Humphey Boggard's page

It's hard to describe him, but I'll do my best:

Kenny is the type of player that started off playing barbarians, still prefers barbarians, and can play any class as a barbarian. Oftentimes minimally invested in roleplay he perks up in combat and gets really excited about crits even if they're rolled by our opponents. Sometimes especially if they're rolled by our opponents.

He practice rolls: "Practice roll, practice roll, practice roll, practice roll. Real roll! [rolls a crit]". The central limit theorem does not apply to his characters. I've seen this in practice. One time I played his character while he was gone and completely failed until I started practice rolling. Crits galore. If Kenny tries practice rolling with a non-barbarian this also fails.

He often attacks inanimate objects in combat. If we are fighting pirates there's a good chance he's fighting the ship. If we are fighting a bronze golem on a platform suspended by chains above a pit of lava he attacks the chains. When asked why he explains that his character, a former slave, hates chains.

Since he might be moving soon we have been joking that this might finally be the week that he runs a one-shot. He finally did. And it f***ing rocked.

The Rules of the $wag Barbarian one-shot:

- Only barbarians. Level 6. 25 point buy.
- 8th level wealth but the extra 2 levels of wealth can only be spent on luxury items that don't affect combat in any way.
- 3v3 barbarian combat, we rolled randomly before the game to figure out teams.
- Arena combat, no explanation of why we were fighting each other.

How it went:

As we were finishing up our characters Kenny asks me how to calculate the CR of a challenging encounter. I explain that we take the average party level (3 6th level barbarians with a generous point buy = APL roughly 6) and he starts flipping through the bestiary looking for something appropriate. Then he asks how costs scale for magic weapons. We talk about that.

He draws a huge, perfectly symmetrical map that he explains was inspired by Super Bomberman, complete with respawning goblinskull bombs. There are chariots with unkillable horses and ejector seats, ramps, and jump pads. Everything is destructible including boxes on platforms that we later find out have potions of resurrection that you can drink before you die and have an instant resurrect effect. In the middle is the piece de resistance: A ( CR 12 taiga) giant on a bridge with a +10 great sword in its stomach. How we knew there was a great sword in it's stomach I still don't know.

My character, Swagthor the Barbarian (aka Swaggy T an urban/mad dog barbarian mounted archer*) was teamed with 69 Chains (a primal rager covered in gold chains) and another barbarian, Electra Diamond, (played by our paladin) a completely bedazzled invulnerable rager. On the other side were two breaker barbarians and titan mauler who wore a simple loin cloth and carried a great club made out of the entirety of his gold.

Combat was fast paced and fun. Our team tried to kill the giant early on, which led to the primal rager being killed. The invulnerable rager (played by the paladin) tried to heal him by lobbing a resurrection potion at his corpse but rolled a 1. The giant swatted the potion out of the air and gave her the Dikembe Mutembo finger wag. Not in his house. My archer barbarian ended up chased all around the map by two breaker barbarians in the unstoppable chariot before finally being cornered and killed. The dead players took control of the giant and combat reached a crescendo when the breaker barbarians managed to sunder it's spear. The last two barbarians managed fortunate crits that killed the giant before fighting to death for control of the +10 great sword. Presumably the winner went off and started a $wag barbarian kingdom somewhere.

* Technically you can't combine these two archetypes. Kenny's GM rulings were generous and largely uniformed. It turned out that almost all of the barbarians had some kind of minor rules issues.

After much rules learning and careful crafting my PC, Sun "The Cage Potato" Wei, is ready to lead our all monk party at the Ruby Phoenix Tournament.

Since Sun Wei is a Sensei/Drunken Master/Qinggong monk he'll be using his Advice class feature to Inspire Courage as a bard of the same level (11 here). So I thought I'd ask the boards for good martial arts advice that he could impart to the team with each round of Advice he uses.

1. [After compatriot misses an attack or fails to confirm a critical hit] Your Ki is weak! You need to do more Ki lifts.
2. Your so-called kung fu ... is really ... quite pathetic.
3. When you can balance a tack hammer on your head you'll be able to head off your foes with a balanced attack.

Any suggestions for tips to help the party?

You'd think Paizo would have thought a little bit more before unleashing a dragon that can literally do anything. Our party ran into one today but fortunately we won initiative and were able to kill it before it deleted our user accounts.

What about if it's hidden in a

"Is only four useful inches on entirety of average man. Three in case of wizard."
- Yuelga Sokolov, professional wizard bodyguard.

