Kamelion's page

I believe Jessica and Robert. I'm particularly disappointed to see Frog God Games' joking response on Facebook to Bill's conduct. I think an apology and owning what happened would be the honourable response, not attempts at humour. I have cancelled my Rappan Athuk maps Kickstarter pledge and won't be supporting FGG or Paizo going forward unless things change, and change drastically. Fast.

Farcluun! Umm, I mean Tharcluun!

So cool. Really hope we get some more pledges to make this a reality :-)

Here's hoping ToH4 makes into the add-on packages!

Yeah, I'd be all over that!

Nice one Raddu :). As an international buyer, I really appreciate the move. Also appreciate the nice long KS duration. I just got a new client with work rolling in nicely. At this rate I'll jump in at the Game Master level in a couple of weeks. Didn't spend all that time with athas.org to miss this opportunity!

New updates, and one that Dr. JF is going to like...

Cool update - that NPC looks awesome :-) And nicely played with the second upate as well, heh heh...

99 backers! It's almost teaser time!

Awesome. Gonna check finances, but Pathfinder Explorer seems like the one for me :-)

Great thread - love hearing tales from the Dungeon of Graves :-)

FGG, please give us a fair warning before the subscriptins become unavailable. Thanks!

I second this. I got the RA sub through the kickstarter, but haven't subbed for Cyclopean Deep yet. Would hate to miss out, so advance warning would be hugely appreciated :-)

Go Bill! A regular RA fix is worth the wait :-)

Rappan Athuk is here :-) So awesome - you guys did an amazing job!!

Mine is now being held at the post office because I have to pay charges??!!! Books are exempt from VAT in the UK. What the hell are these charges? Not happy at all. Waiting to see what is going on...

Two of my mates have received theirs here in the UK. Mine has yet to arrive, but tracking says it's en route.

Bill, is there a deadline on the CD order? At what point will the subscription become unavailable?

Skeeter Green wrote:

Sunday, Bill and I spoke with a very classic writer on revamping a product released decades ago. I hope it comes out! So, kind of a re-do, but a mostly new product that maybe 1% of gamers know about.

I'm calling it right now: Palace of the Vampire Queen.

Ditto. My thoughts exactly :-)

#60 is now slumbering safely in the UK :-)

I recently joined Forsaken Studios, an indie games studio. We're making a sandbox MMO called Embers of Caerus and we just launched our Kickstarter to raise funds for our prototype, which we'll be showing to investors to secure serious funding. Please swing by our Kickstarter page or our website and take a look. If you like what you see, we'd be hugely grateful for your pledge!

(Mods, if this belongs elsewhere, please move it to the proper place. Thanks!)

Thanks for the update Bill! I'd love to add something to the box to get added value for the shipping, but my budget is blown already, lol! Well, I have some gaming money left over but I'm holding onto that for the Rappan Athuk pre-orders!! Will keep an eye out for the invoice either way :-)

Bill, any news on when the shipping invoice for the pre-orders are going out?

With 30+ maps detailing 10-ish encounter areas, I'm guessing that we'll be seeing maps that you slot together to make larger areas.

Well, battlemaps will be awesome either way :-) Those Skeleton Key maps were fantastic, though. A shame they never went deeper.

Quick question - are these battlemaps going to be in colour?

If new material continues to rock as much as Slumbering Tsar, I'll be buying! And if the conversions are solid, I'll be buying those too. Win/win :-)

Two words.

Tomb. Of. Abysthor.

Oh. That's three words. Hmmm.

Can we have the announcement yet please?

:-)

I'd love to see a PFRPG version of the Tome of Horrors. Other than that, though, I agree with those who have said not to update Necro stuff that is already in print. Far better to get Tegel Manor and Slumbering Tsar out there! They get my vote.

There is another thread around here somewhere with psionics ideas, but to respond to your points...

I am running a Pathfinder Dark Sun game with a psion and a soulknife in the party.

For the psion I did exactly the things that you are suggesting. I agree that the power points don't need changing - they balance well against the wizard's spells per day. HD should go to d6 and skills should be tweaked as you mention. I also gave them discipline powers like a wizards, but I was lazy and based the discipline powers largely off arcane schools (filling in the gaps with a couple of powers based on cleric domains or just making stuff up).

In addition, I gave the psion bonus powers in the same way that a wizard gets bonus spells. Basically, they can manifest a free power once per day (or more, for 1st-level powers as their manifester level rises )without spending power points (and can augment it with power points as normal). This is a direct port over of the wizard's bonus spells and helps to offset the psion's lack of 0-level powers while keeping the class on an even footing with the wizard.

After seeing the wizard and new psion in play together, I am satisfied that this new version of the psion is balanced. Both classes performed similarly to each other, with neither overshadowing the other. I'll be keeping an eye on how it goes, but so far I am content.

