Jarik's page

Yeah.. no one will forget the time the kobold blew up!

Any idea if I wanted a printed, bound version if a print shop like kinko's is allowed to do that?

Somewhere on the message board someone did a really cool interpretation of what the world might look like I will see if I can find it.

Edit: Found it and at the same time ninja'd by vagrant-poet. Still think this map is awesome.

Dolori Map

very cool, thanks! minus points for using Papyrus font though :P

Just kinda looking for other opinions here. What happens in your campaign when the rebellious, anti-hero, anti-establishment, lone hero tough-guy, Wolverine wannabes actually outnumber what's considered "normal"? Do any DM's here have players who predictably make the same character over and over and over again? When's the last time your players willingly went on adventure, battled the bad guys(instead of joining them), and didn't turn around and try to fork over the npc's that hired them?

Sorry for the rant, it's just something I've seen in almost every single campaign I play in. Everybody wants to be "the badass", Snake Pliskin, Wolverine type. After a while, there's not much of an establishment left to go against. I just miss the good ol' days, when you adventured for riches, glory, AND to save the kingdom.

I agree with you completely; If I hear one more Christian Bale Batman impersonation from the "urban ranger" at the table I'm going to choke. Then there's invariably the rogue battling with him to be the grittiest.

I wonder if they'll bring back the flip book modules...

Please no.

Oh man I had forgotten about that

Utgardloki wrote:

It's been my experience that wizards and sorcerers tend to get into combat whether they want to or not. Enemies have a way of targetting spellcasters. My goal would be to be able to survive a round or two while trying to get out of trouble.

Thats why my sorcerers usually carry Caltrops (sometimes with a sleep toxin), Alchemist's Fire, Tanglefoot Bags, Acid, Smokesticks and Oil. Battlefield control in a bag or bottle. That with a short spear and a light crossbow pretty much meant my sorcerers seldom needed to multi-class or needed a bodyguard.

Use much the same tactic for my ranged combat specialists. Usually buys me enough time to put a couple of point blank shots in the threat.

Weylin

I agree.. caltrops and the rest are so fun and effective and underutilized

Evil Lincoln wrote:

You guys all know about maptool, right?

It is less fancy, but I have had great fun with maptool and a projector aimed down at the table. I've even had some luck using real miniatures.

Now, that's several grand less expensive than the table, and I have WAY more functionality than that little surface demo does. (plus, my die rolls are instant. I could never wait for that one in the video to stop rolling)

I use Maptool (rptools.net) right now and I love it.

The fog of war and line-of-sight options are super handy.

Here's an example of a guy using maptools with a projector, with the added plus of a hacked Wii remote that gives it multitouch capability.

The software to make that happen is free and open source from Johnny Lee
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ (second one on the page)

I think we've stumbled into a whole new series of transmutation spells..

Costello the Creasemaster's Paper-to-Steel Slice-and-Dice

Fold up a little replica of a dagger and voila! Start the stabbin'!

While the druids slept, you should have reprogrammed the simulation, dropping the shields on the Klingon Warbirds and rescuing all the stranded crew. And you should have dickishly eaten an apple at the same time.

Jarik wrote:

Mithral doesn't allow you to break the armor proficiency rules -- you can't really wear mithral full plate unless you have heavy armor prof

You can wear it, just be prepared to take the penalty to Attack rolls...

Yeah I phrased that poorly.. should have just said, "Mithril Full Plate still counts as heavy armor for purposes of determining proficiency"

Spiked chains aren't reach weapons anymore

Mithral doesn't allow you to break the armor proficiency rules -- you can't really wear mithral full plate unless you have heavy armor prof

Monk Flurry of Blows attack bonus changed from Beta

Another vote for enlarge person and grease at 1st lvl.. and I'll also reiterate how great Message is. To always be in touch with the forward scout in the party is invaluable.. and don't forget that you can make that guard across the way go crazy thinking there are voices in his head :)

vikking wrote:

So I figured out the problem, but still have to figure a way to correct it.

I copied the map over to paint and started to draw a complete grid over the map and found that instead of a complete square grid, the map is a mix of square and rectangle.

I suspect it has to do with the compression done when trying to get the map to fit onto a single page. I’ll have to see if I have photoshop on my computer and see if I can figure out what to do to “tweak” the maps back to proper squares.

Actually this is the problem that I've had when converting the maps to online play. It seems that the squares on the Paizo maps aren't perfect squares. I don't know if this is translation error or what, but I have never been able to get my grids to match completely.