"I will die protecting wizard. My mother died protecting wizard. My grandmother died protecting wizard. My great-grandmother killed by bear while s***ing in woods like most Irrisen elderly. I f***ing hate bears."
- Yuelga Sokolov, professional wizard bodyguard.

Humphrey Boggard wrote:

A 20th level commoner would be a folk hero, like John Henry. He may have never fought a battle in his life but his life was one of toil and you'd never want to find yourself on the wrong side of his hammer.

Paul Bunyan?

Definitely. I think Johnny Appleseed would be another great 20th level commoner.

You can play a Demonspawn Tiefling Cavalier, dump INT, and still never have to worry about getting outsmarted by your horse.

[deleted snarky crane wing response that doesn't add to the conversation, sorry folks]

How do traditional Orcs view homosexuality in lands like the Hold of Belkzen? Is it different based on paring, do they have any concepts of trans orcs and if so how does that diversity of non-traditional genders (assuming they share the same 2 sexes we have) factor into their culture?

There is now a grad student NPC in my homebrew campaign doing research on exactly these questions.

"My character is a vegetarian that only eats sentient plants."

[Gets stink eye from Druid's Assassin Vine]

And I never gave a big thumb's up to the Wyvern's actions, but I don't need to. The Wyvern is neutral and not that bright, it is within his alignment to do occasional #$@$# moves. A Paladin whose abilities stem from maintaining the highest standards of good doesn't get that leeway.

To be fair, a properly optimized paladin should have an INT no higher than 8. Definitely the paladin doesn't have the mental wherewithal to follow complex metaphors involving natives tribes any more than the wyvern would (INT 7).

edit: On reflection I have a whole new respect for the player. When I read the GM's descriptions of what had happened I figured he was just being an immature prat. Now I realize that he was role-playing his character.

edit 2: To say nothing of the fact that the Paladin likely has a WIS of 7 or similar whereas the Wyvern has WIS 12. Really the Wyvern would appreciate the ethics and morality of all this on a much deeper level than the Paladin would.

edit 3: [slight derail] Could a character with WIS 7 really appreciate and understand the concept of freedom enough to act on its behalf?

Yes. Yes it is.

The GM explained that the player's reasoning behind killing the wyvern was that he was frustrated that he didn't get to kill a troll in an earlier encounter.

From what he said he was operating on two levels -

A) In game - "It attacked me and damaged me and made me angry so it has to die".
B) Metagame - The player was pissed about the Trolls in the last encounter not been killed thanks to (in his mind) an agreed mutual withdrawal...

Like every great paladin morality thread we've spent several hundred posts making profound moral arguments that clearly don't reflect the reality of what took place at that particular table.

Gwaithador wrote:

I think that Gary said it best.

This would be completely legit if that had been the paladin's motivation behind killing the wyvern. From what we've been told, it's clear that it wasn't.

But is it really fair to hold the paladin responsible for the actions of his player?

Different tables will have different simplifications to the overly complicated d% system.

For example, we simply roll an ordered 4d4 and interpret the result as a base four number (0-127 in base ten, 100 to 127 -> reroll). The hardest part is remembering which d4 goes first, second, etc., so we default to a ROY G BIV convention. I guess just dropping the second d10 for concealment chance probably could be workable as well.

Going off at a bit of a tangent (no pun intended!):

The first entry by O'Reilly as a 3PP for Pathfinder, Programming Examples for Pathfinder Optimization in a Nutshell.

You could package it with Mathfinder Module: We be Globals!

I came to this thread thinking that you were looking for Matlab or C code for optimizing DPR.

Backs away slowly, closes door behind himself.

Let's help Paizo gauge interest in an edutainment extension to Pathfinder by suggesting Mathfinder titles! Algebraic!

1. Statistics Revisited
2. Inner Sea Mathematics
3. Induction Proofs Unleashed
4. Algebra, Kingdom of Headaches
5. Manual of the Hyperplanes
6. The Epic Logarithmic Level Handbook
7. Ten to the Power of Seventeen Squared Coins for a Kingdom
8. Ultimate Equations
9. Blood of Angles
10. Seekers of Sequences
11. Graphs of Golarion

Humphrey Boggard wrote:

Also, let me know what you think of that Mathfinder idea - you guys are figuratively sitting on an edutainment gold mine.

Playing the game does require math...and the problems get more complicated as you level up...

But it's all math that a grade schooler could do.

I hear about the supposed class tiers in great detail on the forums - what if the leveling the "high tier" classes required substantially more difficult math problems? Instead of threads with thousands of posts complaining about the hypothetical caster v. martial disparity you'd see threads asking for help in solving systems of linear first order differential equations so someone's wizard can get access to 8th level spells.

