Kyremi's page

For the war/bass drum, rage spells come under enchantment. CG sounds right.

A grand piano feels like it should be LN - complicated machinery. As a school try abjuration, it stays put and may need defences.

In a book I read once a violin was made of human bone and cursed. It's a natural for NE and necromancy.

The electric guitar has to be evocation and sounds CN.

Trumpets get associated with archons which makes them LG. As they're used to herald arrivals, maybe conjuration?

If flutes are used in the Pied Piper sense then LE has to be their alignment. Since enchantment's taken, illusion could have related effects.

Accordions are evil by their very sound. CE is the worst kind of evil. Demons and so on are associated with transformation which corresponds to transmutation.

Saxophones are NG by a process of elimination, and it doesn't sound wrong for them. Divination is the last school, ditto.

Those are some awesome suggestions. I'm particularly liking the idea of the evil bone violin; clearly it's time to make some undead dance an Irish jig. The trumpet -> archon -> conjuration angle is terrific. At first I didn't see the Pied Piper effect as illusion, more enchantment, but if the images it conjures are alluring enough for people and animals to follow, it works too. The transmuting accordion is a weird idea, but it's also the instrument which transforms the most during use, so I can see it. The only instrument which isn't really inspiring is the NG divining saxophone, so I'll have to see if I can find a better instrument for that slot.

@Lady-J thanks for those ideas, I'll try to work them in to the alignment framework for each instrument too.

Assuming I go with those instrument-alignment combos, the tricky part now is to give them all goals and powers. I'll ponder that and report back when I have more ideas.

I've had a few more thoughts which I wanted to share; I'm almost definitely going with the one instrument per magical school idea, and I've been trying to find other groups of 8 both within Pathfinder (and D&D) lore and outside of that. So far I've realised that I can use one alignment combination per instrument too, so the necromancy-attuned instrument could be one of the three evils (or be a good-aligned object for a change, insisting that the dead deserve another chance at life). I also found the spell Numerological Evocation which maps elements to schools rather nicely. There's... actually not that many more 8-grouped things in Pathfinder, so I think the alignment + schools + elements will make for a good base.

With giving the instruments alignments, it could play into their effects and goals. The evil ones might help debuff enemies (within their school of magic of course), while the good ones might give bonuses to myself and allies. For example, the war drum could be a chaotic good-aligned item, hence the improved inspiring rage bonuses. However I'm not sure what school of magic I'd tie that into. Transmutation, for transforming the music to be even more inspiring? That works for illusion too though; making the music seem better even though it's not.

I think I also have to break down the effects. Each instrument should; change my inspiring rage in some way, give a bonus of some sort to associated spell school, and possibly have an effect when used as a weapon (coming back to the electric guitar). And also have an activated ability that could occur when I play the instrument (e.g. playing the grand piano makes people want to fall asleep or something similar).

I'll have more ideas later, and there's things I need to clarify with my DM; for example, if the benefits of an instrument occur before I reach its goal, or only some activate post-goal, or all of them do and the goal is just a condition for banishment.

As a 3rd level character you'd have a maximum of 900 gp value in the item. If you compare that to Sleeves of Many Garments, say, you'd probably get an instrument case which could produce masterwork but non-magical instruments. The war drum alone would be worth a lot more.

The example wondrous items mostly start at higher levels, and start off very weak. (Bat Cloak: Fashioned of dark brown or black cloth, this cloak resembles gigantic bat wings. It allows its wearer to hang upside down from the ceiling like a bat.)

Ahh I see. Well, the scaling is a good guide anyway, even if I end up making a higher level of it. I definitely want the items to have some powers at my level, even if they're not spectacular (after all, that's the point of them leveling up). But they should be useful.

There's a system for scaling magical items in PF Unchained. It looks like it's intended for weaker items than this, but it's a start.

I'll see what I can come up with by way of suggestions later.

Thanks for the replies. The scaling magical items page is very interesting, though I'm curious what makes you say it's meant for weaker items? The wondrous-level items seem pretty powerful, unless I'm wrong and they are actually weaker than items of equivalent level.

