Mace Hammerhand's page

In a few months the biggest game fair in the world is gonna open its portals again in Essen, Germany. Since I live rather near to Essen, and have a decently sized appartment, I would like to play host to fellow German and European Paizo-fans throughout the 4 days of the Spiel 2008. This should, of course, result in lots of laughs, gaming and general merriment. 4-5 places to crash would still be available.

If anyone is interested, just reply here so we can iron out the arrangements and all.

P.S. If any Paizo staffer should also come to Essen, I'd be glad to have you as a guest for partying and gaming as well, since I doubt you'd wanna catch the Zs in a sleeping bag on the floor.

My biggest beef with 3.5 in general is the 13.3 encounters per level rule. Maybe I am nostalgic but I love the way 1st and 2nd edition handled it: the more powerful you got the more difficult it became-- to a degree.

In my campaign the players complained about leveling too fast, they want to play their characters for a long time. So I went to work with the UA, back before the alpha release came out. But I did not take the UA table and monster XP rewards as printed because they still stuck to the 13.3 (IMO) nonsense. Instead I decided to use the original CR/lvl rewards system as shown in the DMG. It will take a long time to level, which in turn keeps the players more motivated for playing their characters and the old-school fun in the game. Also it gives me the chance to award story- and RP-XPs more freely, which I think is also a better way to handle my style of GMing.

What are the chances to do the same or something similar in Pathfinder?

and

If such a system were to be worked out, how would it influence APs if at all?

I have no problem with the way Metamagic feats are used, in general. However, in my monthly game one player has an Ultimate Magus character and the way that prestige class handles Metamagic use is something I would like to see with metamagic feats in general:

the caster can drop a level X spell to power metamagic, X being the level equivalent of the + required for the usually learned metamagicked spell. Further, so that the Ultimate Magus still has some use I'd rule that this only works for Caster Level divided by 5, rounded up, so that a wizard CL 10 would only be allowed to drop spells of lvls 1 and 2 to power metamagic. It would also fit nicely with various literary examples, where, all of the sudden, the spellcaster can improve his spell, on the fly. To make this equal for every class, casting a metamagicked spell this way requires a full round action.

Thoughts?

First off: I haven't implemented all the rules into my campaign (ongoing FR for 7 years now) because we just "recently" switched to 3.5.

What I did implement so far are the Channel Positive energy stuff and the Cantrips/orisons.

Did it have any major impact? Can't give a definitive answer to that as of now, since the cleric's player still has to become adjusted to the healing thingy.

As for the orisons/cantrips... the wizard/sorcerer/ultimate magus player and the cleric player loved it, and for the rest it didn't mean any change at all.

Admittedly, it is minor stuff, and I probably will not convert the characters to Pathfinder because of a couple of reasons:

- we only play once a month or so
- 2 new players who still have to adjust
- we made the 3e change only about 1,5 years ago
- I just got them used to their changed characters so to speak.

Nonetheless, I will introduce more Pathfinder stuff since it is only advantageous to gameplay... now if I can only make the cleric/fighter/sworddancer understand that she can use the channel energy thingy while fighting...

William W. Connors.

I have no idea what he is up to, but I loved his work on Ravenloft (2nd edition), and in terms of coming up with memorable villains I think he rocked.

Will there be any (no matter how slight) chance to see him contributing to Pathfinder?

*walks off before he starts begging* (more that is)

Invisible thread monster strikes again, maybe an edit will help...

The first one is me basically wanting to save money when printing out the alpha rules:

- leave the graphics out, printer friendly is text, if we need diagrams sure put them in, but otherwise, for a printer-friendly version, please make it printer (and cartridge!) friendly.

- please find some way to get rid of this CR-nonsense and the IMHO silly math of the 13.3 encounters per level to gain a new level. I don't like the resource-micromanagement 3e has blessed (cursed?) us with. Hell, I get complains from one of my players because the encounter was 2 or more CR above average party level. Combat ain't nice, and encounters do have consequences.

- I'd love to see some save-or-die traps again :)

I only skimmed through the book so far, and I like what I see. Mostly.

The starting HPs is a thing that has been bugging me ever since I started playing D&D, so low that a swordthrust could kill you instantly, and later on you need lots of thrusts to get a character down... I'm reminded of a very old Dragon magazine cartoon which depicts the execution of a barbarian.

Would it be possible/advisable, maybe, to add "background-classes" to the mix? Much like what Jeff Grubb suggested in Kobold Quarterly. I've been toying with that idea some, yet haven't implemented it yet, for lack of a new campaign/group.

What I think is this:

nobody walks out of the house and becomes a fighter, wizard or whatnot. If one were to add, say, pre-existing levels to some character class, say a blacksmith apprentice who joined the militia before setting out on his own as a fighter might be a Blacksmith (Crafter) lvl 4, Militiaman lvl 2 and then a Ftr lvl 1. His attack bonus might shift a little upward because of the militia-training, but it wouldn't be ungodly high. The "background-classes" would add some HPs and skills into the mix. Every class that basically just adds to the background has a maximum of, maybe, 6 levels for very complex "jobs" like scribe, illuminator, wizard's apprentice, and maybe 2 for said militia man.

This way you could tag them even onto the regular NPC classes and actually have folks that could become really good in one area.

Plus, this way, not every tavernboy is just a lousy regular human with 6 or 8 HPs. Maybe the guy was in the militia for a year and knows at least some of the moves to help clear up a tavern brawl...

Thoughts?