Hecubus's page

A friend pointed out that despite the cubic volume issue their its really nice carrying around 50lbs inside of something that only weighs 3 lbs.

I am wondering if errata is needed? The minor bag of holding. Says 50 lbs and 6 cubic feet on the inside. The bag is 2 foot by 4 foot correct? assuming diameter 2 feet of a cylinder and a height of 4 feet, a three dimensional volume. doesn't a regular mundane bag have 12.56 cubic volume? Volume = pi. R squared times height? 3.14 x 1 (squared) x 4?

The minor bag of holding has a smaller dimensional pocket than the actual bag. Am I messing this equation up? Or making wrong assumptions?

Oh pinned.... I would venture to guess someone can PIN a person ENOUGH to be considered BOUND, and thus helpless, but would need a partner to execute the coup de grace. Plenty of time to escape.

I don't see why everyone feels the need to tear through the rules, when common sense would have answered the inquiry. Yeah sometimes a person is helpless... I got an idea

Post your description in real life or in movie of a pinned, or/and helpless person, let's see what we can come up with.

Mine is, 50 caliber nearly pressed against a persons head from behind, target not aware, subject is at the attackers mercy.

I think words appended to helpless condition would be useful.

... Consult your DM to see if the target meets the helpless condition, because there are numerous circumstances in which a target can be or need not be helpless...

I will extend this. I have had considerable dialogue about this. Bound is quite variable and the player should consult with the DM/GM to see if they have bound the target ENOUGH to meet the HELPLESS condition requirements. The myriad of ways to BIND/BOUND someone demand this.

I agree HELD can be referring to the hold spell effects and other circumstances that can create the effect.

Paralyzed or 0 dex is understood enough by all

Now this is harder. The OR OTHERWISE AT YOUR MERCY... I see as intended to include ALL the other (millions) of ways to create the helpless condition. It's really OPEN ended and could mean anything... So consult with the DM to see if your Target meats the condition.

FOR instance.... An attacker quitely sneaks up behind a target with a flintlock fully cocked and ready to fire. He places it square in the center of the targets head half a centimeter away. The DM rolls sense motive (for tingles) perception (smell of powder) and any other checks he wants. Than informs the player that he has the drop on the target and is considered helpless.

You can go with dead lands and the opponents with guns are aware of each other and is pointing the guns at the targets eye. The target rolls initiative with a penalty of 5 if succeeds its a regular attack if fail... Bullet to the Brain is hard to survive from. It's rolled as if he is helpless.

Take the movie the professional. He is in the closet the target is in front of him, Leon eases his blade all the way across the opponents neck and holds it there, the target doesn't know anything, and Slash.... Leon does the deed. I would agree with a player trying to create such helpless conditions as it pertains to the definition of OR OTHERWISE AT YOUR MERCY. I would favor the target with a crapload of checks to prevent the condition, and several hoops for the attacker to jump through to do it....

The assassin gets it easy, sneak up condition met, Death attack, save or die.

Boy a lot of poeple I know are very hopeful of this project. I used to run, along with my partner a website called Gen3D. A little game called UO was out at the time. Than they announced another little game called Everquest.

We were one of the first companys to get in on the beta of that game, and we put out one of the earliest reviews of the game when they allowed us to publish information on it. We were really impressed despite the normal startup snags, lag and bugs. Varant was really jazzed by our review of it.

Since than I have just about played every single MMO that has come out, and have done reviews for other sites for about half of them.

My last love was Vanguard. It was amazing, and I still think it is amazing. Its still better in terms of graphics and class/race/mechanic structure than most out there.

Its been plagued with issues through the years though.

I wish to make some suggestions.

One of the things I noticed that keeps people interested in an MMO for the long term is the ability for a player be invested in the content in the game. NOT just the existing content, in fact its CUSTOM content.

This is what I mean.

Take a Guild managment interface for example. It needs the ability for the guild to change rank names, assign catagories manipulate the data in the guild manager to present it to the rest of the guild in a coherant but customizable fashion. You need to put the GUILD site that the guild might use, WITHIN a tab within the guildmanager, inside the game. SO that forums or even chat is availalble inside and outside the game. You need to have the ability to customize the symbols associated with your guild, some kind of Vetting process to make sure the images are acceptable (I suggest using the community to police itself, so that the load is not on the DEVs or online GMs to handle)

Your Control interface needs to be simple but supremely customizable. (My personal preference is not to use NUMBERS in the interface, maybe percentages, it takes away from the immersion, but many disagree with me on that note)

I HATE personally names floating above peoples heads. In EQ I recall playing on the PVP server once. (good and bad experineces) and I ran behind a big giant tree to hide from my assailant. MY NAME was floating there sticking out from either side of the tree. Failure to hide.