@Dave Justus, I may change up the instruments a bit but part of the fun for our group is the unexpected challenges; if I open the instrument case and a grand piano falls out and flattens a goblin, that's just awesome.

Your magic school idea is great; having each instrument be attuned to one specific school would make things easier and cooler. Your point about the goals is good too; I think completing all 8 should have a big reward, given that it'd be really tricky to do in one day.

I'm not sure I want to limit it to just spells though; for example, the +1 bonus to inspired rage isn't a spell that I know of, so I wouldn't have a way of granting that. For another example, the Crystal Tiara on the scaling items page has a really good mix of spell and non-spell effects.

I'm going to go have a look at groups of 8 things in fantasy; could be that provides some good flavour/effect inspiration for what each instrument could do.

So my DM has blessed my character (a 3rd-level Skald Halfling with the Resourceful trait) with a magical instrument case that allows me to randomly pull out one of eight magical instruments. I can't pull out more than one at a time, and they each last until their 'goals' are complete (they're flavoured as at least semi-intelligent, kind of like a Bladebound's Black Blade). We're looking for some advice, since we don't want supremely OP weapons (they'll be used more as actual instruments anyway, but there's a reason I got a halfling with the Resourceful trait), but don't want them to be useless at higher levels either. I considered having them be an XP sink and their own levels, wherein I can siphon some XP and level them up to increase their power, but I want to explore other options.

The current list of instruments I can summon from the magical case are: Grand Piano, Violin, Accordion, Guitar, Saxophone, Flute, Bass Drum, Trumpet. Each instrument has disadvantages, advantages, and its own goal. For example, for the bass drum:

• Advantage: Increases bonuses dealt by inspired rage by 1 per item level.
  
• Disadvantage: -4 to Stealth, Acrobatics, Climb and Swim checks.
  
• Goal: This is a war drum. The wielder of the drum must defeat at least one enemy in battle while wielding the drum (does not require opponent's death, simply unequivocal victory) before it can be banished.
  

So to be clear on the question; is there any existing framework I can use for creating items that can level along with the character using them? I'm also looking for any fun/flavourful suggestions for goals/advantages/disadvantages for the individual instruments.

Recently our local roleplaying society had a 24-hour event over a weekend... the game I played in was split between 12 hours of a 20th-level 'group' (I say group; we didn't work together, we just happened to be in the same country at the same time) of evil players, and 12 subsequent hours of a heroic 17th-level party trying to undo the damage. Creating the characters was pretty hilarious... if your game is not that serious you could try something like my L20 dwarf antipaladin who conjured sweet baked goods to use as grenades under the alchemist bomb rules... apple pies of 10d6 damage are great against clerics :P

More than that, being able to use all the abilities was pretty awesome; I think I calculated that if this antipaladin had Smited a good outsider while channeling negative energy through his +5 conductive keen hasted greatsword, he could do 1500 damage per round max... without even critting. If you've never played L20 before (which I hadn't) it's insanely fun just to see the size of the stats you get...O.o

(Of course, my L17 good character was a human paladin who conjured savoury baked goods, especially explosive sausage rolls :P)

The maniacal Congressman was shushed, because he sexily massaged his sycophantic pet tigers...

(I can see why he'd be shushed for that, tbh :P)

The maniacal mime was shushed, while sexily massaging his sycophantic pet tigers.

The enthusiastic mime was shushed, while sexily massaging his similar pet tigers.

The enthusiastic mime was shushed, while sexily deciphering his fingerprints...

The enthusiastic drunk was arrested, while loudly deciphering his fingerprints...

...Grizzly, that's an awesome post :D I'll just mention that I currently have +11 CMB (so +7 with a trickshot) since my dex is only 17 at this point... something I hope to remedy with a belt of dex very soon.

Granted, except that for the tenth (now ninth) person to post after this post to have an auto-granted wish, nine (now eight) more people must post in this thread, hence you've created a burden of expectation upon nine other people (or at least two other very dedicated people).

