Jay Elmore's page

Assuming it follows the same structure, we should be expecting approx. 7 preview articles between now and the release of the player's guide.

I think the ones I am most interested in Dragonmarks and the integration of the new races into Eberron.

I'm surprised there has been little to no development of Eberron in the D&D Insider content before now, aside from Expeditionay Dispatches; the only two crunchy articles were in the first two Insider issues of DRAGON.

I am looking forward to having fleshed-out Doppleganger/Changelings and Kalashtar to use. I assume that dragonmarks will be implemented as "multiclass" options in a manner similar to spellscars in the Realms.

I hope they don't rearrange the planes to fit the 4E cosmology, but they've already sown the seeds for doing so in the Eberron conversion for H1:

Also called the Plane of Shadow, the Shadowfell encompasses both Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead, and a region of shadows and despair called Mabar, the Endless Night.

Link

Most of the cool art from products appears in the paizo blog as a preview a few weeks to a few months before the product ships.

I missed that one somehow. Thanks!

I've already said this in another thread, but I would love to see the "Imps vs. psuedodragons over Korvosa" artwork from the end of Curse of the Crimson Throne #1 as a desktop wallpaper.

On a somewhat unrelated note...

There was a piece of art in the back of CotCT #1 that about made my eyes pop out -- it was a swarm of pseudodragons and imps fighting in the skies over Korvosa.

Who do I have to have to /threaten/bribe/seduce to see that turned into a desktop background? Or a poster?

Tzzarg wrote:

Paizo did an excellent job with Rise of the Runelords and I am quite pleased with it. I'd love to continue subscribing, but I have more 3.5 adventure paths than I know what to do with.

Please cancel my Pathfinder Subscription.

Your subscription has been canceled.

Thanks,
cos

I am in the same boat; if there is an easy way to cancel my subscription on the My Subscriptions page, I can't find it.

Please cancel my subscription as well.

Jay Elmore wrote:

The Seoni in Hollow's Last Hope has Skill Focus (Concentration), which pushes her Concentration bonus to +8. However, the Seoni in Burnt Offerings swaps Skill Focus (Concentration) with Spell Focus (Evocation) so she can qualify for the Varisian Tattoo feat, but her Concentration bonus is still +8. Shouldn't it be +5 now?

I just asked James Jacobs about this and he said:

"Yup. It's a typo."

So there ya go. Good catch. :)

Well, I'm not normally so obsessive-compulsive, but I'm trying to create the PCs in PCGen and it took me a while to figure out why the bonuses didn't match up.

So am I the only one who got the PDF download?

If so, I just have to say that this book is amazing. Without spoiling anything, I can see the experience of creating Adventure Paths is going to pay off in this series.

I do have a minor nit to pick, however. I was comparing the pregenerated characters from D0 with the pregenerated characters from Burnt Offerings, and I noticed a possible typo:

The Seoni in Hollow's Last Hope has Skill Focus (Concentration), which pushes her Concentration bonus to +8. However, the Seoni in Burnt Offerings swaps Skill Focus (Concentration) with Spell Focus (Evocation) so she can qualify for the Varisian Tattoo feat, but her Concentration bonus is still +8. Shouldn't it be +5 now?

Wow that looks great!

And to think that if this were at the time when I first joined the boards, I'd have no idea who Larry Elmore was.

"Elmore? Who's that. I bet he sucks. I think Wayne Reynolds should do the cover!"

I've always been partial to his artwork for some reason. :)

I remember his covers to the Dragonlance novels and modules; his covers for the original trilogy are still, in my opinion, the definitive looks for those characters.

Jay Elmore wrote:

I thought I'd mention that I've created the pregenerated characters in PCGen and I'm working on the NPCs, monster race, and items as a loadable dataset.

Are you going to get this bundled in the datasets that PC Gen release? Since Pathfinder and GameMastery are all OGL, then I suppose Paizo wouldn't mind. Would you? It would be fantastic to have these all coded up for PC Gen.

The PCGen project likes to get permission from publishers before they distribute datasets based on their works, even ones licensed under the OGL. I was going to submit the dataset to the project for inclusion, but I wanted to let people know that one was in the works, and give Paizo the option of hosting it.