Like I said above, when you zoom in to pixel level the main problem is slightly inconsistent "grout lines" between the squares.

You could probably classify every PC that's ever existed as any of the nine alignments.

I'd like to see your math on that

Also, I don't think it's been posted so here goes.. this is a pretty solid website on the alignments, detailing societies of each type, what a character of that alignment would consider 10 commandments and 10 sins, etc. Worth a look.

http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html

The doctor was his MOTHER!

Why not? I trust that players are able to separate character knowledge and player knowledge. And if not, then they have their own consciences to deal with, as they are 'Cheating at Pretending'.

They're generally the same people who, as kids on the playground, continually claimed to have been "on base" or to have had "shields"

vikking wrote:

ok this is just because......

If you have "Sins of the Saviors" non pdf the module its self, take a peace of graph paper you can see threw and place it over the map of the Ravemous Crypts and line up the square grid of the map with the graph paper, you will see what i mean by the map kind of being off. I dont mind having 4 squares of the map per 1 square of graph paper, but it makes it hard to get all the lines to match up as 2 squares on the map are just over the 1/4 inch of my graph paper.

vikking, I know exactly what you are talking about--the Paizo maps often times actually skew over a distance, meaning they almost never line up exactly square all the way across a map. I'm not sure why this happens, but I've noticed it on multiple maps for the Savage Tide adventure path, and now for Legacy of Fire. The only way I've found to fix it is to extract the map into Photoshop and manually tweak it until the proportions are correct.

There are inconsistencies that I think are more than likely a consequence of trying to make the square on the Pathfinder maps look like they have depth (as if they are little grouted tiles).

If you zoom all the way in, the face of the first full "tile" (ie, not clipped by a wall) at the bottom left of area C16 on the Thistletop map is 17px x 17px.

The "grout" line between it and the one below it is 2px wide, while the line above is only 1px. Go one more line up and it's 2px wide. Wall thicknesses are similarly off by a variance of 1 or 2px here or there.

Over the course of the whole map it starts to put the alignment off if you're tracing onto grid paper or trying to line a grid up in Photoshop. I think that' s why you see the prevalence of methods that allow you to place miniatures directly on copies of the printed material

I think there's that point where the devs had to decide whether they wanted to make awesome looking maps or make very flat ones that could be perfectly copied onto grid paper. I'd say they made the right decision.

I think the spirit of the game lends itself more to this approach and less to trying to render architecturally perfect blueprints.

As it stands, I think that the goblins are lucky to work and live in a place with OSHA approved standard stair widths (although the lack of handrails needs to be addressed) and handicap accessible 10-foot-wide hallways. :)

There certainly is origami in Golarion!

Technically, in "Golarion" the closest you can get is "Oragoni"

This might not fall into the realm of what you're thinking but Wikipedia is invaluable.. most recently I used http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_gladiator_types to make give an arena games encounter more depth.

But, like many things on the internet (StumbleUpon comes to mind) there's the danger with Wikipedia of finding yourself at the computer 4 hours later reading about subjects so far removed from what you started out looking for that you can't figure out how you got there.

I happened to watch a great TED video about the intersection of math and origami the other day..

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_lang_folds_way_new_origami.html

Freeport stuff. Was going to adapt it to my new "Rock of Bral" in an attempt to make an OGC version of Spelljammer.

Airships from Bastion Press (see above).

Arcana Evolved for the magic and spell flavor.

Arsenal & Factory (Both out of print) are SciFi-ish.

RPGObjects' Legends of Sorcery. Elegant way to make d20 magic skill based without changing everything in your game.

I second Freeport. My DM ran Death in Freeport within an Eberron campaign and it was awesome.

i also bought a 32 inch tv for 5 dollars and a 21 inch computer monitor for 5 dollars. i dont think im going to use the tv to game, but the monitor maybe, for projecting monster pictures, npc pictures etc.

oh man I just found an awesome page of a guy demoing Johnny Lee's display in a gaming application. He uses MapTools on it as well, manipulating some maps of Faerun and then goes through some dungeons, using a light pen to reveal areas of the map and stuff. Then he shows a standard battlemat that can be drawn on with the light pen, and there are tools to add different textures, colors, etc.