Also, it would open up entirely new avenues for books like Statistics Revisited, Inner Sea Mathematics, and Induction Proofs Unleashed.

If i were to sell you a maths textbook, and it has incomplete paragraphs and is missing math formulaes that should be in there, then wouldnt you be pretty annoyed? How would you, or others react in this situation? Likely take the book back for a refund or ask for clarification regarding the missing items.

Math textbooks have mistakes all the time. Most of the time it's small things (referring to a problem in text that was deleted in a later edition) but I've seen some pretty glaring omissions. For example, one undergraduate text on differential equations had mistakes in how it defined the linear independence of functions.

Also, math textbooks are written about topics that have been settled for decades, if not centuries, as part of a rigorously constructed, narrowly defined system of rules. If Paizo used the same care in crafting its rulesets what you'd be left with would be about as fun to play with as a math book.

Make time meaningful. If the PCs have substantial resources that recharge daily then make them accomplish more in a day.

Anyway, this thread seems to have served its original purpose, so I'm stepping out for now.

Does this mean I should start a separate thread enumerating my complaints of a single class feature of the Ratfolk Gulch Gunner and how that mechanical choice has ruined Pathfinder for me forever?

Find a way of thinking of Zon-Kuthon where he's a tragic hero and the good gods are a bunch of weak-willed liars.

For example, his transformation was a heroic sacrifice to keep Rovagug at bay but the other gods were afraid of his power and exiled him to the Plane of Shadow to cover up their cowardice. His clerics in Golarion are brave souls that are willing to face the darkness that is necessary to keep creation as we know it together, etc. etc.

Thumper. Ten out of ten Fremen recommend.

I was hoping to find a guide or thread for helping to build and play a sword-and-board fighter tank that can take a giant beating, keep going, and dish it back out. I saw that there's a guide that uses core only, I was wondering if there's a guide using all of the books.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Here is a link to the mechanics and tactics of a Samurai I recently played to good effect. While the character primarily fought with two-handed weapons he would strap on a shield for the rare situations where it was more important to occupy a space in a narrow corridor than to put out the higher damage afforded by two-handed fighting.

Some general ideas for the beginner:

1. Read and re-read the combat section of the rules. Know it inside and out and try to game out against which kinds of opponents you'd be willing to eat an attack of opportunity to do a combat maneuver (supposing you don't have the relevant feat).

2. The best way to keep enemies away from your squishier friends is to demand their attention by dishing out glorious harm by the barrel full on the battlefield.

3. Conserve resources by avoiding unnecessary combat by diplomacy, bribery, or trickery.

The game went pretty good after that, so I think maybe he honestly realized he was in the wrong, but I have a -20 penalty to my sense motive check because of a curse of my own formerly known as Asperger's Syndrome so I can never truly be sure if an apology is sincere or not.

He's been a friend a long time (like 15 years or so... I knew him when he was like "buy me beer" because I was 22 and I was like "no, you are not 21 yet, I'm not going to jail for you" (forget exactly how much older I am), that's also another reason why I even gave him the chance to apologize without saying "Get the **** out of my game".

So, what do you all think? What would you do in this situation?

A few things in no particular order:

1. Good on you for not letting Asperger's keep you from GMing. This does, however, mean that you're gaming on hard mode and that your players will need to take this into account.

2. You are gaming with friends and you have existing relationships to maintain away from the table. While it raises the stakes it also means that you have more mechanisms to de-escalate the situation. Whatever else happens, prioritize the friendship over the game. You can always meet new people to game with (I was fortunate enough to meet a great group over Craigslist a few years back and we all became great friends even away from the table).

3. That your friend was upset about not being able to play a class that later showed up as an NPC is not entirely unreasonable. He did handle it poorly though and made the effort to apologize. You're not good at determining the sincerity of apologies so you're better off assuming that it was sincere until confronted with evidence to the contrary. You'll be a happier person for it.

4. Your choices were also understandable - you were trying to keep verisimilitude in your game by limiting some of the more outlandish race/class combinations to NPCs. Personally, I handle this differently and err on the side of letting players play what they want as long as it's not mechanically abusive.

5. On the bright side the player is invested in your game enough to feel strongly about it. While this will sometimes give rise to uncomfortable outbursts it also can allow for excellent gaming. The best game I ever played in had a huge ****storm over a PC charging fees for crafting. Words were said, we ended the session early, but once it was resolved we were better friends than we were before.

--
First off, decide in advance how hard a line you want to take on the issue of restricting PC classes for story reasons. I would suggest relaxing your stance on it - there's plenty of techniques you can use to make interesting NPCs aside from saving a unique class for them.