Hey guys,

the iconics look pretty interesting. However, the elf rogue's intelligence is listed as 8, but her skills would suggest that its actually 10 or 11.

I'm a little surprised that she doesn't have a better int, actually.

Also, I can't wait to see the art for the cleric and rogue; the artwork has really been top-notch.

cheers,

Black Baron

Thank you for pointing this out; I was trying to figure out why her skills weren't matching up with the ones in the PCGen character file I created.

As far as the cleric's bonus spell is concerned, PCGen gives her the same number of spells as the character sheet. So I think that's correct.

Jay Elmore wrote:

Just adding a "me too" to this.

I also sent an email to customer service. I'll wait a little longer before I start passing torches and pitchforks out to the mob...

I'm having a little trouble finding your email. Do you mind resending it to us? Thanks!

Done.

As I said, it's not a big deal; it seems like they take longer to get to me than I assume.

Just adding a "me too" to this.

I also sent an email to customer service. I'll wait a little longer before I start passing torches and pitchforks out to the mob...

on a side note it lists me as just a subscriber not a charter subscriber of pathfinder

Is there a difference? I just noticed it lists me as "just" a Pathfinder subscriber as well.

Jay Elmore wrote:

...the PCGen discs that were available as part of Free RPG Day (were they even available? The store I went to didn't get any)

The PCGen CD-ROMs apparently didn't get to where they needed to go in time to be part of the Free RPG Day package. But it's a free download anyway....

Ah, that explains it; I searched the PCGen mailing list and couldn't find a reference to the CDs after April.

And yes, it is a free download.

If anyone bothered to pick up the PCGen discs that were available as part of Free RPG Day (were they even available? The store I went to didn't get any), I thought I'd mention that I've created the pregenerated characters in PCGen and I'm working on the NPCs, monster race, and items as a loadable dataset.

For a brief time, I worked with Code Monkey Publishing on some of their licensed datasets. I'm making these in the release candidate of PCGen 5.12; I assume the discs had 5.10 on them but the characters should load, as I don't believe the datasets are using any of the new 5.12 features yet.

If Paizo is interested, I'd be happy to provide them with a copy of the full dataset when I'm completed for use as a free download, if they wish.

0) Order of the Stick (yeah, I know it's not an article, but it is the first thing I read...)
1) Core Beliefs
2) Dungeoncraft
3) Dragonmarks
4) The Ecologies
5) Demonomicon of Iggwilv

Turning Dragon into "online content"? Shouldn't they have been generating online content all along?

One just has to look at the fate of Polyhedron; IIRC, that was going to become an online newsletter/website. It lasted what, 10 "issues"?

Actually, after taking part in a discussion about the cancellation of Dungeon and Dragon on Slashdot, I feel compelled to come back here and offer my thanks for the following...

Core Beliefs:
As I said on /., my favorite set of articles to date -- so much so that it's inspired me to ask my DM if I can write similar essays for the deities of our homebrew campaign.

The Adventure Paths:
A great idea that gets better with each iteration. I think Age of Worms was my favorite to date, due to the story elements -- fighting a deity? Tracking down some of the Rod of Seven Parts? WOO!

Dragonmarks:
Too bad this series will get cut short; thanks to the lack of similar content on the WotC site (although Keith Baker recently contributed a new Dragonshards article finally) this was my regular fix for Eberron goodness.

Dungeoncraft:
Please consider doing a collection of the Best of Dungeoncraft. PLEASE. I didn't read the series until it moved to Dungeon (which is around when I subscribed) but I feel that a lot of good tips and ideas flowed from Monte Cook and Wolfgang Baur.

Wil Save: (yes!)
People thought this column was pointless enough to get it killed, but I feel like Wil Wheaton and I are at similar points in our lives (although I don't have any children yet, I know a few teenagers whom I'm kinda mentoring through learning D&D) and I enjoyed reading it.

Order of the Stick and Nodwick:
I can't get enough of either of them. 'Nuff said.

As I said before, good luck with Pathfinder; hopefully I'll see you with issue #1.

