MidknightDiamond's page

Woot! Room booked, now I just have to wait till payday for tickets. Can't wait!

I think I'm still floored that there are people upset that they offered a printed book for sale - as if that was a MUST. No one is forcing anyone to buy anything when they're offering all the PDF's for free and heck, if you wanted, you could print that out yourself to make a "book" if you don't want to pay Paizo for it. I just don't understand getting upset because they're offering an optional service of ordering a printing for you and charging for it since they get charged for that service. And it isn't as if it came out of nowhere... people specifically asked for it and it was popular, and so they did it and now people are mad, offended even, that they're doing what was asked for them.

All in all I Love the system, I Love that we get to playtest the system, I Love that we get to provide our feedback.

It's not perfect, it's still in the working stages and I plan to make sure I put in as much detail as possible to help out, but it's a very fun system to run and play for me and my group so far. I know that not all the things I think could be altered will be in the final run and I'm okay with that - they've to consider an entire world full of gamers and not just my table.

I also find it funny that people continue to argue that there's not enough "options" but this isn't even the final release, it's a playtest. It's a sample of all the potential and not meant to be every possible option ever - quite the opposite, it's a framework to make sure that they can spend the next ten years (give or take) easily adding in more options for people that will add flavor, expand possibilities, and extend the horizons of their game.

I'd agree... it takes forever to see an improvement in stats and seeing that you get that last boost at level 20 is rather disheartening since most people never get there and even if they do, it's brief as so many games end there.

Are there exceptions, yes - always.

Still, I like the idea of the two bumps every two levels. It matches the rest of the feats and skill increases better than one set every five.

It wouldn't be a problem if Battle Medic wasn't single use per day (and had a reasonable DC but that's mostly a low level issue). That single, arbitrary restriction is what's making parties without access to positive channel energy completely non-viable.

Along the lines of this... given you can only use Battle Medic once a day per person (success or failure), so it can't be spammed/abused, it's DC is quite ridiculous. I think it could afford to be lowered to a 15 for it's basic use.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?
To find out more about...
Ancestries - p22
Armor Class - p16
Backgrounds - p38
... etc

While I seriously love this idea I cannot help but read this with the voice-over the Starship Troopers announcer in my head.

Virellius wrote:

My party defeated Drakus in a SINGLE round. :/ THey didn't even realize it was the 'boss'.

If the party had 4 members, they would need to dish out 10 damage each. So the rolled really well and/or critted?

This, and my party didn't know he was the boss either but he had had time to prepare for them because they rolled really badly on breaking down the door. All in all, it only took them about 2-3 rounds to kill him, but it was rough and two of them ended up at 0.

It all very simply depending on how the dice were falling and what actions were taken in what order, etc.

MidknightDiamond wrote:

It's not pretty or fancy but in case anyone wants a portrait layout with a lot more room for equipment and some room for descriptions of things... have at.

Haven't used it yet so I'm sure I'll be making tweaks in the days to come as well.

Custom Portrait Style Playtest C-Sheet

I like that sheet just need to make it fillable now

Thanks. I used to be able to do that but with two moves, one of them being from Texas to Washington, and the death of three computers, my copy of Acrobat has gone missing the maze of unpacked boxes on the 10th circle of Hell... thus, I can't do that. If anyone else wants to - please have at, just leave me credit for the original and make sure I get a copy.

It's not pretty or fancy but in case anyone wants a portrait layout with a lot more room for equipment and some room for descriptions of things... have at.

Haven't used it yet so I'm sure I'll be making tweaks in the days to come as well.

Custom Portrait Style Playtest C-Sheet

The cross reference part is killing me. There are no Expert weapons or armor on the treasure lists... but a + 1 weapon is a lvl 4 so expert has to be a 2 or 3... logically. But it's not there. You have to hunt it down to find it as a small blurb in the section on different quality items.

So far I like the rules, like the icons... like the layout of the monster stat blocks, but I HATE the character sheet and I don't like having to do a word search on my pdf to find something that should logically be in one place (like what does 'expert' do to armor) since that does matter for the first part of the playtest... only to find it somewhere else.

It's good stuff overall - just a ton of typos and very badly organized.