Next, I'd sit down with your friend over a beer and talk to him about the incident at the table. Whatever else happens, keep it calm. Ask your friend to keep his outbursts calm and constructive or to talk to you away from the table since it's a struggle for you to continue the game in the face of a lot of negativity.

I'm not buying it. In practice rogues seem awfully death prone - poor fort save, a sneak attack mechanic that encourages them to risk a lot to get into advantageous melee positioning, fewer hit points. This is to say nothing of the fact that a lot of their skills are easily replaced by spells.

It's smart in the sense that ultimately Pathfinder is a game and games are supposed to be fun. Most players don't thrive on rules minutia like we tend to do on the forums. Probably they start off taking what feats seem pretty good and choose new feats depending on the situations that come up in game. Failing a lot of will saves? Take Iron Will. Still failing a lot of will saves? Get gear that boosts will saves and consider taking Im Iron Will. The beauty of the fighter being that you can take feats that serve well at low levels (e.g., Cleave) and swap them out later on for something more relevant.

Also, most people I know don't play as much at high levels. The calculations become onerous, combat bogs down, and the narrative becomes more about PCs as superheros rather than the guys that might get in a fistfight at the local pub. As for why they're not playing a simplified version of 2e - we end up playing what our friends play. The guy who's most excited about ruleset stuff is probably the GM and so the rest of the group ends up playing that system - he's already made the investment in terms of books and all that.

You forgot Samurai. I played one from levels 5-13 in Rise of the Runelords who proved to be an absolute beast. Challenge mechanic for extra damage + boosts to saving throws + ability to turn an enemy's critical hit into a regular feat + full druid companion animal makes for a pretty strong martial class. Admittedly, the class has a much narrower focus (mounted melee specialist) but it's quite good in that role.

Yeah, he's a wizard that dominates the game via combat and doesn't makes the game less fun for other people. He is the main damage dealer and this is because he gets the money from other party members and crafts numerous wondrous items. There is a rogue and the rogue does not do anything since the wizard takes care of the situation before the rogue can even do anything. He wants to be the spotlight and he made his character to be the main driving force of the party and shadow everyone else. He only heals himself and doesn't cast spells to anyone else for the reason of "I have limited spells". Also he threatens to kill the party members if they piss him off IRL and now he has raised the price to 75% and is now screwing everyone else and now we are all at his mercy.

TL;DR You are correct, he is that kind of wizard.

I have considered that, however this is the only game that is near my location. Basically, my only choices are, leave the game and don't play anymore Pathfinder or stay and endure the negatives. Also I've been with this group for years and this is like the only major problem we have come across in the game. I, for one, see that leaving the game should be my last resort and should try to convince the PC to the best of my abilities before choosing to leave the game.

I would encourage you to talk to the GM in private about your concerns. If for some reason that can't be done talk with another player with which you have a good rapport. The behaviors you described are way out of bounds and that player should know that this kind of thing isn't acceptable.

Finally, this thread has been taken over by the people arguing about the ethics of fantasy microeconomics. The real issue is that you're dealing with a fellow player who wants to dominate the game and a GM that hasn't yet curbed that behavior. If you'd like to discuss further consider staring a thread in Gamer Talk.

The reintroduction of gray wolves into our national parks. So far the Parks Service has been able to cover up all the deaths but it's only a matter of time until the lame-stream media starts to pick up on it.

Checking the body for gold is a type of caring. Sheez, cut the guy a break already.

I would talk to him about becoming an anti-paladin. Not a Disney Evil Villain anti-paladin doing evil to see how evil that evil can be. Instead, he should still think that he's a paladin but is rather deeply deluded, gradually turning bitter and ultimately resentful. I'm sure you could work out motivations to keep him an active participant in the plot (vengeance, wrath, greed, etc) and the rest of the party probably doesn't have a paladin to be upset about there being an anti-paladin in the party.

I say take role-playing lemons and make role-playing lemonade.

edit: If you play it right the rest of the party wouldn't necessarily know he's turned anti-paladin for quite a while, especially if the now anti-paladin takes pains to conceal the change. Eventually he'll probably betray the rest of party (when they inevitably find him out) and have to roll up a new character but it'll be a great story arc to play out.

edit 2: I wouldn't switch directly to the anti-paladin alternate class rules. Instead he'll keep his abilities (lay on hands, smite evil, etc) at first and gradually change over as he accepts his new life.

Cole Coyle the Mole Mohel. Kind of suggests a preferred attack as well.

... DM:"So... what did you have?"