Have the name float over the head when the person is hovering his mouse over the character, to simulate LOOKING at them them. Have the ability for a person to choose weather or not there name appears above them when this happens (simulates keeping a low profile), or its blocked by line of site.

IF you have ships, don't let them be just for image alone. Allow them to be used to actually travel to locations you can't get to any other way. Accross the sea to get to another continant for instance. Let the random ecounters of the sea create the adventure for you. Have the ships give you the ability to hold your cargo (equimpment).

Let us use wagons to hold more loot and bags. let our horses have useable saddlebags, etc...

Have features Under the water. seaweed, volcanic activity, lava flows. etc....

Build the world that takes personal Flight into account. To control flight in areas where you want to control access to content. USE ariel encounters or wizards on hiltops throwing fireballs at you or somthing. DON'T just SUDDENLY have your mount cease to function in the air above controlled content.

If you get knocked off your mount in the air by a swooping dragon, so be it.... at least it happed IN the game, not by some arbitrary rule for the area. IF you summon a mount, allow us to MOUNT the mount. SKYRIM is an example of this. (although give a whistle or somthing to lure my mount to come to me)

If this is sandbox..... ALLOW people to exploit the enviornment NOT the Mechanics.

For instance If my party can TRAP a evil cow of death by running/leading it into a ravine so we can kill it easier. LET US do it. Just adjust the experience for the kill and give us a BONUS for setting such a trap. Don't penalize people for playing smart. Don't Nerf the mob later and have it POP out of the pit arbitrarily in front of the party and continue on its merry way. LET have the immersion that permits us to feel like there are some PHYSICS in the world.

If a mob becomes easier to take out because we take advantage of some geographic feature, than its because we are smart. Let us be smart.

Make items namebable by the person. I am really tired of everyone showing up to a raid all having the UBER SWORD Of CLEANSING DEMONS on there back because they all went on the epic quest to get it. HOW about such weapons being acquired via the players getting them MADE from Componants acquired from the EPIC quest. Than the player can name it the BOOGER SWORD OF CLEANSING WATERNYMS. Vetting the name with the community if needed.

I promise you if you have a awesome guild manament/progression system, a proper search system to find players to play with, a detailed Friends Roster that you can EDIT notes on your friends with, etc... All in place when the game starts. This will make HUGE inroads to keeping the community in the game.

NOTHING is more frutrating than having a crappy interface to play behind, than HAVING to wait one to two years for the team to getting around to improving it.

EVERY MMO I have played has messed with the playerbase this way. They put some really subpar interface in the game when it launches and they take forever to improve it.

Inventory UO I thought was best in this regard. BAGS popped open your screen and you dropped your items in the bag, all stacked on top. ONE thing I loved was, when a person was Pickpocketing my bags,

I would stack about 5 animal skins on top of precious items. When they snooped my bags and had to move the skins to see what was further in the bags, it gave me (like the real world) numerous opportunities (as many skins as they had to move) for me to detect the snooping. It was awesome and felt real. Immersion.

PVP.... hmmmmm this is hard... its the griefers. If you can provide us the means to Actually hide from an assailant (bushes, invisbility, all out running). A criminal system in place. such as... if I get murdered I get to report the crime, when the other person gets caught ALL his stolen loot gets returned to all the people he took it from, a man with a reputation of a murderer can't buy, bank or sell in any city and any player can see if that person has the repuation of murdering people so they can choose to interact with him or not. If you steal from somone you get Jailed by any guards that capture you. YOu pay huge fines, or you pay huge JAIL time which has to be payed ONLINE in the game. You can't just camp in jail though you have to be producing somthing in jail to pay your time.

PVP should be a heavy price to pay in your society. But I think everyone should be able to do it. Only place you can hang out in is the PIrate coves. You should be able to Legally duel each other, heck FULL raids should be able to duel each other...

YOUR GUILD can declare war on another guild... and fighting them doesn't penalize you at all...

ITS WAR....

I digress.... a lot

I would love to help you guys define some of the parameters in the game, because I would love to see a great sandbox MMO come into being. I would do it for a buck a month.

Need a good editor though, I am writing this on my phone.