I wish Pathfinder integrated the Ars Magica casting system...

So this is a great little game I played... must've been 5 years ago on another forum. Simply, there's a starting sentence, and each subsequent poster changes one word in it, e.g....

Paizo are trying to get more monkeys into small cages

could change to...

The government is trying to get more monkeys into small cages

(little things like are -> is don't count)

So to start the game, use the sentence below...

***The lethargic priest was pre-occupied, while meaningfully decyphering his slippers.***

GO!

Kyremi wrote:

Loaba: as a sniper, I agree fully with your assessment, but Rapid Shot's requirements list Point Blank Shot, therefore it's kind of a necessity... since Rapid Shot is pretty damn essential, as far as I know.

My bad, man. As a Ranger, I didn't have to meet the requirements for Rapid Shot. As a Fighter, you do.

Ah yeah, shiny ranger stuff :D And at the end of the day, at some point I'll find myself in a small room where the enemy is well within 30ft and it may be I'll be thanking the gods I took point blank shot :P

YrdBrd, the only thing I'd add to that pile is a pair of Bracers of Archery... seems you have the rest covered, as far as I can tell...

Loaba: as a sniper, I agree fully with your assessment, but Rapid Shot's requirements list Point Blank Shot, therefore it's kind of a necessity... since Rapid Shot is pretty damn essential, as far as I know.

Cheers, Charlie Bell :) Unfortunately, no party bard either, but definitely looking out for belts of dex.

YrdBrd, what kind of role are you seeing for the archer? Long-range stuff, or more up-close-and-personal shooting? If it's up close, take stuff like Snap Shot (at next level, since it needs +6 BAB). Also, why the Iron Will specifically?

Just because you don't have a spell caster in your party doesn't mean you can't get command word items that casts Gravity Bow/Abundant Ammo each 5/day. It wouldn't be terribly expensive since they are both first level spells. Find yourself an allied spell caster, or ask your DM if he can put one into a future treasure hoard.

I'd never heard of these command word items before, so that might explain it :P Now that I know of them, they sound fantastic... I'll see if I can get my hands on a few of these...

Grizzly: I do have an efficient quiver which I forgot to mention :P Unfortunately we have no magic casters in our party, so Abundant Ammunition and Gravity Bow are, sadly, not available. I'll look into broadhead arrows since they sound awesome...

As for battlefield control, unfortunately the trick shot is only within 30ft, a range where a sniper is unlikely to find himself :P

@Callarek: In this particular game the DM houseruled that we get stat upgrades every second level, and I put two each into strength and dexterity.

Your feat list is remarkably nearly accurate; you're right that my skill focus was Perception, and most of the feats are correct except for point-blank master, which the archer archetype provides its own version of at 9th level (which is only one higher than I am now). Instead, I have clustered shot.

You're also right that with my full plate I only have a 20ft move speed, but then again, I'm designed to be a long-range stationary 'turret', if you will. Once I've moved (and climbed into a tree/onto a roof/wherever), I'm unlikely to do so again for the rest of the fight.

@bfobar: You and Callarek make a good point about the boots of speed; I'll keep them in mind, since we don't have a wizard casting Haste, unfortunately. I'm definitely on the lookout for a belt of dex now, and having a Speed-ed bow would be terrific, but that seems to be quite dang expensive :P

@Martiln: Yeah, it's not cost-efficient, but it's how it ended up, unfortunately. A higher-plussed bow is certainly on my list.

@Lightbulb: Yeah, I do have all those you mentioned except Improved precise shot, since I'm 3 levels below its prerequisite of BAB +11... sure, once I get enough BAB to get it, I will be.

Cheers for the response :)

Yeah, I agree that I could have a bit more equipment, but what I didn't mention is that I have a set of mithril full-plate armour which gives me *bonuses* to acrobatics and climb, hence I can climb damn near anything with ease, and set myself up in a good spot to snipe for the rest of the fight... this cost a serious amount and left me a bit wanting in terms of cash, hence the not-as-great bow :P However, we've been getting some money, so I might try to do a few upgrades...

