Krak de Chevalier's page

There is a point when the pursuit of the mechanical fails in front of the story.

To wit - A wizard 10/Loremaster 6 gains a level and choses Loremaster. Thus becoming Wizard 10/ Loremaster 7 - able to cast 9th levels spells.

But under Jason's FAQ the PC has NO spells to cast.

What, does he just whip down to the Magi-mart and pick up 9th level spells and a bottle of milk!

I smell bad storyline fudging....

Surely a "Prestige" class should be a extension that is really no different that just making a late stage archtype choice.

my 2cp worth.

No. If there is anything that would hinder or slow movement, such as an obstacle using your current movement type you can not charge. The fact that you could jump it if you were allowed to do so does not stop it from being an obstacle.

James Jacob answered another thread on April 2010 (sorry cannot remember how to paste link)that stated jumping during charge is OK. The only reason to do so would be to negate an obstacle. So James' answer implies a jump removes obstacle from hindering movement.

You could also have a look at 2nd Ed Battlesystem and Battlesytem Skirmishes supplements. I bought 2nd hand copies recently to look at what fudging is required for Pathfinder stats. Basically there is a system to convert PC/monster stats into a stat block for large scale combat. PC's can remain individual stands and monsters become 10 per figure from memory. Then combat becomes like a standard table top wargame. There is a nice sense of novelty occasionally popping up to wargame scale then back to rpg scale.

I highly recommend the AD&D supplement DMGR2, The Castle Guide. It has a basic summary of Feudal Society, Chivalry, evolution of castles applied to D&D genre.

Was available from WOTC archive, having trouble finding link again to paste.

Ok, trying to make sense of mounted combat. As I read it the animal companion horse has hoof secondary (even if combat trained since bite is primary) and a combat trained 'light' horse has hoof primary. So when using Trample the animal companion will get a -5 to hit but a combat trained horse from the market will have no penalty?

I feel variety is one of the special things about this RPG. A long campaign should be seasoned with a sprinkling of everything over time :-)

Yes, but this works better without item creation rules IMO. 2nd ed had no item creation rules. It encouraged GMs to be creative with ingreedients needed to make something.

beat me to mentioning 2e!

In our current game we have players hanging off getting items made until they have the 'cool' part. Our barbarian just hunted a dire bear to make a cloak. He has been waiting a few levels rather than saying 'I just want a magic cloak'. Now the wizard will enchant it. It's not rules but you can do it voluntarily with Pathfinder if your group wants that flavour.

Or maybe it's becaue Heroes have more important things to do then to set up magic item shops. Investing feats in MIC after is a feat loss towards making your character better at what they are supposed to be doing.

True, although you can make items to help do your thing. But I do agree they can feel dead weight a bit while out on adventure. Pity it can't be little more like 2e, just part of what a wizard can do but with the need do a few special things to make that item just right.

I'm a little old fashioned. I like more game time to pass as PCs reach higher levels so "what they are supposed to be doing" is a bit more than rushing from encounter to encounter. Training troops, wizard research, priestly politics, rogue underworld activities, etc. Just my preference, I enjoy other styles as well.

I may have missed it, but I haven't seen it mentioned that PCs making magic items is important if you don't want to keep playing the same old theme - all magic items were made in past, no one knows how to make anymore OR everyone else can make them EXCEPT the heroic PCs!

I think we also get trapped into remembering our early RPG days when magic items were new to us and had that 'sense of wonder'. Once you play enough campaigns that can wear off and is hard to get back. Being drastic with magic item rules may be a bit overkill.

There can be a real sense of special when a PC makes an item - get them to make a drawing, write a cool description.

Just finding stuff in loot all the time can take away from the story as well unless accompanied by a good story.

I feel variety is one of the special things about this RPG. A long campaign should be seasoned with a sprinkling of everything over time :-)

I use the Pathfinder RPG adVance spreadsheet at that link. Updated for Pathfinder core spells (Spellforge is 3.5). But you will need to manually add APG spells and spells from other sources. I am currently using for a wizard. It requires a bit of maintenance on the hidden sheets if you add a lot of new spells.

Also a little sad when we all start to subscribe to the same 'optimised' build - amounts to playing pre-gen characters.

I'm playing an elven wizard with starting stats of

Str - 14
Dex - 16 (inc racial bonus)
Con - 12 (inc racial penalty)
Int - 18 (inc racial bonus)
Wis - 10
Cha - 10

makes for a nice CMD and has surprised a few creatures with her mighty elvencraft composite longbow of frost :-)

Was hit by a roper recently and lost 6 points of strength. Was able to keep going (we had no lesser restoration/restoration available at the time).

Abbey of the Golden Sparrow - 28

Achievement Feats - 172

Forgotten Foes - 217

The Favored of Skexxiz - 343

For staves select spells where caster level matters. e.g dark vision - hour per level. Often spells that have instant or min/level duration can just be on scroll or wand since won't have a big benefit from using current caster level over min caster level for scroll/wand.

The basic concept of charge needs to be changed to allow for movement to any square along the front of an enemy. This would allow attacks to carry past in the case of a 'ride-by'.

Quite clearly in jousting it shows use of a lance by charging past opponent - knights obviously didn't want horse colliding with opponent (they could lose mount if they did). Even in foot combat you are likely to run slightly to the side of an opponent to get the swing of a blade across(Highlander end scene anyone).

Picking up on a comment from Carbon D Metric suggesting rewards like an old castle. Xmas tree happens more when PC's receive 'cash' rewards i.e. magic items or coins that can be used to create magic items. The other end of the scale is to make the PCs 'asset' rich instead. Assets can be favors, personal momentos, buildings/land - anything that is not easy to change into cash form but can have great value in helping the PCs (ooh you want to sell that building, sorry there's no buyers right now..OR you can't sell that land/castle it is granted to you personally and reverts back to King should you die without heirs.)

