Ian McDougall's page

Thanks.

I just got notification that my order (comic-book subscription) has shipped, but it does not appear to include my sidecart item (Labyrinth Lord). Is this a function of the comic subscription being different, or is it a mistake (either mine or Paizo's)?

Thanks.

Most of this order shipped, except one item. It appears however, that I am waiting for the wrong item. I would like to clarify that I have received my Duel Masters Starter, and have not received my Firestorm TCG Display box. This may just be a display issue, but I would like to catch it before anything more is shipped if it is not.

I'm looking for an article I read (3.X) that featured the creation of the "candlemancer", a variant wizard IIRC, as a step-by-step process. I found the class itself in Tome and Blood, but cannot find the article. Does anyone else know where it might be?

Two items in my order, specifically the black and green game pawns, appear to have become backordered, with the rest of the order pending on them. Would it be possible to split my order after the fact? I'd pay any associated shipping fees.

Rather infuriatingly, the "Title" field of PDFs I've downloaded from Paizo is exactly the same as the cryptic filename I was hoping to dispose of. In other cases, the title field doesn't appear (from other publishers), and I imagine that in some cases there's even a title in the title field.

Obviously this is something that would take a lot of work to fix, but if you ever find yourself short of improvements to make, I'd appreciate anything that could be done. It makes it hard to use my PDFs when I can't recognize them readily, and renaming them will be a long task if I decide to do it by hand.

Apparently White is on backorder as well as Red? I only caught it at checkout.

So uhh, I think that gave me a pretty complete view of backwards compatibility in pathfinder, thanks.

Does anyone have other thoughts that I should know about? Preferably, not "you're wrong for X reason" but more along the lines of "hey, nobody's mentioned issue Y." I don't actually need to decide now, I was just wondering about the state of the game, and the direction it was headed.

I received my order now, but I do have a few bits of praise and a few questions:

I got a pack of Item Cards with my order. It's not on the list of stuff in the order, and it looks and feels kind of like a freebie. If it is, it's a pretty cool freebie, and if it isn't, thanks anyway, it's still pretty cool.

My Dr. Lucky is leaning forward at an odd angle, and I can't tell if it's a bent mini or if it's a quirk of the design. If he isn't supposed to be leaning forward, is it generally ok to bent pewter back into shape by hand?

The Goblin Ninja minis are a "chocking hazard". I have yet to chock on them, but other than that they're exactly what I'd hoped for.

In general, everything in my order arrived quickly, and is of excellent quality. Thanks!

Actually ki always bothered me more than psionics because it was never fully explained or appreciated, but an overlap with psionics might be pretty cool...

My only concern with conversion was some of the rule changes, for instance to flying, but they don't look hard to deal with.

I think psionics does deserve to be developed better than it has been, although the 'Expanded Psionics' treatment was good. But my main reason to include it is convenience. If I want to find an alternate use for a skill, I don't want to have to look through a book other than the PHB - the book associated with skills. Similarly, including a nominal amount of psionics in the core book would make it that much easier to use psionics for anyone who wanted to. Actually that's not quite a good analogy, but I like both arguments so I'm leaving them.

It's all good, I'm just spoiled by built-in spellcheck.

I think that Pathfinder wanted to avoid "cheating" the terms of the license with name-changes and similar, although perhaps they would be favorable to a more complete rework of the dragons. As far as already OGL dragons, there must be some out there.

Anyway, my concern was less with balance than ease of conversions back and forth, although thanks for those thoughts on power creep, I'll keep them in mind. It doesn't seem conversion will be as big a problem as I was afraid.

My second point was that while some people are absolute about what they want put in pathfinder, a house-rule might be the best solution, the exception being in situations when Paizo might actually change the way material is published because of a decision. On the other hand some of these issues are valid, merely tangential, so the supplement of house rules I envisioned more as a list of issues discussed, in order to highlight potential problems and solutions. Keeping the early versions of Pathfinder would mostly solve that though, and perhaps more conveniently.

Anyway, thanks, you've helped me solidify my ideas and given me things to think on.

I assume by 'this' you meant only the last part of my post? I apologize for posting three disparate thoughts in one place.

I think the idea they were floating was just including the soulknife, which is psionic, but has no ability to manifest psionic powers. Obviously, including the entirety of psionics would be too much, but I was arguing that just a little might be convenient - it includes psionics in the mix enough that you can use it without an entirely different book. And although I can't think of specific examples, I would argue this in similar cases too.

I didn't follow last bit about dragons. What is chontic? Although yeah, gem dragons were in the MM2, so they're not open game content :(

I've noticed some trends in the discussions of the pathfinder RPG, but I'm unsure where to address them, so I thought I'd do it here. These are three completely unrelated thoughts.

This is a question concerning backwards compatibility: I realize that Paizo is attempting to ensure that previous 3.X material is easily converted to Pathfinder (at least I think they are), but will it be as easy to convert Pathfinder back to 3.X? I might like to use some of the material from it without a wholesale conversion.

I have noticed that some people see pathfinder as a way to fix rules that have never seemed quite right. While I agree that many of these small things could be fixed, perhaps many of them would be better implemented as house rules? For simplicity's sake, I think a few well-placed reminders that game rules are ultimately up to the DM and perhaps some suggestions in the book would be enough.

