Kalmyel Stedwethren's page

I know story-wise it isn't based on any period in our history - I for one prefer the broader range of options available(not to mention the inclusion of magic and monsters).

I just thought it might be interesting to note that anyone who claims that guns & "Arthurian" knights in full plate can't be in the same place together because "it's anachronistic" was wrong...

Just as a quick note, since it doesn't seem to have been mentioned here already - while the 6 shots per second is unrealistic even for the 17th-century period of the Three Musketeers, firearms have been in use since at least the early 15th century. I will admit that the guns as detailed in PF are more advanced than the C15th versions.

Full plate as Pathfinder describes it is from 15th century - the period of the Wars of the Roses - so having the two together (along with crossbows and lonbows) is not anachronistic. Somewhat ironically, the arrival of plate armour meant that only bucklers and pavaises (tower shields) really saw any use any more, so the image of a full-plated knight with a sword and shield *is* an anachronism.

Of course, PF is only loosely based on our history at best - even without guns, the mix of weapon and armour technologies found in any Pathfinder Lodge would span several centuries of Earth's history - so in the end it's up to each DM to decide for themselves.

I'm playing a level 4 Magus/1 Bard in the Carrion Crown campaign. Just took the Bard level. Is my CL 5? Does it depend on the spell I am casting? So Cure Light wounds would be a d8+1 but Burning Hands would be 4d4? Both are spells but not on the same spell list.

Your Bard caster level is 1, and your Magus Caster level is 4, so 1d8+1 and 4d4, respectively. BAB stacks between classes, but Caster level does not.

My personal hope is that there won't be a need to "swap classes" unless you're looking to change up your action bar. People who train as multiclass fighter/mages should be able to operate as multiclass fighter/mages, and not have to lock themselves in to one or the other. It is, after all, a time-honoured archetype (though I accept that without swapping gear you wouldn't be at full effectiveness)

I ran (briefly) a forum game on another site where the players got to choose their name and a general outline of the skills & abilities they wanted. Beyond that, nobody knew stats, classes, or even what game system I was using. While it didn't last long due to the workload outweighing spare time, the feedback I got was that everyone enjoyed the experience, and only having a rough idea of how injured/tired they were was far more immersive than "I still have 3 hp left...".

Ticolensic - the dispersal pattern of particles from a sneeze.

Kattaribesh

Using the spellbook will replace my weapon attacks? What if I want to stab someone between castings? Will I need to Refresh the book, change back to a weapon and then waste another refresh to get the rest of my spells? Am I limited to cantrips in combat instead of using cold steel, while my spellbook is in effect?

Also, if I want a particular spell more than once, does that mean I need to put more than one copy in my book, or will having it there once allow multiple castings?

I don't have the books with me right now, but aren't vermin mindless? The kind of advanced reasoning that goes "hey, things just got burny here - that wizard did it" should be entirely beyond them. "Pain! Pain! Let's lash out at the nearest thing!" is more what I'd expect.

Nah, less math, and less encumbrance as well. Remember that they use the base 10 system. Magic items are so ludicrously expensive that the only way you'd have the moolah to buy them and NOT be crippled by the weight is through pp.

Nope, the APG (if you look at it) is more of a all around book, meant to add onto the core book. No other book is that general, nor does any other book have as many base classes or alternate base classes. The only other one that comes close is the Ultimate Equipment book.

Those weights I mention are of actual fighting arms from the period, not using modern steel.

Just because items are priced in gold doesn't stop you from paying in platinum. Otherwise, it's like saying you have to pay for your groceries with $1 bills instead of the $20 in your pocket. Putting the prices in gp just keeps the pricing "scheme" standardised.

Being an elf?

My understanding is that when you have sufficient xp in the bank, skill training is instant. Of course, you still need to earn your merit badge to get any benefit from your new skill...

I personally like the large variety of female minis - to the point where it's easier (in Reaper's catalogue at least) to find a female mini that suits a concept and looks good than to find a male one. Though it would be nice to have wizards who wear more than just robes (women) and don't have beards (men). Besides, getting more people into the game can only be a good thing, regardless of gender.

@ Richter - don't think "mass produced", think "commissioned". Actually having your character involved in crafting is something I was pushing for, but the system as it stands is "fire up the NPCs and come back in a few hours". As much as I'd like to, I will not be crafting anything, just asking my private bevy of craft-slaves to do it for me.

It has already been stated that you personally will not be crafting anything - you'll be getting abunch of NPCs to do it, and "manage" the process with your trained skills. If you personally aren't crafting, requiring you personally to be a spellcaster for magic items seems unnecessary.

I haven't heard that one.

Well you are meaning someone with no physical stregnth merit badges to look like Arnold. Stats are natural aptitude, so someone with 7 str, who spends 24/7 at the gym eating protein shakes will look like Arnold, while the 18 str guy spending his days in the library, may in fact look like screech from saved by the bell.