There was a cool TV programme once (Stingray I think) - guy with cool car helps people, only asks that they owe him a favor someday. Favor gets used in later episodes to help win the day.

Cool non-magical items with detailed descriptions can develop PC attachment. In an old campaign I had a fighter with some magical swords but the item I really missed was a non-magical sword made from blue crystal that he lost.

Also 'assets' can be money sinks if things get unbalanced and great adventure hooks.( better than saying - someone just stole your +3 sword)

You won't entirely get rid of xmas tree (after all Frodo had Sting, mithril shirt, Star of Earendil and an elven cloak) but you can minimize it.

Krak de Chevalier wrote:

Anyone checked out the old Immortals rules?

I remember those old rules. The black box if memory serves. It was good stuff but I never liked the limits on the "demi-humans"

Master set was black box, Immortals in tan/sandy coloured box.

I bought most of the gazetters which (IIRC) removed some limits for demi-humans by introducing extra specialised levels - early PRC concept

Anyone checked out the old Immortals rules?

I always liked the power progression concepts that OD&D set out.

Basic - PC's were newbies, Expert - they were having an affect on local and just on to national stage, Companion - they were heavily involved in struggles between nations, Master - thoughts turned those really pulling the strings - the Immortals. And so began the 'epic' tasks of attaining immortality!

Only to find as a new immortal you were the new kid on the block again. Although for fun you could always pop up as an avatar and kick some mortal butt.

The mechanics are outdated but there is still some value in the concept for high power play.

The SRD site is really handy for looking at options like schools.

Just export the spells database to CSV, open in Excel and put an Autofilter on the column headers.

I use it to look at schools, group spells by range, what spells have saves or SR, etc. It is a really handy tool.

Hopefully the APG spells will be put into the list as well.

Hope that helps :-)

Kor is starting to sway me... why? I'm playing a level 14 paladin with the weapon enhancement divine bond, and let me tell you... it is infinitely more powerful than the paladin mount divine bond. So someone slapping the heavy horse template on a 12HD horse... (for paladin 14) wouldn't be gamebreaking... meh.

Yay!!! Vote for wonderful Warhorses. Say no to paltry palfreys.

I really hope we can have some resolution that supports the genre and style of the game.

I know the Core Rulebook had to have animal stats since there was no Bestiary at the time. The Druid horse has marginally worse stats than the riding horse in bestiary.

But there is no way it be that a knight-type (paladin or cavalier) should be going into battle on a palfrey! (aka riding horse)

Where is my destrier!

Animal companions are just that - primarily companions (like wizard familiars). Although many can be mounts as well, that is secondary.

Knight-types are fully committed to taking the mount into the thick of melee. It doesn't seem right that at 10th level the druid's horse buddy is the same as paladin/cavaliers battle stead.

Yes, the books are all printed now. But it would nice to have an acknowledgement that where is says - 'functions as a druids animal companion' - it just means use the levelling table and apply to choice of mount from EITHER Animal Companion list OR Bestiary.

Please, after 40 years can we finally get mounted knight right! It's great the animals are more survivable now (having literally been in gaming wilderness for so long). Please let this be the time for the noble stead to shine!

If you want ideas on running sub-kingdoms, check out the kingdom rules in the old D&D Companion set/Rules Cyclopedia.

One of our players is buying the Kingmaker AP material as it comes out to run as future campaign (we are doing Pathfinder in Eberron currently).

I have always looked forward to reforging the link to the PC heroes influencing/controlling the fortunes of kingdoms (original concepts took commander figures from table top wargames off to adventure and potentially be more powerful commanders in the next battle).

There are sooo many points of interest for players I don't know where to start - developing own thieves guild, your own sub-branch of a knight order, a wizards tower!

I always thought the discussions about balancing power missed the point that while wizards got raw power to blow stuff up, fighters could create armies, clerics could gather a fervent horde, thieves could develop all sorts of capabilities for espionage - that is the balance of power!

PC's want power - well my army of ten thousand might be a tad better than your single +5 longsword :-)

Back in 1e/2e we stuck pretty much to making a party with all bases covered.

After a break of a few years I played in a group with 3.5e. I played a favored soul, and we had an artificer, beguiler and battlemage. The idea of roles got more blurry. Even though the favored soul was prime healer he also was frontline fighter with a greatsword. The artficier was able to provide the support during combat.

Since then diversity in parties has come from people wanting to rotate the types of characters they play.

We told the most recent player to join our pathfinder group to pick whatever they wanted. I think we are all confident now to play with any make up and not rely on the 'trainer wheels' of 1e/2e.

Just wondering if there was much consensus on how the Magus should operate.

For example do we see the Magus fighting in a particular style

Buff & Go
rnd 1: spell
rnd 2: spell
rnd 3: melee
rnd 4: melee and subsequent rnds
OR
Opportunity Strikes
rnd 1: melee
rnd 2: spell
rnd 3: melee
rnd 4: spell
OR
Arcance Combo
rnd 1: melee/spell
rnd 2: melee/spell
rnd 3: melee/spell
rnd 4: melee/spell

I think a lot of people a leaning towards the latter. But each requires different ability sets.

This has been a fun post to follow. So much so that I have actually registered so I can post :-)

Have been thinking a bit about the role of a fighter/wizard blend. We have infantry, artillery, medics, combat engineers, cavalry type roles covered by usual core classes. A fighter/wizard seems to me to be like a commando/shock troop role.

The germans used Sturmtruppen in WWI and italians had Arditi, dervied from 'Adire' - to dare (like who dares wins). Maybe some variant on either of those would be cool.