to keep up with as a fan. And you better love reformed drow characters if you want to keep up with that one series.

I'm not bashing D&D, I love Forgotten Realms or at least the old version of it. I think 5th edition is hella fun to play. There is absolutely nothing wrong with both D&D and Pathfinder being fun and profitable for all involved.

I know which one I heavily prefer and as long as Paizo keeps producing things that I enjoy then they will continue to receive my hard earned coin.

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

If you're hunting for female authors, may I suggest Ursula K.Le Guin? As an Oregonite, she's practically your neighbor, and she is the author of a story which became PBS's first foray into producing their own science fiction, "The Lathe of Heaven". She also is well known for her fantasy work as well.

I've read several of her stories and they haven't really interested me.

You'll note that there's one thing that all 11 of the authors I mentioned above share—they're mostly known as horror writers or DARK fantasy writers. The two exceptions would be George R. R. Martin (whose Game of Thrones stories contain more than enough to quantify them as horror, and who has also written plenty of horror stories himself) and Dan Simmons (who is a VERY well-rounded genre-hopping author, but who got his start doing horror).

I generally am not as interested in other genres, and as a result, authors who don't write dark stuff or horror tend not to interest me. Ursula K. Le Guin's stories aren't dark and creepy enough for me, and her writing style isn't interesting enough for me to make an exception as a result.

I have a suggestion that meets the supernatural horror and a female author guidelines: Laurell K. Hamilton and her Anita Blake series.

Which of these two authors do you prefer, H.P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard?

Rysky wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Kalindlara wrote:

Will Mr. Wertz really get that angry if you feed Abadar to a deity-eating ultragod?

...is it safer not to find out?

I'm not so much concerned about Vic's reaction to the reaction to all the players who have Abadar worshipers. That type of stunt is the type of thing that "fired" a lot of Forgotten Realms plans when TSR did the Time of Troubles.

If I'm gonna do something like this to Golarion, I'm going to spend a few years dropping hints and doing foreshadowing about the POSSIBILITY of such an event in the future, rather than just springing it out of the blue.

*begins scouring over books for portents foreshadowing the Coinhoarder's end*

I can save you some time there. There's no such portents. It's not in the works. Folks would have picked up on that, in the way folks have picked up on the whole "Nocticula may be at some point in the future redeemed." If that story happens, it's not going to surprise those who have been paying attention.

One of things I truly love about Paizo and Golarion is the resistance to pull Time of Troubles shenanigans on players and DMs. I vividly recall how many campaigns I was in back in the day when my cleric of Bane and other player's characters were rudely told "well you don't really exist anymore" because of the surprise changes to deities and settings. I absolutely hate that kind of treatment to the source material and to the fans.

I don't understand how the one player in the OP campaign has had to replace five or six characters already due to death. Clearly that player is not building characters correctly or is not playing them smartly or the DM is just out to kill characters.

There is no fun or sense of ROLL play if you constantly have to recreate a new, exciting character...that dies in one session only to be replaced by another new, exciting character...that dies. Over and over and over.

Why do ppl necro five year old threads? I think it is safe to say you can create a new topic at this point.

1. Dwarf. My all time favorite fantasy race. I wish Golarion dwarves were more like Warhammer Fantasy Dwarfs but that's just a lore thing. They have good mechanics and all that jazz. However, what I really love is the fact they make their own things better than anyone else can and have to fight off superior numbers in order to hold onto those things.

2. Duergar/Hobgoblin/Dhampir. Bad dwarves? Yes, please! Goblins that don't behave like goblins but instead are pragmatic warmachines of efficiency? Yes, please! Half dead things that in certain builds are insanely fun to both role and roll play? Yes, please!

3. Humans. I hate that humans mechanically are always a "blue" option in all class guides because of the free feat and floating stat bonuses plus a bazillion or so great racial traits you can swap in and out as needed. It makes for so many games being nothing but humans instead of players picking all these wonderful races that you can't see in the real world.

I think it's more Mean Girls syndrome

The GM's hidden agenda is this
Get rid of a player who doesn't play as often as he wants.
Keep her character
Give her character to someone else
Blame the group for the decision

And never let her have an honest conversation with the group about possible alternative solutions to her absences

This crosses into personal insult territory. Absolutely no need to try and take it there. If you don't agree with his decision list reasons why you disagree but don't attack someone's character.