So I've got a level 8 fighter of the archer archetype, half-elf. He's meant to function primarily as a spotter and sniper (he has +20 to Perception checks...) with stat line:

Str 16
Dex 17
Con 13
Int 12
Wis 12
Cha 8

He's taken the classic feats (weapon focus, greater weapon focus, weapon spec, point blank, deadly aim, plus others not related to attack/damage), has Bracers of Archery (+2 att/+1 dam), and Expert Archer from the archetype bumps it up another +1/+1. Obviously he has a strength 3 composite longbow of +1... so running through the numbers, without any situational/optional feats a full round attack does +17 => 1d8+8, +12 => 1d8+8.
In an 'ideal' scenario, within 30ft and using deadly aim, rapid shot and manyshot, this becomes... +14 => 1d8+13 and 1d8+13, +14 => 1d8+13, +9 => 1d8+13. Taking 4.5 as a dice average this is 70 damage...

So my question is; does this seem 'good' enough? I've seen some examples of an archer doing +26 to hit at level 10, which I don't see happening for this char anytime soon. Basically, am I missing something obvious to help improve either my attack bonus or damage? Also, changing class (e.g. to zen archer) is not an option for me in my current game...

Thankfully you don't seem to have included the 4e 'power divisions' of at-will, encounter and daily powers i.e. everyone's a wizard. Having DM'ed and played 4e before discovering the relative sanity of PF, this was the most annoying thing about it; no class felt unique when they all had 10-20 powers at lvl13 and each with a variety of effects...

Also, the skills from 4e were silly. At every 2nd level up, ALL skills increasing by 1, purely from the half-level bonus... seems a bit ridiculous to me; yeah, that elven ranger who never went near a city in his life has something like +10 to streetwise. Which means he's more street-savvy than most city-dwelling commoners... sense, it makes none. Plus it meant that at higher levels the party I used to DM never failed a skill check (though that also might've been me setting DCs too low).

Lastly, I'm glad you didn't bring in some of the whackier 4e classes, like the Battlemind. That thing is OP on a silver platter.

In a campaign, our party of three are discussing some books nicked from the local town's library, and upon learning nothing important was taken, I jovially suggest "oh, just 'how to do flower arranging' books then".

The DM is silent for a second, before replying... "Did you just say 'How to deflower a ranger'? Same as you would any other class, surely!"

The whole table just collapses into laughter. It's probably a 'you had to be there' moment... :P

Hello again...

Yeah, it's over a month since the last post, but in the meantime I've manufactured about 45 of these cards and I wanted to show people what's possible with this template in real life. So, check out these three links...

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/710/img0712a.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/713/img0713k.jpg/

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/836/img0714ly.jpg/

I bound them together with rubber bands which go through two holes I punched in the top, through the plastic laminate I encased each card in. Doing this manically in one night before a game, it only took 3 hours straight to do 45ish cards...

If anyone else is using these, it'd be good to know :) On the same note, critiques and suggestions are also very welcome and will most likely be incorporated into any later versions of this template.

My wizard took out a whole bunch of miffed undead with one well-placed fireball spell. Being undead, they all failed the Reflex save and dropped to the ground, burning. Granted, this was an ideal situation, but still a very good demonstration. Besides, Fireball is a classic, it's like a vintage wine from yesteryear; you just can't not choose it.

(Of course, the undead I killed had the last laugh when they managed to band together as a spirit, possess me, and almost made me kill our Paladin. One painful month-long exorcism later, involving Protection from Evil literally being tattooed onto my wizard's body, taught me to think about desecrating unholy places a bit more carefully next time... but hey, due to the spirit I now speak Abyssal and have permanent defenses against Evil.)

Go to YouTube.

Search for "Two Steps from Hell". Choose any song (but especially Protectors of the Earth, Magic of Love, and Heart of Courage)

Listen.