Finally, I have seen, specifically in the psionics thread, but perhaps it is elsewhere, arguments against including things in the name of space. Space is an issue, but in my opinion, a little of everything is more worthwhile than a few fully developed sections: the most useful 3.X book I ever had was the first printing of the PHB, the one with previews of the DMG and MM in the back. If you ever needed something from either, you could just pull it from the back of the book. Admittedly, the selection was limited, but the convenience was amazing.

Wizards of the Coast can barely keep their website and forums from crashing on a daily basis, did anyone really believe DDI was going to be this D&D break through Wizards is hoping for? They don't have the IT info structure, they never have, and I doubt they ever will.

To be fair, I think the WotC website used to be good. The columns and features on the old WotC website were what got me into D&D, and they're still there in the archives, along with the monthly adventures, many of which were amusing if not useful. "Random Encounters" and "Vicious Venues" were gold, and I always enjoyed the Map-a-Week. But I stopped when they started become predominantly product promotions, and old, generic features were dropped in favor of world-specific ones and product tie-ins.

Still, I don't think it's that WotC couldn't produce the content if they wanted to, I think it's that marketing interests have limited the scope of the site, and the type of content that reaches it. I also think that there's noting particularly wrong with the content, although it may be sparse (I have yet to investigate Dungeon), but that some types of content are best suited for the internet, and some types of content I want to be holding a physical copy of.

Thanks! I kind of like both stories, but I'll probably use the demon lord one because it's easier to expand. Of course, I sometimes forget the the 'official' story is optional, so thanks for reminding me. At the same time, it's always interesting to know the intentions of the author.

Right, so a little poking that I probably should have done in the first place reveals that Lascer is the creation of James Jacobs, which is pretty cool. But there is still a difference between the two backstories for Lascer: in "The Razing of Redshore" he is a powerful being in exile for killing a deity, and in "The Demonimicon of Iggwilv" he is a servant of Obox-Ob. I would guess Mr. Jacobs prefers the second one, but perhaps someone could clear that up?

It was pointed out in an old Sage Advice (3.0) somewhere that a gnome farmer is more intimidating than a half-orc barbarian. I think the response was that if the DM felt it appropriate then STR should definitely take the place of CHA. I'll see if I can find it and confirm that though.

That said, I think that maybe a note in the skill description mentioning that STR is also an option might be good.

I'm confusing the movements of a symphony with the movements of a mass, but oh well.

I never got my hands on a copy, and I imagine it's probably 3.0, but I know Monte Cooke had a book called "The Book of Eldrich Might II: Songs and Souls of Power". I enjoyed the first one very much, and I imagine the second one would be just as good a resource. (The first one was to the second one as "Tome & Blood" was to "Song & Silence". I think I got that right.) Probably a good resource if it's around.

And this is a random brain splurge, but maybe one of the pieces is 'trapped' so to speak? Unless you've built Tvash-Prull into your campaign already there has to be a reason he's still relatively obscure.

Anyway, good luck with that, and let us know how it works out.

I have two relatively unrelated questions that perhaps you could help me with:

I just found Lascer in the last Dragon issue, and remembered the Shadow Shoal from "The Razing of Redshore" (I think). Is there anywhere else the Shadow Shoal turns up? Also, there appears to be some discrepancy between the backstories for Lascer in Dungeon and Dragon, unless that's my imagination?

Also, while browsing through the monster manual, I saw the Grey Render entry, and really read it for the first time. It looks like a really good monster to place in a mid-low level adventure. Are there any established adventures with the Grey Render in them?

Thanks for your time!

What's the gist of the article? I rarely read dungeoncraft.

It's a general format for a short and concise dungeon. It's a brief description of the purpose of each of the encounters with examples. Ex: 1. is the gatekeeper, and 5. is the resolution. It's a good read, although a little strict; if I were to use it, I'd shakeup the order, or maybe have a 6-7 room dungeon instead.

For awhile Paizo had adventures that only went into issues going to subscribers, anyone got a list of which issues numbers and adventure titles those were?

Thanks

I don't have titles, but the issues were:

I can't speak for 102, but I know for a fact that 100 does not.

Thanks, sorry I thought it was a Dungeon for some reason. And thank you again, it's been bothering me.

I would definitely spring for the minis if they did anything like what Hat is doing. ~$4.00 buys a small box of 24 unpainted plastic minis, technically in 1/72 scale, but a goblin would come out fine.

I keep hearing "Up on a Rooftop" underneath most of these, can anyone else? It's very, very scary.

Thanks! But since I have to pick my issues w/o the aid of # 116, does anyone who owns that issue have the time to just put the dungeon #s that were in the sidebar list mentioned above? Thanks!

10. "Siege of Kratys Freehold" issue 33

Of course these are only from before issue #116, and probably didn't include more recent ones because there wouldn't have been a good way to judge the reaction in so short a time. My personal favorite was probably "The Abandoned Way Station" but I don't remember the issue number.

At some point I skimmed an article about building a 5-room dungeon, but now I can't for the life of me remember where it was or find it again. Can anyone point me towards an issue #?