Grond wrote:

I'm more disappointed in the ACA than any piece of legislature in many years. I want UHC and the fact America is practically the only Western nation without it is frankly embarrassing. Health care should be given to more than those who can afford it.

That ACA plans are hideously expensive (both in monthly cost and especially in the annual OOP amounts, co-pays et al in combination) doesn't help matters any. My family had better insurance at a much smaller monthly cost than what we were forced to pick from. We paid for ours all on our own. The policy we have now is barely tolerable ... and we'll be hating life if we get into any serious medical trouble.

I have family and friends that have the same difficulties or frankly worse because of the ACA. Those plans are frankly horrible. UHC would remove this kind of undue financial burden from so many. I was hoping that Obama would finally get UHC when he had the full Congress behind him but unfortunately for all of us that did not happen.

I'm more disappointed in the ACA than any piece of legislature in many years. I want UHC and the fact America is practically the only Western nation without it is frankly embarrassing. Health care should be given to more than those who can afford it.

More like it's easy to derail a thread.

Not my attention. I wanted only to point out that for quite some time now both parties simply put forward candidates who never break from party and only care about certain oxen to be gored. This is in contrast to TR who is the ideal candidate in that they would put the most good for the most people as a priority.

When is the last time you can honestly say a nominee from either party actually did that?

Grond wrote:

It was not "culture" it was the accepted wisdom of the time. Ever heard of Social Darwinism? White man's burden? This was accepted as evident truth for a very long time. I'd argue that Social Darwinism is still alive and well today quite frankly.

Picking one person out to hold them up as an example of "OMG look at the crazy things ppl said back then!" only strengthens my point that Teddy having public friendships and advisors that were black or simply non white shows how open minded in that era he was.

He was talked out of taking on Jim Crow laws after the whole dinner debacle because of fear it could incite another Civil War. I mean you can definitely find things he said that are by our standards racist, absolutely...but those were considered as common sense back then as saying grass was green or the sky was blue.

Roosevelt's accomplishments to the common man in America far, far outweigh any modern day squeamishness over his literally outdated racial views.

So, if we're bringing him back to be president are we magically updating his now completely unacceptable views to something more in tune with the times, but somehow making all the things we like about him the same?

I'd definitely support Teddy Roosevelt "the Good Parts version". I'd do that for most past presidents. Otherwise, despite admiring the impact some of them had in their day, I wouldn't even consider anyone from before women's liberation and the end of segregation.

Of course TR would be updated in his social views. As I mentioned before and I can tell by some of the comments how little it is understood but "white man's burden" was a steadfast belief among educated white people in the Western world. The whole point was a sense of moral obligation to bring up the non white world into the civilized world that white men had created.

Since things now are far more equal I don't think TR would feel a "burden" and see that outdated thinking was exactly that: outdated thinking.

He said things like this:

"Our effort should be to secure to each man, whatever his color, equality of opportunity, equality of treatment before the law."

And also this:

"principle of giving to each man what is justly due him, of treating him on his worth as a man, granting him no special favors, but denying him no proper opportunity for labor and the reward of labor."

And also this too:

"One of the gravest problems before our people, the problem of so dealing with the man of one color as to secure him the rights that no man would grudge him if he were of another color. To solve this problem it is, of course, necessary to educate him to perform the duties a failure to perform which will render him a curse to himself and to all around him. Mind that. And it is true of every one. In addition to rights in every Republic there are correlative duties. And if the man, black or white, is not trained to do his duty he becomes necessarily a festering plague spot in the whole body politic."

He also was a visionary that saw how true this would be in America:

"Every generous impulse in us revolts at the thought of thrusting down instead of helping up such a man. To deny any man the fair treatment granted to others no better than he is to commit a wrong upon him — a wrong sure to react in the long run upon those guilty of such denial. The only safe principle upon which Americans can act is that of “all men up,” not that of “some men down.”

So...yeah. I'm fairly confident that if turn of the 1900's century TR could see those things as true it wouldn't take much for him to change some of indoctrinated views.

Anyone who studies him and with two degrees in history I can see I have done so will see that he truly cared about making the most good for the most Americans as he could. He did that in defiance of what both parties wanted and was remarkably successful in getting his way with Congress and the Supreme Court.