Although there is no psychic warrior in the game (yet) I agree that the class doesn't need tweaking. Basically, the psychic warrior's powers balance well against the fighter's armour and weapon training. In fact, I tend to think that the psychic warrior's 20 powers are maybe a bit more powerful, but offset by the class' lower HD.

As for the soulknife, I am still undecided. I am using the soulknife unchanged at the moment and it seems to be holding its own. The player has never played a soulknife before and is still finding his feet. The class looks balanced on paper against other melee-based classes, but I wonder if it might not run out of steam at higher levels. God feat selection is probably important here. Something to watch, I think...

Oh, and I'd give Psicraft to all psionic classes, just on general principle. I'm folding Concentration in Psicraft like with Spellcraft, so it becomes necessary. Autohypnosis has its own niche, imho, so I am leaving that separate.

For on-the-fly Grapple to CMB conversions, I have a little note stuck to my screen that summarises the basic changes. Add or subtract the following numbers from the 3.5 Grapple score to get the base CMB value.

FINE +8
DIMINUTIVE +8
TINY +6
SMALL +3
MEDIUM 0
LARGE -3
HUGE -6
GARGANTUAN -8
COLOSSAL -8

Then adjust as needed for feats/abilities like Improved Grab etc.

For feats, I did a table that compares the differences between feats at levels 1-30. Add the following number of feats when converting a 3.5 statblock to a PFRPG statblock. (These amounts are not cumulative.)

Level 1-4: -
Level 5: Add 1 feat
Level 6: -
Level 7-10: Add 1 feat
Level 11: Add 2 feats
Level 12: Add 1 feat
Level 13-16: Add 2 feats
Level 17: Add 3 feats
Level 18: Add 2 feats
Level 19-22: Add 3 feats
Level 23: Add 4 feats
Level 24: Add 3 feats
Level 25-28: Add 4 feats
Level 29: Add 5 feats
Level 30: Add 4 feats

For skills, I use the Alpha 1 system (aka the simple skill system from UA), so I just rebuild from scratch. Doesn't take more than a minute or so.

These are the changes I find myself referring to the most. The rest I tend to just play as written. Sometimes I'll add a hit point kicker, though, if I want the NPC to have a bit more staying power ;-)

My PFRPG game uses Arcana Evolved heavily, so the core book sees a lot of use. It's still going strong, thanks to the excellent binding. However, I would certainly buy a new edition if it incorporated all the errata.

PC's Name: Raeddyn
Race: Human
Class: Totem Warrior (bear)
Level: 6
Circumstances of Death: Slain by an Aspect of Orcus' single daily use of the Wand of Orcus' death attack on board a flying ship high over the Isle of Dread
Setting: Homebrew

PC's Name: Darganeth
Race: Human
Class: Sorcerer
Level: 6
Circumstances of Death: Beaten to a pulp by an Aspect of Orcus on board a flying ship high over the Isle of Dread
Setting: Homebrew

Primer
An incredible mind-bender of a time-travel movie. Loops within loops. Won't say anything for fear of giving away its twists, but if you liked Memento ,you'll love this.

Pi
From Darren Aaronofsky. Utterly deranged portrait of madness and genius and the fine line between the two. And, as and added bonus - unlike his other movie Requiem for a Dream - it won't make you want to go and kill yourself at the end!

Memento
You've probably seen it, but if you haven't, your life is not complete. One of the best movies ever, in the same tradition as Usual Suspects.

eXistenZ
Is this obscure? Dunno. A must-see for all gamers, as it delvbes heavily into the blurred line between real-life and game-life. More subtle than The Matrix although without the black leather. It's about a virtual reality gaming system. Say no more. Watch it. And enjoy your next Chinese meal ;-)

The American version of the Office was definitely amusing - enjoyed the episodes that I've seen.

The UK version was fantastic - a brilliant piece of work. On a par with Alan Partridge at his finest for comedy that makes you laugh out loud and cringe in horror at the same time :-)

Option 1. Most options, most flexibility, most fun. Had a player make a new barbarian just the other night. Good stuff.

That's a very sweet table! Another great design is the Agyris gaming Table (http://www.agyris.net/v3/ugt/default.asp)

Two of the guys in our group recently finished kitting out our new gaming room with a table based on the Ultimate Gaming Table design linked to above (it's the same design, only with nicer chairs and without the cup-holders, lol). I ran my first game on it last Friday and it was a dream. Surround sound, weapons bedecking the walls, cool drinks on tap. The whole thing only cost around $200 (the 8' x 4' plexiglass was the most expensive.) If you have the room, I highly recommend installing one. It doesn't break the bank and makes for the perfect gaming environment.

Second this. A downloadable index would make playtesting the Beta a whole lot easier!