Best wishes
Hecubus (Gene)

The answer Jacobs wrote isn't in the FAQ so I am assuming they are not being official. For instance it breaks a rule. Falling prone in a square doesn't make you helpless. And the only way to occupy normal size enemy square is if that enemy is helpless. So I would suggest moving through or changing the rule so that a prone figure can occupy an enemies square with them. With some penalty

Although under the Movement and tactics area it says "attempt" to tumble. Does that imply you will fail. Some say that is the word that indicates you need a "successful" check to move through occupied or threatened squares. But again it points us to acrobatics skill (trained) despite acrobatics being able to be used untrained, the table says the DC is for avoiding AofOs and there is no entry for failure.

Imagine this. Take that you might have uber movement. You have 50 guys in a straight line in front of you in a five foot corridor. Ignore the half speed (some ability). You start moving through squares (5+cmd for each opponent with +2 escalting for each extra you have to pass) you get 5 square into the movement and you fail the acrobatics check. Now some are saying that you get booted to the closest or last legal square. Which is 25 feet away. That's screwed up. So I think you HAVE to move through no matter what even if you suffer failure and get the AofO. If you die you fall prone in the square and are helpless. And you don't break the rule for occupying an enemy square.

Typed from mobile phone. Forgive errors

I see some officials weighing on this subject. Is anything gonna be posted in FAQ and thus become definative.

I see some entry regarding tumbling/acrobatics. Since after three printings they have not changed anything regarding all this.

According to the Core book (regarding movement through threatened DC = CMD and occupied square +5 CMD = DC) This is what I find.

The Asterisk indicates under the acrobatics skill table, that the value applies to the Attacks of Opportunities. Extra opponants give a +2 to the DC.

Through the square? sliding past someone, under there legs, flipping over? penalty says +5 already to the DC

It says nowhere that you Stop movement under the skill entry, and it provides nothing about moving you back to a LEGAL sqaure.

It does say under movement 190s that you can't enter a enemy square, and spells out why, but scanning down is says a TRAINED person can TUMBLE through, and a person can Overun the occupying foe.

It does say TRAINED people can do this.... so You need 1 rank at least to try and move through using Acrobatics (without provoking AofOs?)

So what if your are UNTRAINED? thats the next question are you actually precluded from moving through the occupied square or threatened square for that matter? I would say NO you can't. Since you need to be TRAINED to do it. You will have to OVERUN instead.

You are penalized with Half your Movement unless you add 10

There is a Feat called "Stand Still" that that allows you to STOP someone from moving through your squares (for the whole movement)

Some have suggested in some place, you are dropped prone from the successfull AofO, I guess unless they trip you. WHICH is how a person without the feat "Stand Still" can stop a person. Trip em, they need a whole movement to stand up again.

The notion that IF you end movement in a occupied square is Moot, since you are trying to get to an UNoccupied square, on completion of the movement.

The notion that the square is considered hampered terrain under the obstacles entry is not explicit under acrobatics/tumble. It simply says your Movement is halved, not halved TWICE. Obstacles are everything else.

As far as I know you have to be actually be MOVING to provoke the AofO, so you have to actually be moving through the square. If you don't succeed, as the AofOs are defined, it prevents the action (movement) from taking place. Which is awkward since you didn't actually succeed in moving. SO you must actually be moving to provoke them. So the only question is... Did you get hit in the process? that's what I THINK the DC only defines.

I think the text represents exactly what it says. You shouldn't be forced back or stopped cold unless the opponant CAN stop you.... which the feat "Stand Still" clearly allows you to do.

There are already enough penalties to this to make the tactic hard to perform without getting hit.

And enough provisions for the player to stop a person if they don't want someone moving past them, such as through a trip attack.

Suggested errata under the MOVEMENT section and under the Acrobatics skill entry.

"The person moving is not stoppped in his movement unless the opponant attempts to stop him, via a trip maneuver (from the AofO) or through the use of a feat or ability."

or addeded to the astrisk section a tiny clarification can be had.

"movement is not stopped"

Just my ramblings.... go ahead and poke at em.

This is where you ask your DM...

"Have I tied him up enough to the point of being REALLY BOUND?"...

"HELPLESS?"....

"no?"...

"I tie him up more than"...

"How about now?"...

"Yes?"...

"Good, I COUP EM than?"

hmmmm....