Why not Zoidberg? (tm)

I actually do have and wear a Dr. Zoidberg "Why not" t-shirt in the Che art style. He would have my vote.

Theodore Roosevelt was kind of a hawk like Clinton, and had the fun bonus of being super-duper racist. If you're going to bring someone back who did lots of good and also tons of bad, you might as well bring back Nixon and have done.

Roosevelt is the only President we had that did the most good for the most people regardless of party or position.

Oh, that racism thing?

On 16 October 1901, shortly after moving into the White House, Theodore Roosevelt invited his advisor, the African American spokesman Booker T. Washington, to dine with him and his family, and provoked an outpouring of condemnation from southern politicians and press. This reaction affected subsequent White House practice, and no other African American was invited to dinner for almost thirty years.

So racist was that guy to regularly have African americans as advisors. People in different times had different values. While I'm sure you can respond with any number of what we consider "racist" occurrences with Teddy the fact that he was open minded to a fault in an era where that was not encouraged to put it mildly is a point in his favor.

In short, we need more leaders like Teddy that would work to do the most good for the most people regardless of what their party or supporters want them to do. I could give a lesson on all the great things Teddy did as POTUS but his greatest gift was the ability to not see party lines.

Grond wrote:

James,

You mentioned before that you wanted to do the Red Mantis Assassin companion book and I know that I am not the only person that would love to see a book dedicated to Golarion's greatest assassin cult. Is there a chance we could see this book within the next two years or so?

I suppose there's a chance... but not a big one. Not a big one at all.

Many Grond tears were shed to bring us this information.

I thinks Tacticslion said something in his great post that is overlooked: we need to look no further than Robert E. Howard and Conan to see how PF characters would adjust to Lovecraftian horrors. You just stab them in the face or tentacle or body mass with the nearest pointy object.

Howard had the right idea that civilization is just a ruse and that barbarism is the true nature of mankind. Conan as a barbarian in Howard's world was always able to quickly adjust to facing Cyclopean horrors of the Mythos by never being civilized and thus "softer" as you see the characters in Lovecraft when they encounter these things.

A civilized man may go mad at seeing these things. A barbarian (or for Pathfinder practically every adventurer) would just instinctively fight the dang gum thing and wonder after the fight why the merchant went running off after pissing himself. I mean...I fought worse amirite?

I know Howard and Lovecraft were great friends but I always felt Conan's responses to very, veeeeeery Mythos creatures were a little dig from Howard to Lovecraft about how every single person in Lovecraft would go nuts and effectively do little to nothing against these things.

Have broadsword, will travel. You can have a Mythos feel, sure, but Pathfinder embraces such regular horrors that there simply is no room for the "my guy can eat you guy" nonsense that some Mythos fans want to see from Cthulhu and the rest.

I absolutely Lovecraft and his Mythos but I don't think that approach of "my guy can eat your guy" works at all...AT ALL...for Pathfinder.

James,

You mentioned before that you wanted to do the Red Mantis Assassin companion book and I know that I am not the only person that would love to see a book dedicated to Golarion's greatest assassin cult. Is there a chance we could see this book within the next two years or so?

My concern is that I remember being a Warhammer fan back in the 1980's thinking that Rogue Trade and Warhammer 40k were neat and all but such a niche that it would never seriously threaten the fantasy genre.

Yeah...no. Sometime in the mid 90's the sci-fi line (40k) overtook the fantasy line and the fantasy line never recovered. The fantasy setting was still incredible but it never got the support it once had.

Last year Games Workshop the company behind them killed off the fantasy setting and brought it back with such a crappy setting that I refuse to even acknowledge its existence let alone buy anything set in it.

I realize Pathfinder is a somewhat different position but still...

Call me crazy but I want to see the same core races in Pathfinder plus some new races. People are fine with humans in the future why not also Dwarves, Elves, Halflings etc? I would love to see how those races are adopted into a future Pathfinder setting.

IF Golarion disappears, maybe I'll have no choice but to go back to D&D 5e. Well, probably not- I still haven't forgiven WotC for 4.0. I'm not a fan of the science fiction based game genre: and I have enough Pathfinder material to keep running games for years to come.