I have zero desire for any sort of "separate but equal" award. It would only serve to encourage the sort of "white boys only" club attitude that needs to die.

Send the names of women and minorities to Tonya for consideration for Volunteer of the Year awards.

This pretty much sums up my thinking as well.

I think diversity in all ways should be encouraged and if you want to acknowledge it, rather than making a separate award for women/minorities... why not make one that rewards those that specifically go above and beyond to encourage diversity, fairness, inclusiveness, welcomeness, safety, etc.

Mind you, I had always assumed that's what the volunteer award was all about, among probably them managing five million other things that perpetually blows my mind and leaves me in awe, and if so, then there'd be no harm in making that a bit more obvious that it includes such.

But Liz definitely has the rights of it... speak up and nominate ANYONE and EVERYONE you feel deserves recognition when they go above and beyond. Paizo people are amazing but they're not psychic - they can't acknowledge people if the stories of good deeds don't reach them.

I have solved the parking mystery.

So, parking at the hotel for Paizocon attendees will be $8 a day per car. The key to getting that is to make sure to get your parking stub validated for the Con. There's apparently a special button somewhere to do this, but I'm not too sure on where that is or how it works but they said you can ask any employee and they'll help you get it scanned in properly for the special rate.

I blame Cosmo for the APG Iconics not being out yet despite being told in Nov. 2014 they were being "spruced up" to be out soon.

Guys... we have SO MANY pregen characters for people to choose from already. I think Paizo can spend their time on other things, personally. Either way, saying things like "you're better than that" and "this is getting sad" really isn't helping.

It's demoralizing and it obviously cannot be a question of time if they had the time to put out the ones for Occult Adventures.

And it is SAD when you have players who are simply denied playing something they want because people just haven't gotten around to it in over a year in a half.

Actually, I've had new players come in and ask to play a witch and an alchemist respectively because they liked the name and wanted to try the class out. The look of defeat on their faces when I told them that they didn't exist was, well, troubling.

I think that some of the above language regarding their absence was harsh, but I do think that a pregen for each class really should exist. Especially because over half of the classes currently in the game have pregens.

Bolded emphasis mine - this is exactly why it's sad.

Maybe harsh is what we need at this point because obviously it's being ignored with polite niceties. It's a valid complaint with no cursing, no forum rules broken and clear frustration.

This wouldn't be nearly as bad if they hadn't posted themselves in this very thread in Nov. 2014 that they were "Working on it". That's like a slap in the face and practically a bold face lie. It obviously didn't take a year and a half to get the Occult Adventures ones out so it shouldn't be taking that long to get the APG ones out.

I say beat the dead horse as much as necessary - it is REALLY REALLY REALLY ridiculous that we get the Occult Adventures Iconics out before the APG ones.

It cannot be a case of alignment problems, they could do with Seltyiel as they did with Meligaster and go LN instead of LE.

We're at a year and a half already... seriously disappointing. This is something very stupidly simple that shouldn't take that long to work up and would make a lot of players happy and yet it's been shelved or ignored for no reason.

Bad Form, Paizo, you're better than that.

I don't really get this. If 15 point buy means cookie cutter optimization to survive, but GMs have to put in more work to make things appropriately challenging for higher point buys, what's the point? Can't they put in work to make it easier to survive for the lower point characters? If the GM is making it harder, might the 20 pt characters also need cookie cutter optimization to survive?

I don't really have a position in this argument, but that line of thought just makes no sense to me.

The point is, when you have nothing but 15 point buys there are only a couple of builds per class that work, it's min-maxing, over-optimization, because you just don't have options. You won't get people playing fighters with high charisma because they want that in a character because those points need to go to STR/DEX and CON.

If I have to spend a little extra time so that my players can make UNIQUE characters every single time, then I deem it worth it.

Every group is different, every group dynamic is different. And my logic doesn't have to make sense to everyone. I don't mind if people love 15 point buy, I just personally hate it, and it doesn't make sense to me. I very much dislike low fantasy games for the same reason. If I'm going to play or run something fantastic, by golly it will be FANTASTIC !

In the end, it's mostly just personal preference between players and GM's and something each group has to sort out among themselves.