Someone with 7STR spending their time in the gym and someone with 18STR spending all their time in a library will probably find their respective scores switching, or at least averaging out.

The game may be different, but there is no way in the real world that any human being that weighs less than 100lbs will have a strength score anywhere near 18.

Why shouldn't a mage in plate do as much damage as a mage in cloth -- so long as s/he put in the time and effort to train it up? If I put time into training magic, I don't want to be arbitrarily weakened just because of some preconceived notion. Let the time taken to train up armour be the cost of wearing armour.
Back on topic, I like the idea of repairable items with limited overall durability - but as others have said, magic items should be far sturdier - you're already risking their loss by just carrying them.

Having limited numbers of spellbooks would basically screw over anyone who came late to the party, and allow the early adopters to maintain superior power through both skill training and arcane firepower. I'm not convinced it's a great idea.

As mentioned elsewhere, the chance of creating a masterwork item basically renders all of the non-masterwork versions essentially useless.

The idea of "crafting above your level" having a degree of randomness in success/failure is fine, but if you're trying to make something that is well within your capabilities, it should come out as exactly what you wanted it to be.

From a roleplaying perspective, if you commissioned your friendly local smith specifically to produce a +accuracy axe, would you pay them for their time when they produced a weight-reduced one instead?

I'm going to weigh in as against this. I don't want to spend months training and hours/days/weeks gathering special materials to make a new & shiny piece of armour, only for the Random Number God to decide that actually, this Agile Mithril Breastplate of Stealth will actually be a Clunky Mithril Breastplate of Drawing Everyone's Attention.

If you want randomness, look for it in looted gear, or even recipe research. But please don't put it into actual crafting - unless you're ok with EVERYONE getting results that might cost them weeks of effort (for no good reason) every time they use their skills - and that includes mages, fighters, explorers, architects, masons and everyone else.

Valkenr does a pretty good job of describing what I DO want here.

Actually, if Nihimon is correct in this, and I just have a bunch of NPCs scurrying around my smithy/enchanting studio/whatever running errands while I do the actual smithing/enchanting/whatever, I'll be quite happy about that. There's no harm in accepting help, after all. I mean, it's nice that there will be a working economy and all, but some people take crafting skills for the satisfaction of creating things, not just making money.

But so far, all we've got is "you'll be needed occasionally, usually to run some errand", and "there MAY be some other mini-games involved". In a game like EVE, where a human just can't etch those microchips by hand, hands-off crafting makes more sense. But when the fabrication process involves a (demi)human being picking up a hammer and hitting a piece of metal, I see no reason why my character should not be able to do that herself with the right training.

I'd much rather be a totally badasstic ranger who manages to find an incredibly rare vein of mithril way the heck off in the boonies, than bee of a zillion schlubs who can all harvest, refine, craft, the whole way through.

While I'm willing to accept that I might not be able to handle the entire process from start to finish myself, would you rather be a badasstic ranger, or someone who sends out a badasstic ranger NPC and occasionally runs "quests" to fix her boots? This is my main problem with crafting.

Those things on the "mystery race" aren't its extra hands - they're Kuato.

Sure, you may have "mooks" haul buckets of coal into the forge, shovel the coal into the fire, and pump the bellows. But I seriously doubt you'll get through the whole process without the hammer ringing in your hands while the sweat of your brow drips.

I certainly hope you're right, because it sounds from the blog like I'll be playing a glorified gopher.

From time to time during the crafting job, you'll be informed that your assistance is needed, usually in the form of acquiring and supplying unanticipated components—which may be available only in distant locations or may be derived from the bodies of various esoteric beasts or rarely visited locales!

What would be better, albeit more complex to implement, would be to craft items yourself, and as you gain in skill (and thus reputation), you have the opportunity to take on NPC apprentices, and develop your smithy/enchantment studio/whatever into an organisation as described in the blog, rather than immediately outsourcing everything to NPCs.

Because really, if the sum total of my involvement in making a Ring of Protection is going out and collecting a dire badger spleen, why should I even need to train an enchanting skill instead of tracking/hunting?

Have I read this wrong?

From my perusal of the blog, your role in crafting is purely managerial, and your character will never actually make something themselves - instead they'll oversee some NPCs who craft for you.

Well, there go my plans for being a legendary swordsmith (in the style of Kill Bill's Hanzo Hattori). I don't even get to say "this sword is made with the sweat of my brow. I tore the ore from the earth with these hands, drew forth the iron from the ore with these hands, and fashioned the blade with these hands. This is my sword." Instead, I say "I had some mooks mine, smelt and forge this sword for me. Yay."

Don't get me wrong, it's good that you're supporting the large-scale operations that merchant-types will want to run, but some support for people who actually want to be crafters might be nice too.