They are not destroying Pathfinder or stopping to produce it. This is not Games Workshop with their idiotic and frankly horrible decision to destroy their Warhammer fantasy world and replace it with excrement. Pathfinder will be fine. You can completely ignore Starfinder if you want.

Two questions:

Will you able to use Starfinder races/classes etc in Pathfinder and vice versa?

Assuming the answer to the above is some form of "yes" then will Starfinder have something like rifts from Palladium Games excellent Rift RPG? Basically holes in time/space to let both universes interact with each other?

Some of the responses in this thread are interesting. How can anyone consider players reading a module/AP in advance cheating? Or going to a forum to look for help on how to build a character for it? I mean seriously you don't think people will go out and simply read it for themselves in a post internet world?

As long as people don't let their OOC knowledge flavor their IC knowledge what's the harm?

MAD is one that comes up often as well.

Crystal Frasier wrote:

j b 200 wrote:

Crystal Frasier wrote:

I'm sure they will. These two were denied for very different, and very temporary reasons.

Can you give any insight into the reason?

Alas, I cannot. Rest assured the battle was epic

A longer explanation is: Picking what APs to be do when isn't a simple matter of "I have a great idea!" Everyone at Paizo has great ideas. Everyone here has way more great ideas than we could ever possibly write. What does and doesn't become an AP (and when) depends on who is available to do what, what other products we have on the schedule, which authors we know we'll have available and what their strengths are, what we've done lately, and what we haven't done in a while.

More often than not, because pitching and outlining APs is a team effort, the original ideas morph and evolve. Whoever will run that AP has to be excited an on-board, but the whole team gets into the planning stage to help out, throw out plot twists, call out potential problems, and tighten dramatic elements.

I can tell you that the AP we ARE doing is another great idea that is a fusion of my third pitch, refined with some extra input from Wes and Adam, and I think it's going to be a ton of fun, with some old-school flavor we haven't played with in a while.

Old school flavor with some kind of twist...could this be a dungeon crawler AP? Dungeon crawler for old school flavor and the twist being it is set in the Darklands?

Table top RPGS are not the same as MMORPGs. You DO NOT need a dedicated healer in a group. What you want are Cure Light Wound wands for actual hit point healing and status removal either through a player or scrolls. That's it. Yes, having someone who can cure and status removal as part of their player's skills is nice to have but it is not mandatory.

I would point the GM to this thread and see if the GM can help resolve the issues. And if not then I would quit the game. No game is better than a bad game experience.

You mean like the Dark Knight type class from FF tactics?

Yes, like Cecil from FF3 I think it was FF3 that was a Dark Knight before he became a paladin. Also, Dark Knight class in the FF MMO game. It also is like the Shadowknight class in EQ and EQ2 or the Reaver class in Dark Age of Camelot. There's quite a bit of examples of martial classes that can drain life and replenish their own life with melee weapons. I'd love to see that in this game.

I want a Shadowknight class that gives you a heavy armor martial build with the ability to inflict life drain damage through weapons or touch attack, can have an undead minion or two and finally gives the game this iconic type of fantasy character.

I would like Land of the Linnorm Kings or Taldor.

This is why PVP almost never works for a campaign. The OP is going to have to talk to the druid, the GM and the group OOC to resolve this situation. I do not know why the OP thought stealing would be acceptable but the fall out from that action is exactly why you just don't do it.

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Stopped by police for 'gaming material' -- Back in the Dark Ages of Gaming (after a troubled person shot two of his friends and then blamed gaming for the cause) our area went from a 'modest' gaming presence to worse than dancing in 'Footloose'.
Still remember to this day being stopped by a police officer from a nearby community and the question "Do you have any dice or gaming materials on you?" came up as one of the questions. Thankfully, I didn't *at that time*, so it wasn't lying when I said 'no'.
When he requested to search my bag to verify it, and found a model kit for a P-51 Mustang he let me go without any further questioning. Still sticks in my head, though.

Holy bananas - I never knew it got to the point of actual law enforcement taking it seriously! Where did you live?

Actually, I just finished a 15 page argument paper on this for my rhetoric class final. Between Patricia Pulling and William Schnoebelen, the early eighties were hell for gamers. I just missed the time period, (Was born in 83) but reading through all of my research seriously brought to mind the book Fahrenheit 451. It was common practice for the cops to actively seek out gamers, and if they stopped a young male, that was one of the first questions they asked.