Me:"Uhh... I collected some moss?"
*beat*
DM:"A cutpurse has stolen your pouch of moss! You see him dart off through the crowd."
Me:"Okay." *beat* "Boy, is he in for a surprise."
DM:"Aren't you gonna chase him down?"
Me:"For a pouch of moss? Why would I bother?"
DM: *headdesk*

Something similar happened to my g/f's friend in NYC. She was dog sitting an older dog. The dog dies and the owners tell her to take it to the vet (either to dispose of the body or figure out how it died). She doesn't have a car so she puts this dog into an old suitcase and takes the subway. She gets to her stop, starts lugging this fairly heavy suitcase up the stairs when a pleasant stranger offers to help. He gets to the top of the stairs and takes off with the luggage, dead dog and all.

But Christmas (a.k.a. my birthday) is coming, and all we want for the holidays is some playtest.

Your birthday falls on Christmas? That's rough, I'm a 12/23 myself. All I want for Christmas is to have a half-way decent party for once and for people to stop wrapping my birthday presents in Christmas paper.

I bet they waited until 11a to release the playtest so that they could incorporate every last bit of the talmudic wisdom in the message board threads.

Azran wrote:

@Nicos: No you are going to far. The vanilla conjuration school is usually better at lower levels.

nah, the original ability is "meh" at lower levels and worthless at mid to high levels. The teleportation subschool is usefull at lower levels and totally fantastic at midto high levels.

Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Pardon me, Werebat. Everyone in the entirety of Asia in the 13th Century would like to have a word with you. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire

To be fair the Mongolians were notorious munchkins.

I am more interested in how many rogue replacements will be.

I'd love to see a class called the "rouge" based on all I've heard about it on the boards.

So for those that haven't heard yet the last 2 classes for advanced classes have been announced and I again have some worries about one in particular. Apparently we will be getting a new class called The Brawler which is meant to be a class that, "blends the fighter and the monk, creating a warrior whose sole focus is unarmed combat and martial maneuvers, without any of the mysticism of the monk. This class is designed specifically to beat up monsters, with a full base attack bonus progression (like a fighter) and improved unarmed strike damage (like a monk). To top it off, the class is also very skilled at making combat maneuvers."

So they finally fixed the monk? Cool.

The starknife is 100% biodegradable. It's friendly to the earth and it can hurt you in 100 different ways. It has warrior capacities and it looks a little bit funny.

For most combats we'd usually say the NPCs fought their own battle against enemies not shown on the table. Saves the GM a lot of dice rolling and still keeps the NPCs around for narrative moments. Remember to make sure to adjust your descriptions of the NPCs after combat (Jakardros pulling arrows from dead ogres, Shalelu using her wand to heal an injured Vale).

I think the rouge makes Canadian Football a lot more interesting and I'd like to see the rule implemented in the U.S.

I'd buy an Iron Golem (150K), Cube of Force (62K), and a Scarab of Protection (38K).

I say let him try. It's these kind of epically bad ideas that make for stories that you'll be talking about years from now:

"Remember that time when Jim's cavalier tried to tame a greater barghest?"
"Yeah, and it gutted him then and there and made a jacket out of his skin."
"That was the best! What was he thinking?!"

or it's possible he might succeed:

"Remember that time when Jim's cavalier tried to tame a greater barghest?"
"Yeah, and it worked for two sessions until the barghest gutted him and made a jacket out of his skin."

Let's try to turn this thread around by saying something intelligent about the original topic.

/I got nothing.

@OP - What level are they starting at? Certain sets of mechanics can be pretty intimidating if you jump in at a higher level as opposed to settling in from first.

I would suggest introducing her to the Witch. Choosing a patron will help her develop an idea of what her character will be like and familiars make for great roleplay. As a prepared arcane caster the witch complements the other characters nicely and hexes give her something interesting to play with at lower levels. Finally, since she's INT based she'll have plenty of skill ranks to throw around and will rock at knowledge checks (a weak point in this party).

An entry in another thread got me thinking about a campaign where one of the many races of a world decide they are the master race and commence a war of ethnic cleansing and enslavement against all others.

Wasn't that one of the tropes in the Dark Sun setting? I'd imagine there will be some sort of ecological disaster would come with that. Seas of Silt and deranged halflings.

How would this affect classes like Paladins or other characters of good alignments who believe in this philosophy?

Probably they'll lose touch with their gods and have to worship some sort of Sorcerer King to get their powers. Either that or gain some kind of psionics to compensate.

A lot of people complain about rouges and say they're underpowered but I think they make the Canadian leagues a lot more fun.