Profit.

This isn't quite the same as what's been described already, but...

I made myself Words of Power cards for each word, and on the back of each card is written the Latin translation of the name of the word, so now when I cast a combined spell, it sounds something like, "Lectus Arcus Impulsae" (for Selected Shock Arc).

My favourite combo would probably be... "Fragor Procresco Incendio Fulmen", translating as Burst Boost Burning Flash.

I also considered translating it to "Sprādziens Pacelta Degoša Uzliesmošana", but that's all-round harder to pronounce in the middle of battle :P (bonus points if anyone recognises the language without using a translation tool)

Weird is just because you let it be weird. We roleplay to pretend we're someone else and act out stories as that person. While we would not particularly enjoy fighting a red dragon as ourselves, we do enjoy it as another persona. It should not be a no go area with romance to anyone serious about playing their role, I think. Then again, I know most people are not like me in this. Pity really.

Weird more just for the fact that he was a very big, manly guy, and he couldn't act very well, so his imitations of a very small slight woman were both funny and weird at the same time :P

Which actually reminds me of another stupidly obvious and all too common cliche:

Thou shalt not play a character of the opposite gender as an overly flirtateous slut.

Seriously - have you ever seen a guy playing a female character who didn't do this? I've recently made my first female character, who I haven't played yet, and I'm trying to working very hard to come up with a personality for her that's decidedly feminine without being sexual.

I thought it was limited to just that one direction of guys playing female characters badly, but I actually have a female friend who has recently played a male character, and decided to make him gay so she could continue to hit on male NPCs like she would if she was playing a female character. In that case, it's humorous. When guys do it with female characters, it's just a bad cliche.

A few years back, one of my fellow players in a 3rd ed game was playing a female caster... she was the most suggestive and flirtatious character I've encountered. To be fair, this setting involves any male casting characters going insane (Wheel of Time), but still, was a liiitle weird.

Thou shalt not whine about "lack of roleplay", when the GM has clearly said that he willst runeth a dungeon crawl.

To be fair, one can roleplay anywhere; it's the difference between a sorcerer saying 'I use magic missile, I roll 6 damage' and 'crouching behind the ruined spokes of the wagon, I ready my last magic missile and, taking careful aim, send a green point of intense light streaking towards the goblin for 6 damage'.

In my first DMing experience, I was running a game for a few of my friends in D&D4e. In general I wasn't harsh enough on them, which I both regret and don't regret, since it made it possible for their characters, and therefore them, to feel epic in sweeping away enemies with ease. Then again, they never really feared combat encounters as they should do, and ended up doing pretty much whatever they wanted. And it's also a flaw with 4E, where it tries to make every character a superhero from level 1.

Currently, I play in two PF games, both of which are pretty damn unforgiving; I like it that way, since needing my wits to stay alive (especially since both my characters are squishy casters) adds a lot to the fun factor.

I'm not sure if Hexes are the same as Spells for a witch, but if they are, you may be interested in my template for spell cards, which are similar to what you've made; they work in MSE and they're bigger, to hold all the spell info... the thread I made for that is here.

There's one in particular which stood out for me in my new group...

"After the DM hath spoken, thou shalt not re-hash what he just said, but slower and more obviously, making every description tediously long."

We should really narrow these down to something like The 10 Gaming Commandments or such...

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I keep fixing things :P

I noticed that some targets were insanely long (see Open-Close, for example), so I modified that field to be bigger, and multi-line, so it can include all the target information. Hence, version 1.2, downloadable here. Enjoy.

I was playing around with the text in the border areas, and the white glow simply doesn't do a good enough job with contrast. So I switched to white text with a black shadow, and I think it looks infinitely better... download the modified template here.

For anyone who has used the black text, let me know if this seems like an improvement.

Awesome! Can you post a link to download the actual template?

I did, it's found at this link, it should be a zip file with the .mse-installer file plus a few fonts :)

Thanks for the response guys :)

I'm very interested knowing how they come out in print, since I've not been able to try that myself yet. It's possible to print directly from MSE2 but I've not tried this yet... my usual method used to be exporting all the cards as .png pics and printing them individually.