I will never forgive Mazes and Monsters for further convincing my ultra conservative Christian parents that my playing D&D at the time was going to force me to lose my soul.

Yes, Tyrant archetype lets you play a LE AP with very little change to the base class. I think you swap Diplomacy for Ride as a class skill as the only real mechanical change. I thank Paizo profusely on behalf of groups that had GMs that would not houserule to allow APs to be anything other than CE.

I hope this is the start of each AP eventually getting a hardcover edition. I am a subscriber and I will still pay to get a hardcover edition for all the APs. It is just far more convenient when running a game to have it one book.

Go Evangelist archetype, your party will love you.

It never ceases to amaze me that the only class that people seem obsessed to alignment check is the paladin.

What would be the best class to have if you only had one spell caster?

Wizard?

Cleric?

Personally? I would go with Evangelist cleric. Almost all the fun of the cleric with inspire courage and other bard goodies tossed in. It is hands down IMO the best buffer in the game and the best way to play a cleric. You just can't go wrong with it.

Grond wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

BlackJack Weasel wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

The Red Mantis assassins are indeed emotional... not out-of-control passionate, but they're absolutely not divorced from their feelings.

Do you have a source? I'm honestly not accusing you of being wrong but I want to gain as much information as I can about them.

I do. They're from my home campaign. I invented them about 15 to 20 years ago (not sure how long it's been to be honest), and have worked very closely with authors in building them up. I've also tried to keep them pretty close to me as well, since I do have plans to do more with them, which means that they're not quite as well-detailed as they would have been had I been less greedy and let anyone run with them.

The best source at this point is Pathfinder #9, which has a big article about them, but the upcoming Inner Sea Faiths has an article about Achaekek that I wrote that has more info about them.

I won't lie, I have been waiting years to have a "Path of the Hellknight" type book come out for Red Mantis Assassins. They are tied with the Hellknights as my favorite Golarion unique faction. Would love to see more of their history, inner workings and yes, more archetypes like the warpriest mantis zealot to go along with it.

A "Path of the Red Mantis" book would be incredible, but it's one of a few books that I'd never want to let anyone else write... and my writing time has been a tricky thing to manage.

This is when we all kneel down to the Great Mantis to open up enough time to allow you to write it. I know it would be greatly appreciated by not just myself but thousands of other fans. And by appreciated I do mean in the strictest "please take my money!" sense...

BlackJack Weasel wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

The Red Mantis assassins are indeed emotional... not out-of-control passionate, but they're absolutely not divorced from their feelings.

Do you have a source? I'm honestly not accusing you of being wrong but I want to gain as much information as I can about them.

I do. They're from my home campaign. I invented them about 15 to 20 years ago (not sure how long it's been to be honest), and have worked very closely with authors in building them up. I've also tried to keep them pretty close to me as well, since I do have plans to do more with them, which means that they're not quite as well-detailed as they would have been had I been less greedy and let anyone run with them.

The best source at this point is Pathfinder #9, which has a big article about them, but the upcoming Inner Sea Faiths has an article about Achaekek that I wrote that has more info about them.

I won't lie, I have been waiting years to have a "Path of the Hellknight" type book come out for Red Mantis Assassins. They are tied with the Hellknights as my favorite Golarion unique faction. Would love to see more of their history, inner workings and yes, more archetypes like the warpriest mantis zealot to go along with it.

I like martial classes, not a fan of casting classes. In MMORPGs my favorite kind of class is a hybrid melee class that has a life steal mechanic like Shadowknight or Reavers from Daoc.

I love prestige classes and frankly wish the PrC were more like they were in 3.5. I truly miss my Stormlord of Talos and there's nothing currently in Paizo that allows me to play a class like that again.

Actually you can tell him that in combat healing is worthless. You know that is just how this game works. I don't know if that guy is thinking this plays like a MMORPG but it does not. He could buff and summon with his oracle and heal out of combat and be great at those things.

You are not doing him any favors as someone else suggested by letting him think straight healing is the only thing he can do with an oracle.

My groups for years have always done max HD for both players and bad guys. It makes the fights last longer but it is more fun and frankly easier to keep track of for both PC and DM.