So, instead he's going to try to turn these sticks he found into arrows. He works on it a little bit and his arrows suck, but he got a little better. Maybe someday if he sticks to it with an hour here and there he will make good arrows.

<snip>

...but during the time he's mucking about with arrows, he isn't fighting, and thus not gaining any combat XP.

So the entire crux of your post is the assumption that you won't be able to interrupt a skill-in-progress, train something else for a bit, and then pick up the earlier skill where you left off. That, or that you would have to do more than just duck into a menu to change your training.

The last I checked, nothing had been said one way or the other about this, and it may well be possible to chop and change between in-progress skills with no difficulty. Obviously, it would delay reaching the threshold of whichever skills you put on hold, but otherwise there's no difference aside from what you're doing while the fletching skill is being trained.

Or am I misunderstanding you?

The Difference Engine was the nominally steampunk book, essentially being a cyberpunk book with Babbage engines rather than computers. I believe the comparison to Neuromancer was just for the levels of grittiness.

Of course, nailing down what is/isn't in any given genre is an artform in and of itself these days...

I also like the idea of different languages in-game -- though the only place I've seen them implemented by the game itself was in WoW, where it was largely ignored anyway.

That said, when FF11(which had no such in-game languages) had Japanese, US and European players all on the same server, the fact that I personally could speak all of the main languages used *by the players* made my Red Mage pretty handy to have around. Until people stopped grouping with anyone from outside their own country, at least.

If you can introduce a niche for in-game linguists, that would be very nice - like, for example, a Dwarf NPC not hiking his prices up quite so high because this particular human was respectful enough to negotiate in Dwarven.

As someone who has friends with wildly differing amounts of spare time than I do, the learn-by-doing method would mean that if we all wanted to play together there would need to be dedicated alts for the times we could all get online, or we'd end up at hugely disparate levels. The time-based training method means that nobody would fall behind skill-wise, and that the friends with more time could spend it exploring, or gathering resources, or even just hanging around in a tavern being a drunkard, without worrying about putting too big a gap between us.

To more directly address a point you've made: Where is the sense of achievement when you gain that new skill point? It's been moved, to just after you go out and earn that merit badge that the skill training just opened up for you.

It has been said before that your trained skills do not directly make you better at anything. What the skills do is unlock the potential for merit badges, which DO make you better at whatever, and require you to actively go out and earn them.

Think of it this way: when you play a normal MMO, only one kill actually earns you each level - the rest is basically a grind to get to that point. The time-skill-training system just takes care of that grind for you in the background, leaving you free to do whatever you want until it's time to take that last step. As for the Eve levelling system being too slow for you...that's just a pacing issue. Or would you be happier about it if it took the same amount of time as normal, but required you to spend all of that time grinding mobs?

Well, I have to say that I'm a fair bit happier now that the whole money/training thing has been cleared up. One question though - it was mentioned somewhere earlier that you would only be able to train one character at a time, but the most recent blog lists "multiple characters" as a potential account enhancement - does that mean that the simultaneous training will be possible?

As a curiosity rather than a concern, will there be any attempt to manage the costs of individual resources in the game, or will economic manipulation be handled solely by faucets and drains for big-M?

To put it another way, if you notice the price of, say, Mithril is skyrocketing or plummeting, would you nudge the number of resource nodes to affect the Supply side of the supply-demand equation, or will it be all laissez-faire capitalism (except for big-M)?

Thanks (and sorry for what was probably a pretty bad knee-jerk reaction initially!)

While my initial (and continued) intention is to play as a subscriber - if the game's worth playing, it's worth paying for - the initial viewpoint of "this will be equally advantageous for people with time, money, both, or neither" looks like time and/or money will still confer a significant advantage. That in-game cash you just spent on training isn't going to buy that new sword, or that spellscroll, or those raw materials. Time to either pony up some cash or go gold-farming.

But I was feeling a mite pessimistic before I read the blog, so I may be misunderstanding things, or blowing it all out of proportion. The fact that my bank charges for spending currencies other than my native Sterling doesn't make this any better.

@Onishi:

If that's true, then I don't imagine there being many free-to-play players, which will drive the server population down - never a particularly good thing for an MMO.

Edit: @Vic - that's good to hear, but does that then mean that Onishi was correct in his assessment? What will be the nature of this stated money-to-training relationship?

...so you can buy skill training with real-world cash now.

I'm not sure that I like that - the skill-training system may have removed the benefit to people with more time than average, but you've just skewed it in favour of people with lots of disposable income.

How much would it cost to buy the training for an instant start-to-capstone class boost, and how long before someone buys it?

Edit: corrected spelling.

I think that in principle it's a good idea, but on the other hand I've never seen or heard of Pathfinder Society games happening anywhere over here other than at the UK version of Paizocon.

The upshot of this is that it's basically a benefit that other people in PFO get, but I'll never see. You can doubtless imagine that this doesn't excite me much.