Let me know if there are any design changes I should make to the cards, too.

Hello to all...

I've seen a lot of threads around here about various solutions for spell cards, but most of them tend to be either flat out boring, or they're too small to fit even most spells on them. Seeing as I recently started a wizard character, I wanted a better way to keep track of spells than 12 pages of print-outs.

My solution is the PF Spell Card Template, designed to be used with Magic Set Editor 2, a program originally meant to create fan-design MTG cards. However, it's capable of making any sort of card, as long as someone's made a template. So, I designed and created a template specifically for PF spells... I posted a few links (one from each school of magic) below.

Elemental Body
Foresight
Ghost Wolf
Hideous Laughter
Interposing Hand
Mind Blank
Permanency
Scintillating Pattern
Temporary Resurrection

A few points... the jagged edges one may notice in the pictures are gone in the template; that was a compression issue. Also, no card would be big enough to carry all the information contained in spells like Detect Magic or Permanency, so in these, it's probably best to just add a bit of the text and then a page reference. Lastly, it's important to note what I'm providing here isn't a finished set of cards; it's a means for anyone to create their own set.

So... to use this, one simply has to download the template file from this link here, while Magic Set Editor 2 can be found at this link here. Once downloaded, simply install MSE2 first, and then unzip the folder containing the template files. In there reside a few fonts which will be necessary, so install those. Then, simply double-clicking the file pfspells.mse-installer should open up a Package Manager (part of MSE2), and you click on each of the three components (opening each drop-down box) and select 'install'... and it should be done.

To use it, start MSE2, select 'New set' and in the new window, under 'Game type', find PFSpells. There's only one style choice for now, so select it and click OK, and it's time to make cards. The process for making a spell card is pretty easy, and I can elaborate in another post if need be, but the one important thing is to click on a bit of the card which isn't in a box to choose the spell school (and therefore the border colours).

Apologies for the massive post... Feel free to critique my design; it's definitely not perfect, I only came up with it a few days ago :P Suggestions for improvement are most welcome and encouraged, since I'd like this to be something anyone would be happy to use. I hope this resource is useful :)

I changed the colours of the schools a bit, generally making them a bit darker and less in-your-face. I also discovered how to add a glow around text so that meant I could do previously-impractically dark borders.

Elemental Body
Foresight
Ghost Wolf
Hideous Laughter
Interposing Hand
Mind Blank
Permanency
Scintillating Pattern
Temporary Resurrection

I included spells like Permanency to give an example of how these cards would deal with absurdly large reams of text; they'd just act like an index, and you'd need the core book to look the spell up.

Richard, by B&W do you mean these cards in greyscale i.e. just printing them without colour? If yes, you could just use the Universal school border, which is a neutral grey. Or do you mean literally no other colours on the card other than black and white?

there were already a few tries to make spellcards, but those I saw were not very impressing in my opinion, the main problem was that some spell either needed really small fontsize or several cards, sometimes even both. This was probably due to the fact that they wanted cards the size of magic the gathering.

I like your layout but I wonder if you can do every spell in that format.

If you need to make space, the verbal/Somatic place perhaps only needs 1 line and ST/SR are also quite big.

The colours, mainly the red seem very intense, perhaps make it a bit darker of something, also if it isn't too much trouble a black&white stack would be of great use to some (= me).

Anyhow, I really like your size of cards, should be right for 6 per A4 page.

edit: or instead of B&W specific, just choose backgroundcolour that won't become the same as textcolour.

The Component circles need to be as they are, since some spells have combinations like V, S, M/DF, which is why DF is the circle furthest to the right. Plus, some of the component descriptions can get really long.

True, the red is a bit bright, I can tone it down, and a B&W stack is entirely possible, except that means it's much harder to distinguish between spell schools by the colour alone.

For the SR/ST bit; yeah, it's leaving enough room for those exceptional spells with a lot to say.