Definitely worth a watch

http://www.youtube.com/user/SpynalTom#p/u/6/b1WqdPy655k

i just bought a lecture room quality projector for 20 dollars at an excess inventory auction at the univeristy of nebraska. there were 12 projectors there, and i could have gotten like 6 for 20 dollars a piece. in trying to figure out the projection to use it to map. i didnt think about the mirror. the game is played in the basement, so that would be pretty cool all the way around.

i also bought an old school school overhead projector, which im going to use for inititive. (3 dollars)

as far as the origninal posting: there is no good way, other than counting and drawing, or making a reference map before the game, on the 4 square per inch paper which you use, counting it out, and then using a thicker marker over the lines to make it easier to trace out at the game table.

good luck with your game.

That's an awesome idea.. I'll definitely keep an eye out for an auction at a nearby public university. Maybe I can put some of that government wasteful spending to use for me too!

as costs drop on flat panel televisions it could be feasible to flush-mount one horizontally in a custom gaming table.. that would be pretty nifty.

I could see awesome things happening with Microsoft Surface if it ever comes down to a reasonable price for consumers.

While I don't think they've totally got the essence of gaming down (virtual dice, are you kidding me?), these guys are doing some interesting things with the Surface

http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/20/surfacescapes-puts-dungeons-and-dragons- on-surface-makes-your-d20/

And Johnny Lee has done some amazing things hacking the Wii, which could potentially be turned to gaming purposes by some clever individual.
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

This setup is particularly promising (right at 2 minutes in)..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ

I thought katanas did 300d1?

I think it's 1dMöbius

I don't remember the brand off-hand (I am at work now) but I got lucky enough to find an awesome projector off of craig's list. It only cost me $300, he threw in the HDMI cable for free, and it has 80% of it's bulb life still left. It puts out a resolution of 1360x768 or 1280x1024 or...something close to that with the HDMI cable (was maxed at 1024x768 with the S-video cable before, which it's using in those pictures) but looks gorgeous now.

With the laptop having a lot of RAM, MapTools, and this set up, our game time has sped up quite a bit since I don't have to draw and re-draw maps anymore. There are some dungeons that don't really look that great (the final one in LoF1 is kind of plain) and I try to make up for that with the occasional diversion (I tried to build the 3D LoF 1 dungeon overnight...11 hours later and still was short, though I got a few rooms complete. Ah well) but for the most part the projector setup is the way to go. :)

Edit: As for the mirror, yeah, it works quite well. It degrades the quality a TINY bit (I can barely tell the difference) but it compensates things in terms of picture quite well. It flips the picture upside-down when it detects the projector is hanging like it is, and then there is another switch to actually change it to compensate for the mirror's reflection. Looks beautiful, and yes, the mount I bought for the mirror is such that I can un-tighten a couple screws and slide the mirror out of the way if I wanted. I haven't done it yet since the way my living room is positioned means I'd need to futz around with the couch and a projector screen, but it's been talked about.

if you do want a movie night I suppose you could actually just position a second mirror on the table to kick the image back in the original direction :)

I messed around with MapTools a couple days ago and it seemed very feature-packed, especially for a free program.

If I ever made this a reality I had planned on displaying the map out of photoshop and using layer masks to hide things. But it looked like MapTools has a fog of war setting.. is that what it's there for?

MapTools also appealed to me as I'm relatively new to DMing and don't have many miniatures amassed yet. MapTools seemed to have a ton of virtual ones built in and then there was another tool from the same company to easily make more from any image source.

KaeYoss wrote:

On a related note, why don't katanas have 2d10 damage, with 1-20/x5 crits. I don't care for damage, I just want them to fit my twisted image of samurai?

Because for a weapon as vaunted and nerdtastic as the katana, those stats are ridiculously low. How could the Highlander have been such a badass without a katana that did 3d100 damage without the ability to do critical critical hits and also grant an AC bonus and also x4 Str damage (not Str bonus... actual STRENGTH score).

Don't forget vorpal..all katanas are vorpal

Someone say projection? I can say this from experience, it is definitely worth it.

Especially since I've since upgraded the laptop since those pictures were taken, one that can now accept an HDMI cable. Meaning that the resolution can go high enough so the projected image completely fills that white board.

It is so excellent.

That looks killer, man. Color me jealous!

I've got the HDMI laptop.. wonder what I could pick a suitable projector up for...

Edit.. also just realized that you are kicking the image off of a mirror. I don't know why I'm amazed that works but I am. I would figure it would throw the focus way off for some reason. That's great to know it works though. Any tips or tricks involved there you can share?

That's appealing because it seems you could still remove the mirror and have movie night fairly easily.

Here's the scenario: A wizard NPC has charmed a waitress to deliver the PCs drinks with notes attached. I thought it would be fun if the notes, or "Cayden Cailean's toasts" were origami heads perched like they were sipping drinks. Is it within Golarion's character to have developed origami?