I hate it when my players start fact checking my inventions in a game to see if they comply with the rules. If the DM says an item does what it does, than thats it. If I dont want to use standard items out of the book, that should not violate your groups provision that you ALL are going to play by the same Pathfinder rules. Mechanics is one thing, but basically you are dictating to the DM what he is doing in the campaign. YOU might as well just RUN the game yourself.

You write on your sheet EXACTLY what he tells you... nothing else. You don't go pouring through the books just so you can go RULES LAWYER on him. If he tells you to write down... Bypasses GIANTS DR occasionally... than thats what the power is as far as your concerned.

I am grumpy.... eccckkk

I would write the new Epic level handbook for you. : )

First of all I understand the concept of a Level Cap. I dont like the notion but understand it. I think that you should allow scaleability to be continuous. HOWever I think a way to contain the complexity of the system as it scales upwards should be handled by EXCHANGING lower level spells, and powers, and class abilities for epic versions of them rather than stack them on top. Since by this point Wish and other spells are pretty much the most powerful spell in a wizards arsenal. Why not just turn certain spell levels and the lists of spells they contain (what they know) into AT Will powers. They would need to take epic feats or take EPIC class levels in SOME GRAND ARCHE MAGE to be able to do it. As the level increases the complexity would go down.

Damage wouldn't be so random anymore, Maybe damage from epic effects are consistant but MITIGATION of that damage could be random. Some kind of mechanic that allows you to WARD OFF the 1000 hp of damage or turn it into nonleathal. The Mechanics could be a battle of who can out REGENERATE the other. Those numbers could be the random elements.

Since EPIC DRAGON MASTER and EPIC CHAIN GODKILLER are really on equal footing with each other, maybe the SCALE of DAMAGE and SAVES and such are different. 30 EPIC Points of damage could be the equivelent of 3000 points of damage to the Commoner NPC, but to the EPIC DUDES fighting in the sky over the mountain, they just did 30 points of epic damage to one or the other. SAVES, ATTACKS, HP, ACs, POWERS, ABILITIES could all be on a completely different scale than that of the common man, but still deal with relatively LOW numeral increments to save on the complexity.

Maybe the Epic character only GETS 4 EPIC iterative attacks, but EACH attack really amounts to the the COMMON man "the blow of a Thousand slices".... one successful strike to the lowly BELOW epic character is actually hit with alot more than what a EPIC opponant might be successfully struck with. The EPIC AC of such an opponant indicates that he can actually see the onslaught of a thousand punches heading at him from EPIC NEO and offer up an effective defense. Structured and ROLLED out as an EPIC sword blow for an EPIC +12, against and EPIC AC of 26.

A lot of mechanics for the ELH work well enough though, I always liked them, I have tweaked them through the years. The EPIC spells (True Dweamors?) ehhhhh complexity worthy of revision.

Saves? well, I like the idea of taking a epic feat once in a while that could up your Fortitude (in case of a epic wizard) in order to deal with the disparity between different saves. The ELH just changes the scale (which I hate, suddenly everyones scales the same on saves.)

I dont know... I want an epic level handbook, I need it to scale onwards if need be, All Abilities should just scale from now on in there EPIC counterparts. I have a billion notions, and I am willing to test them, write them down. Hell I already do that.

I have a game with a wizard that is 63rd level, it has taken forever for him to get there and the subject matter he deals with are world/plane shattering. It's crazy, but he paid for it, he earned it, and all the grief that comes from the responsibility his character now takes on.

I hate limitations, that are artificially unpassable. I think with time and resources, everyone should be able to RISK exceeding their own limitations. Thats the spirit of our games, RISK to exceed.

I just ramble on in my musings....

Sorry dont have time to sort through this Thread at work right now.

Does this Heroforge Pathfinder work with the CORE pathfinder new rulebook? CMB CMDs and all?

Does it incorporate the new class structures?

What extended book material does it incorporate?

What does it NOT do?

Does it work on Open Office? or is it Excel (macros) only.

I renewed my subscription on your website a month ago. I still shows my current suscription being expired. I have written two emails detailing everything. WHY wont you answer my emails? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU POEPLE? I got better service using the Lap Flaps that fall out of the Magazine.

Here is copy of emails sent
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According to the invoice you sent me in my email my renewel to my subscription of Dragon went through. I have now received a notice in my email asking me to renew my subscription. I went to your website and logged onto my subscription and it told me I was expired. What the heck is up with that. Your email when I ordered it said you charged my Visa already. Please resolve this

This is a copy of the Invoice you sent me, on 4/11/05
Eugene O'Brien

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