In general, most spells can fit on these cards and remain readable, however there are some which obviously won't (case in point, Detect Magic). For these I'd guess it's a matter of putting in as much as one wants, and a reference saying 'see pg. X of CRB' or whatever.

Yo guys.
For ages I've been looking around the site and the interwebs as a whole trying to find a better-looking set of cards for the entirety of PF spells, but unfortunately there's nothing out there. So, I took a program I've used before; Magic Set Editor 2, and decided to make a PF spellcard template for it. For those who don't know of MSE2, it's literally a 'make-your-own-card' bit of software, usually used to make Magic: The Gathering cards. It's extremely easy to use with the right templates.

Elemental Body

Hideous Laughter

Interposing Hand

Mind Blank

I only started learning the code for this yesterday, so I've not yet got an installer package for this template, but that should be sorted shortly. I'm also entirely open to any suggestions to improve this, since I want it to be as useful as possible to as many people.

Take a look, leave feedback, enjoy :)

edit: I wasn't sure if this was the right sub-forum for this, if it isn't, please point me to the right one :)

As far as I know, you don't add Target Word and Effect Word levels together to get the spell level; you just take the higher one (this only applies to spells with single Effect Words; multiple Effect Words are covered by the special table). So, you get a standard Fireball with 20' radius at level 3, because Boost Burst is 3rd level, but the cost here is using the Boost meta word, of which you only have X uses per day.

Also, your boosting of the Selected word is awry; it says in Selected that 'This boosted target word increases the level of all the effect words in the spell by 3 levels.'. So, Selected stays as a 0th level Target Word, but Accelerate becomes 5th level (boosting it doesn't raise its level, as in the description, but boosting Selected means Accelerate becomes 5th).

Same applies for Boost Selected Force Bolt, where you get a 0th level Target Word (Boost Selected) plus a 5th level Effect Word (Force Bolt), hence a 5th-level spell overall.

Like many people have said in the testing, the point of WoP isn't to replicate old spells; it's to add versatility and do spells the old system can't even imagine (e.g. multiple damage types in one spell, etc.). But yeah, there are some bits of it which are lacking, mostly just in the variety of words; we need more, but I doubt we'll ever get them.

Thanks for the replies guys :)

Seems this spell is more useful when the save fails rather than when it succeeds, if the target has lots of HP at least... it'd be funny if it beat itself unconscious though.

First off, I agree. Systems have moved away from the gritty realism to an easier experience; especially 4th edition. I DM'ed a group who played that for nearly a year, and there was nothing I could throw at them that would even scratch them; they never considered food or any such necessities, and when they attacked, despite being three completely different classes, it felt exactly the same since they all used one of their many many powers (plus, the battlemind, despite being a tank, outdamaged the two striker party members). Now, obviously some of this is my fault; I should've made the encounters harder. But, some of it is the system's fault; 4E is like WoW on a tabletop. If you're looking for realism in 4E, you won't find it; it's meant to be easily played and understood, with simpler rules and all such things. In order to make 4E 'gritty', you'd have to do major overhauls, at which point you may as well move to PF or 3.5

Regarding PF/3.5 in general, the beauty of these systems is that at the end of the day the rules are just suggestions. A PF SWAT team isn't going to kick in your door and arrest you for debuffing magic classes and making enchanted items as rare as gold dust with a diamond coating. If your setting demands a low-magic, high-risk setting, make those changes. Reduce all the class hit dice by one (or even two?) categories to make hits feel more damaging. Make players keep track of things like torches, and who is holding them, and what happens to them if they get ambushed etc. If a player really really wants a spellcaster, maybe reduce the number of spells known or spells per day (or both) by half. At that rate, low-level casters wouldn't survive much without multiclassing into something like fighter, which I guess is the point of the setting. Want more realism? Implement the called shot, wounds and vigour, and alternate armour systems presented in Ultimate Combat.