I'll answer your question with a question. Is there origami in YOUR Golarion?

Cool stuff! I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for sure and on the development of your utility.

One suggestion would be to have feats like Skill Focus, Weapon Focus, and any others that can be taken multiple times create a duplicate unchecked entry below themselves in the list whenever they are selected.

Also, on those types of skills a blank area where the skill or weapon chosen could be input would be a big help.

Keep up the great work!

yoda8myhead wrote:

vikking wrote:

I think that they just need the grid lines on the map to line up with the lines on graph paper. making it easier to trace.

Without knowing the scale of the grid you're using and the width of the printed lines on those pages, it would be near impossible for Paizo to do that. And what if you and I use different sized graph paper? Who should Paizo cater toward?

let me clear up my frustration a bit.

I can get 4 squares from the printed map to fit in 1 square on my graph paper no prob. but 2 to 3 squares to the left or right of the section I have lined up are no longer matching up....ie the printed map squares are now no longer lining up with my graph paper lines. the lines on my paper now start to bisect the squares on the printed map.

so it starts off all lined up nice nice like but then starts to become un-aligned the farther from the center as I get.
The graph paper im using, 1 square equals 1/4 inch. the full sheet is 8 and a 1/2 inches x 11 inches.

does any of this make sense?

now dont get ne rong, I love the maps, the looks the realistic feel and all but the grid is a bit off which is what erks me i guess.

The 12 dollar Game Mastery Flip Mat on this site isn't a possibility? Seems like it would save you a ton of frustration. And price-wise, that's like 3 pads of graph paper that you're just throwing away now.

James Ellroy's American Underworld trillogy, hands down. For fantasy, I'll have to go with Glen Cook's Black Company series. His new Instrumentalities of the night books are excellent too.

For classics, Zelazny's Amber series is pretty good (the old cyle is better than the new one), as is Gene Wolfe's Books of the new sun. Finally, I like Steve Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

I almost picked up Black Company the other day.. it's that good huh?

I just actually realized that they were written back in the 80's. The version I saw was a new printing with the first three books all compiled and printed on really nice stock and for some reason assumed it was from the last few years.

I read quite a bit and had never heard of them.

1. Conan

2. Stormbringer
3. Amber
4. Harry Dresden
5. Dark Tower

Wheel of Time... first part of the final book comes out on Tuesday!

Troy Denning's Prism Pentad (set in the Dark Sun world) was really well done too, and has recently been re-released

Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is one of the best-crafted trilogies ever

Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies are awesome also

And you can't count out the old school Choose Your Own Adventure books :)

Rise of the Runelords might be a solid choice..
here's a link to the Players Guide..
http://paizo.com/download/pathfinder/RiseOfTheRunelordsPlayersGuide.zip

Second Darkness is tough for a paladin (they tend to try and smite everyone in Riddleport)

Jarik wrote:

I think that name would have helped to some degree.

And having never played a healer I have to admit I've not looked very closely at the exact limits of each healing spell before.

And finally, my last post was a fail attempt at having the final word, and I was grasping at something to come back at you with :)

Never try to win the final word game with someone who has the ability to lock threads! :P

True, and I think that is fairly well illustrated by our respective forum avatars. You, a fierce T-rex and me, dinner.

Jarik wrote:

Touche! Although, if I read it as a maximum of +25 dmg healed total, and the OP read the other part the way he did, maybe the spell description isn't quite as clear as it might be and could stand a little overhaul at some point :)

Well, since the spell's written with the same language there as all of the cure spells, I'm not so sure how much more clearly that can be imparted...

Perhaps if Jason had stuck with my original name for this spell, "cure deadly wounds," that relationship would have been more obvious.

I think that name would have helped to some degree.

And having never played a healer I have to admit I've not looked very closely at the exact limits of each healing spell before.

And finally, my last post was a fail attempt at having the final word, and I was grasping at something to come back at you with :)

Jarik wrote:

One hitch.. the spell restores a maximum of 25 hp :)

One hitch back at ya!

Breath of life restores 5d8+1 per level, maximum of +25 at 25th level.

At minimum caster level of 9th, you're healing 5d8+9 points of damage. That's 49 points of healing maximum.

"This spell cures 5d8 points of damage + 1 point per caster level (maximum +25)."

Touche! Although, if I read it as a maximum of +25 dmg healed total, and the OP read the other part the way he did, maybe the spell description isn't quite as clear as it might be and could stand a little overhaul at some point :)

Here's an example of how the spell works in play.