Yesterday I bidded and a won a copy of Deities and Demigods. You know the one with the purple cover thats about 20 years old. Yeah that one...Anyway I opened it up and I about swallowed my dice...

The Cthulu and Melnibonean Mythos (Elric, Stormbringer) were missing. WTF!!!! That's why I stop buying food for a whole week (yeah video gaming is a cool job but it doesn't pay very much). Just so I could pay the 20+ odd dollars to have a Cthulu and Melnibonean Mythos in my Deities and Demigods. If there is anyone out there that has pity for a starving gamer could u send me copy (attachment zip .rar pdf whatever works)of these two missing sections to my email @ esotericluv@hotmail.com , I sure would appreciate it.

Lazy skeleton AKA EbonKnight

Michael Moorcock has the pages for the Melnibonean mythos scanned amd posted at his site here:

I think that rewarding levels in a favoured class is far better than penalising characters that stray into other classes. Big thumbs up for the general idea. I don't think that the +1 hp or +1 skill point is enough. For some time now I've been using the favoured class rule from Conan d20. Under this rule, you get a bonus feat for taking levels in your favoured class: one at 1st, 5th and 10th level.

This is probably too high-powered for the Pathfinder core rules. But in games where you want to have a lower amount of magical gear, for example, these bonus feats work to offset the reduced amount of treasure.

I'm not expecting PFRPG to adopt this rule, but just wanted to throw it out there for general consumption :-)

The absence of several domain-only spells from the PFRPG cleric list is my main complaint with the changes Pathfinder has made. I'm a huge fan of the game otherwise. I applaud the ability of the cleric to access spells/spell-like abilities from both his domains at once - big improvement there - but it's a shame that several spells unique to numerous domains have been lost.

If anyone is interested, I made a list of all domain-only spells that were avaialable to clerics under 3.5 that are no longer available under Pathfinder. I posted it a couple of months back. It's accurate up to the Alpha 3 release and I can post it again here if folks would like to see it.

For my own games, I'm just going to add those spells back into the spell-list of clerics who take the relevant domains. A few extra spells here and there won't break the game - it's no different to allowing a cleric access to extra spells from Complete Divine, Spell Compendium or whatever. I'd like to see the problem fixed in PFRPG core rules, but am happy to house-rule it if not...

Planescape: Torment. Utterly engrossing. Loved it to bits.

Honourable mention for Clive Barker's Undying, because it scared the wits out of me and made me scream like a little girl. One more than one occasion.

Torg!!!

There's only one The Hellbound Heart. Everything else is a weak-sauce movie adaptation.

All praise the Order of the Gash!

Just read my 20th anniversary copy of this the other day - utterly magnificent stuff! Often imitated. Never bettered.

Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

(Awesome news, guys!)

We have a similar situation in the UK, albeit with a few notable differences. Here, the cutoff point for import duty/VAT is £18 (about $36) at the moment, and the "handling charge" is £8/$16. I thought that was bad enough, but your $32 added charge is outrageous! The main difference here in the UK, though, is that books are not subject to VAT. As most of the Paizo stuff I buy (including all of my subscriptions) are classified by Paizo as books, they never get charged. I only have to be careful about order sizes when I'm ordering flipmats and the like. Sounds like you guys are getting squeezed by your postal service - those levels and charges are unreasonably restrictive. But, like you say, you're in a monopoly. Bummer.

You have an awesome site - great work there. I used to get WD every month (until it became dedicated to Games Workshop stuff) and cherish my old issues dearly. Wonderful to see these old classics updated. Nice one!

In TORG there was a built in system that IIRC was called 'skill challenges.' at the least it was called something like that.

Dramatic Skill Resolution.

:-)

(Sorry, nothing to add to the main discussion. Your mention of Torg just set off my Torg Remote Alert Sensor and I had to come and see what was being said...)

Throatwarb...

Umm, never mind, actually.

I pronounce it BAH-Hah-Mut.

Hmmm. I suspect that the BBC will be very careful with what they allow out before the season finale airs in the UK. It should be interesting, to say the least, although I could have sworn that the seventh doctor was supposed to have taken Davros out with The Hand of Omega.

Yeah, no preview of next episode and no spoilers given away in the Confidential (well, we saw Mickey at the script read-through, so I guess he'll be in the finale, but hardly a surprise). Davros' appearance wasn't really a surprise following the previous previews (and the fact that The Sun leaked pictures of him a couple of weeks ago). But the end of the episode... yeah, really rather startled by that. After last season's finale, with the clock being turned back, I'm still suspicious as to how conclusive the outcome was, but all the same - can't wait for next week!

Er, wow. Just watched "The Stolen Earth". Didn't see that coming. Pretty damn cool.

Awesome news! Congratulations!

We're using the Grace, Health and Breather rules from BoXM in my Pathfinder game at the moment. Works well and keeps the game flowing nicely, especially as there is no cleric in the party.