Before anyone makes the obvious suggestion, there are already enough non-PFS games going on that starting one on my schedule is pretty unlikely.

Actually, I'm of the opinion that what Valkenr was pretty straightforward and easy to understand. The Pathfinder tabletop rules are not going to be used in Pathfinder Online. Some other rules will be used - some of them may even superficially resemble the Pathfinder ones, but that will be coincidence. The world and lore will be translated, but not the ruleset (aka "dice mechanics")

Anyway, back on topic: It would be nice to be able to disengage from combat and flee with a chance of success, and/or to fight with a guerilla-style approach. For that matter, although it may have been mentioned in jest, if socially-oriented players (bard-equivalents, etc) stood a chance of begging for their lives from NPCs, that would also be cool - so long as the chance never became a certainty.

We'll always have lone or small groups of players running around slaughter pigs for their often-not-there livers, but imagine having groups of players getting together, going out and quite litterally going on hunting expeditions? Imagine players gaining access to non-lethal methods of capturing wild animals also? Herd of wild Horses? A blanket of Sleep Spells, load them into the heavy-duty wagons and have the mages keep more Sleep spells ready in case they wake up, drop them off to the PC who has the relevant skill and an enclosed area to keep the horses while he domesticates and trains them, bang, you have 'Wild Stock' which can have random attributes to add to the next generation of Mounts.

Running out of Pigs? Go hunt down some more, and take a few back to the farmers to use as breeding stock to keep the numbers up while new farms are being built to deal with the influx of players demanding meat and hide.

This.

Not everything you do has to impact the world in a big way, and this? This I like.

I realise that a lot of this is still up in the air in terms of how the game will work, but is the Vanguard likely to be a roving mercenary force righting wrongs as it goes, or is the intention to stake a claim on an area and defend it more thoroughly?

I'm not planning on having much of a religious background (being atheist in a world where you might actually meet a god face-to-face appeals to my sensibilities) - hopefully that won't be too much of an issue?

I doubt that I'll make it into the first 4500 on the server, but I'd quite like to join the Vanguard if it's still accepting members by the time I do make it to the River Kingdoms.

With all this talk of "level 20/20 characters being too powerful compared to a normal level 20 character", a lot of folk seem to have missed where Ryan said that a brand-new starting player would be roughly equivalent to a lvl 6 Pathfinder character, and someone hitting their first capstone would be roughly equivalent to a level 10 Pathfinder character. While one is undeniably more powerful than the other, it's not nearly as extreme as the level ranges in WoW, or PnP Pathfinder.

If, after 2.5 years people start heading into gestalt territory (rather than direct stacking of "levels"), then that's fine by me too. They've put the time in, they should get something for it.

You know what would be nice? Reclaiming materials.

You've just slain the Hobgoblin warchief and looted his adamantine mace, but you've spent all your time training in swords, not knobbly sticks! No problem - take the mace to your smithing friend, and have them use the adamantine to forge you a new sword instead.

It makes far more sense than having to sell it just because it's the wrong kind of weapon, and is an alternate resource stream for crafters too.

I hope that the inns/taverns will have plenty of dark corners for people to sit in while they wait for a party (with their hoods up, naturally) :)

Seriously, I don't have any great ideas on how best to go about joining parties in PFO. What I *do* know is that in FF11, the effective level span in a party that could still get reasonable XP from monsters was so narrow that you could spend HOURS trying to get a party together, only for one member to quit 20 minutes after you left the city and put you back to square 1. It would be nice if we could avoid that.

In my previous groups, there were two ex-military types (one army, one RAF), one person with a couple of years' Jujutsu training from years ago, and I've been doing martial arts for getting on 14 years now.

So...kind of, yeah.

Surely the loss of higher-level spells offsets any potential gain from multiclassing. A Wizard(1)/Barbarian(2) with the trait has basically traded a cantrip, a 1st-level spell and a 2nd-level spell for +1bab, 6hp and +1 to Fort & Ref. Not to mention that her mage-college buddies will be showing off their 3rd-level spells when she's only just getting her 2nd-level ones, and so on.

Without it, she not only trades away her extra spells, but also loses relevancy on the ones she does have. Her damage spells are being cast against creatures with 3xHP and better saves than they're supposed to be, her range suffers, and her non-damage spells suffer from decreased duration.

If Magical Knack granted caster-level, spellslots AND spells known, then I'd agree it was overpowered. As it stands, it's basically just a trait-tax to keep multiclassed casters relevant.

EDIT: My apologies, I didn't notice that this was thread necromancy.

No, the OP clearly states that it's for listing what changes you want to see in future guides (without arguing over them).

That said: Please reinstate the Magical Knack trait. As it stands, spellcasters are essentially punished for multiclassing while the other classes suffer no such penalisation.