Chalk up another "thank you" to Paizo for the year-and-a-half-ish run on my subscriptions. After borrowing friends' copies of Dungeon and Dragon for ages, I finally broke down and subscribed when you put OOTS on the back page of Dragon. (Best thing since What's New, in my opinion...)

I'm ambivalent on Pathfinder, given the rise in cover price; I'll have to check my back issues of Dungeon and Dragon -- if I'm missing any I may go that route, otherwise I'll pop for the first 4 issues.

Either way, best of luck to you guys on Pathfinder. :)

Jay - instead of shelving the idea completely, why not try to rework it a little? Try to think of something else to include in the article along with the feats; once you have that idea, you should be good to go.

--John

I wasn't saying I'll never work on it, but knowing that submitting it "as is" for my first query will likely not get a positive reply saves us all some time and trouble. :)

Hi again everyone!

My soft moratorium on Class Acts articles featuring only feats is, as of right now, a hard moratorium. I accepted a couple more earlier today and that's it until further notice. If you have a CA query in my inbox that's for feats, expect it to be rejected when I get to it. If you have a CA query brewing that is all feats, don't bother sending it in. I have enough, thanks.

Yay! Boys and girls, research works! *shelving that CA idea for later*

In my opinion, Dragon is as good as I've ever seen it (I've been a reader on and off since about #150).

Agreed. I subscribed for the first time ever, back in January.

Core Beliefs is one of three semi-regular features that Dragon runs. There have been three so far, and they seem to appear every 4 months or so.

Might I just say that I love Core Beliefs? Maybe it's just because I don't get to play D&D as often as I'd like, but I've always wanted to see more exploration of the relationship between deities and their followers, plus all the good fluffy stuff (holy days, aphorisms, relics, etc.) If Faiths of Eberron is anywhere as good as the Core Beliefs articles, I'll be a happy man.

There is an Ecology article in every issue. They tend to be excellent.

I appreciate the sidebar with the various DCs for Knowledge checks. I think it helps set a good guideline for similar Knowledge checks.

The Class Acts has been changed from 1 page on each of the 11 core classes to 2 pages on each of the four class groups (Warrior, Arcane, Divine, Adventurer), with occasional support for the non-core classes (Scout, Favoured Soul, etc), and occasional support for Psionics (and, with luck, Incarnum).

Well, except for Mike's comment that he'd like to see the page count grow to where he can have more 2-page Class Acts, I would be slightly disappointed to see an Incarnum CA only because it would mean skipping one of the core CAs.

The four parts are labeled according to the complete books (and hopefully won't increase in number with each new complete book...).

Well, I've seen at least one "Psionic" Class Act, so I think we're actually up to five categories.

I'm hoping that we won't see "Mage", "Champion", and "Scoundrel" (the next three "Complete" books), since those are going further into territory covered by "Arcane", "Divine" and "Adventurer"...

Jeremy makes excellent points. The threat of death has an unbelievable effect on character's actions. IMC characters had made friends people high up in the kingdom, these people were friends with high priests. Thus if they were killed resurrection was available not to mention the DM has allowed a secondary ninth level spell that causes no level to be lost. The cost only increases. Then the kingdom comes out with a decree that all resurrections will be subject to review because of the upset to diamond flow. It is not a question of if one can be resurrected but when. Suddenly brazen characters are much, much more timid and reserved. This change occuring without final death only delayed return.

So your DM introduced a spell that negates the major penalty of being resurrected, and suddenly the PCs have little to no fear of death. Raise your hand if you see a correlation...

Without game balance you will not have character balance.

Amen, brother.

It seems that many of the complaints I've seen stem from DMs who either allow too many options for the PCs without correctly judging the impact on the game (understandable, given the breadth of options available), or decide a rule is harsh/stupid and make a house-rule to change/eliminate it without realizing the impact it has on game balance.

(Another option to shut down the easy resurrection mill in your campaign would be to make the remaining party members do a quest to earn the casting of the spell. Maybe the high priest wants to test their faithfulness or devotion, or wants to challenge them to do a deed equal to the one he performs for them.)