We have, as exhibit A, the barbarian Ostog the Unslain, who has a Constitution of 18 and thus dies when his hit point total reaches –18.

Ostog is savaged by a dragon and dies when the monster's attacks reduce him to –80 hit points. When this happens, there's basically a 1 round window to save him with breath of life.

Ostog's cleric friend Vorn runs up to his mangled body and casts breath of life on it. He rolls his dice and cures a total of 35 points of damage. This brings Ostog's hit point total up to –45... still beyond his limit of –18. Ostog at this point remains dead. If there are no more breath of life spells cast on him by the time Ostog's turn comes up next in Initiative, he stays dead, and is now beyond the reach of breath of life to bring back to life. Break out the raise dead spells.

NOW! Let's say that Ostog has ANOTHER friend in the group; a bard named Styrian who happens to have a good Use Magic Device check and a scroll of breath of life. Before Ostog's next turn comes up in initiative, but after Vorn casts his breath of life spell, Styrian steps in with his scroll and makes all the skill checks he needs to in order to cast the spell. This second breath of life spell ALSO cures 35 points of damage, bringing Ostog up to –10 hit points. Ostog is now above -18 hit points, and is thus brought back to life (although is still out of it since he's at -10 hit points); at this point other magical healing of any sort can bring him back to positive hit points and he can get back in the fight.

One hitch.. the spell restores a maximum of 25 hp :)

He might also turn into a monkey mentally. That's definitely not a buff as far as I'm concerned :P (okay, dwarves would trade up).

True, although if he retained his mental faculties and was just an extremely overpowered character with animal abilities he'd have to multiclass into monk.

The spell Breath of Life brings a question:

It claims to be able to revive the newly dead, but the mechanic says: "If the healed creature’s hit point total is at a negative amount less than its Constitution score, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. If the creature’s hit point total is at a negative amount equal to or greater than its Constitution score, the creature remains dead." But the definition of dead IS having a negative amount equal to or greater than you CON score. So, in order for this spell to bring someone back to life, he can't be dead yet.

So, does this spell truly raise the dead, making the above mechanic wrong, or does it only act as a cure spell, making the claim of a difference wrong?

Or something else?

You can be dead without having a negative hp total greater than your CON (Constitution drops to 0, or killed outright by a spell or effect..although the spell doesn't work on those killed by death effects)

Also, the writing isn't real clear, and here is more of the spell description..

If cast upon a creature that has died within 1 round, apply the healing from this spell to the creature. If the healed creature's hit point total is at a negative amount less than its Constitution score, it comes back to life and stabilizes at its new hit point total. If the creature's hit point total is at a negative amount equal to or greater than its Constitution score, the creature remains dead. Creatures brought back to life through breath of life gain a temporary negative level that lasts for 1 day.

I read that as meaning, "apply the 5d8 healing and if that leaves the character's hit points at less than negative CON they stay dead." I might be wrong there though.

A player wants to play an orc in the adventure path. we dont have the campaign book, so we were wondering how likely would it be to have an orc wandering in the city?

Here's the free Players Guide for the Council of Thieves path if that helps

http://paizo.com/store/downloads/pathfinder/adventurePath/v5748btpy89m7& ;source=search

Ack!!! All Sorcerer 1st level attack powers are weaker and limited to 3+CHA per day and do less damage. This includes the claws.

On the flip side, Bloodline arcana makes up for it in spades.

Draconic sorcerers do +1 damage per die for their energy type

Elemental sorcerers get free energy substitution for their energy type which rocks.

Wow.. hope my DM house rules the 3+Cha limit

What was done to Arcane bloodline to change it?

And when you say elementals get free energy subs, do you mean that they can use any energy type for their ray?

thanks a ton, really need to know whats up

Thanks guys! Garen should be a hell of a lot of fun

I like it. Very detailed and the origin of the bloodline is very nice. One point of correction. At the time of the death of Aroden, Magnimar had been in existence for 22 years. Instead of stating "The Dayles were some of the first inhabitants around Magnimar ...", it would be better stated "The Dayles were some of the first refugees from Korvosa who settled in the area of Magnimar ..." or something similar. Nitpicky? Sure, but still. :)

Love the concept as a whole though. Very well filled out and I especially like the logic behind his initial spells.

Thanks! That's exactly the kind of information I was hoping to get from posting here.

Here's an image I found and slightly edited to represent Garen..
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/6884/garendayle.jpg