Lastly, on style; the flashy-attack problem goes away once you leave 4th ed. PF/3.5 only have the default 'I hit/shoot something' (unless you're a caster) and it's up to the player to describe how and where, and it's better that way. If you're nerfing casters, they'll have to be using martial attacks more often and that will make their spells seem even more special when they do use them.

Short answer; if you don't like something, change it :P

Simple enough question... the spell Terrible Remorse has this description:

"You fill a target with such profound remorse that it begins to harm itself. Each round, the target must save or deal 1d8 points of damage + its Strength modifier to itself using an item held in its hand or with unarmed attacks. If the creature saves, it is instead frozen with sorrow for 1 round, during which time it can take no actions and takes a -2 penalty to Armor Class, after which the spell ends."

It's clear what happens when a creature fails the save; they freeze. However, if they don't save and they have to do the 1d8 + Str damage to themselves, do they then have the rest of the round to do their normal move/standard/swift actions, and the Terrible Remorse thing is just an extra? Or does it replace their standard action?

The dwarven fighter/baker isn't flawed. He's Discworld. Makes total sense in Discworld. Dwarven baking isn't for food, it's for combat.

The RAW one is flawed. A much better caption would be "Wizards - 'Awesome' just doesn't cut it when reality is your b*#&#". I mean, it's Harry we're talking about here.

I just found a whole site with RPG-related DeMotivationals

LINK

One of my favourite - not because of the humour part, but because of the pure awesome:

LG

Ah, I wasn't aware of the Discworld connection to the dwarven baker... to be honest I don't think it's a fail concept, stale bread can be really hard, must hurt when you get bread-walloped. Plus it's a great illustration...

I think that site was one of my sources for my collection, it's a good one :D

I'm sure the regular denizens of the intertubes have seen these kind of pics floating around... these are specifically RPG ones though. A few examples of my favourites...

[IMG]http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/4286/roleplaying.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/731/0d0063e18706f5d2edd8406.th.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/5201/fccdwarvenfighterbakerm.th.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/796/minotaurbardcowbellmoti.th.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5579/motivator8289937.th.jpg[/IMG]

(this'd be better if I could actually embed pics in posts...)

Anyone got similar ones, or like the look of these? I have a large collection, I can upload a few more if people enjoy them...

They did indeed, back in the day -- though, to be totally fair he wasn't the only example provided and it was meant to show that charisma wasn't related only to looks. (It wasn't anything about *might*, it was that the ugly dude sure could get a crowd to listen to him and agree with him).

They also used Rasputin as an example of Con -- because he was supposedly very rugged and hard to kill -- not because they were encouraging us to bilk the Russian royal family.

In any case, most of this stuff is clearly paranoid and has no basis on reality, but in some cases, at least, it's based on the testimony of "experts" like Patricia Pulling, back in the day -- Here's some fun reading about her, at least.

Wow... even not reading that through in its entirely makes it clear that woman is a bit disturbed. She lost a child, and that's terrible, but she's completely overreacting. And, anyone else seeing the irony of her presenting herself as a 'D&D Expert' when according to her D&D was responsible for her son's death?

Kyremi wrote:

Straight Talk wrote:

Whole long list of an entire 11!! people who've died

Correlation doesn't imply causation. If you look at the number of pirate attacks in the past 20 years, and correlate this with global temperature, you see they both rise. O S#!$, PIRATES CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING!! Another rebuttal; these are 11 examples, from millions of people, plenty of room in millions of people for 11 crazy ones.

hey I got a question -- if 11 people in millions is enough to condemn D&D how many have to die for less than half a million to condemn something? Because I remember this preacher from not so long ago who might be in trouble now.

Actually, the ratios would add up; given a ball-park figure of 4 million D&D players, and 11 of those are enough to condemn it, reducing it to 500,000 means you'd only need 1 and a bit people to condemn this whacko publishing what amounts to a child abuse book as 'parenting advice'.

One could only wish we could do some sort of 'counter-book', distributed to all the nutjobs out there, giving them 'advice' which ended up in... dunno, anything hilarious really. Any ideas?