I had a fantastic year again, even better than last year. Met some amazing new friends, got goblin brains, and played until I about dropped (both in char and out).

I loved the Scavenger Hunt boon idea, I think this should be a recurring event assuming we didn't terrorize the staff too much over sigs, heh.

My only complaint, if you can call it that since it's really circumstance, was the volume level in the Grand Ballroom for those events did make it a bit difficult to hear at times - especially during the special, but that's not a huge deal given it means people were having a blast. Perhaps if there were a better way to arrange the tables so they were just a bit further apart it might help but otherwise I can't think of anything else.

Wonderful job again Paizo and as usual, all the staff we encountered were super helpful and polite.

Just cause...

Had an amazing day at Paizocon today and it's definitely al(most) all Cosmo's fault.

You know, it's funny but I have never seen the bad behaviour and attitudes towards female gamers in my personal life. When I started gaming, it was with both of my sisters. The first group we were in had them and my older sister's best friend. Three girls right at the start. As I look over my years of gaming, I see that for the most part I have rarely been in a gaming group that didn't have women.

So imagine my shock when the whole Anita Sarkeesian event took place. I was dumbfounded. I began searching around on internet forums and began to see what was actually happening. I cannot explain to you my level of disgust. It was as if someone had taken the blinders off and revealed the dark underbelly of the gaming community. I talked to my younger sister about all this (who I still game with after 30+ years!) and was startled to discover she was well aware of it, although she is not an active participant in gamer culture.

One of the reasons that I actually post to the Paizo forums is because they go out of their way to be inclusive. I just don't feel comfortable anywhere else as much as I do here. And yet since the veil has been lifted for me, I have seen an occasional statement on these boards that is borderline. Some of the more offensive posts are rarely seen by me, as Paizo is very good at removing those posts quickly.

I have come to the realization of just how lucky I have been and how ignorant to the rudeness of people happening within my view but not my notice.

Make women feel welcome. That is all that will be required to get more women into this contest. They can be just as good at all this as anybody else.

So... color me more naive than I thought.

This describes me pretty well, save I'm an only child, but I've almost always been in a group with multiple females when gaming. For the last 12 years I've been the primary GM/Storyteller in our group and the only opposition I ever faced in terms of "power struggles" was from the other females. I counted myself lucky--I'd heard whispers but never felt I'd ever been on the receiving end.

To be honest, I don't hit up blogs, lurk on forums, hang out on YouTube, or any fandom sites. I had no clue, literally none, Anita Sarkeesian was until I started reading this thread.

All I can say now (after having done a bit of web searching) is Holy S***! I've always known that the internet could be a place for rampant stupidity and idiotic behavior--my mother signed up to AOL in 1995 and sadly those were my first experiences with gaming (small town high school had no gamers that I ever knew of)--doing text based RP in chat rooms. So... I've encountered stupidity there, but I suppose I was just too young at the time to really connect it to something based on gender.

Now, having read all of this I sat down and actually thought about it. Hindsight is 20/20 and I realize that even my very first game, and one of my favorite gaming moments of all time, was exactly this problem. My first game, my now fiance brought me in to his group and they were in the middle of an old campaign. AD&D looking at like 16-18th level characters. The DM gives me a few rules about equipment (cause that thing was just a BEAST for a first timer) and then when I was done, looked at my creation and scoffed. He decided it was too inferior to meld with the group and sarcastically suggested my fiance help me and that he "tweak" it and add more stuff to it. So I let him. He regretted it a few weeks down the road when I showed him exactly how nasty my "novice" understanding of the mechanics was. At the time, I thought it was him just giving me a hard time because I was new and I probably never would've thought anything of it except for my fiance' later apologizing and explaining that it had been otherwise. But I was 19, young, and blew it off.

Still, the more I think about it... I've had some stares, some comments, and what not over the years since then. But I never really let them get to me. It probably helped that until I saw my fiance' playing SWTOR that I hadn't ever gotten into MMO's either--but even then while I was playing a distinctly female char I didn't actually see it happening. I used to be amused and even a bit confused when people were shocked that "Yes, I really am a female" and was able to keep up with the "boys". Now, I just have to shake my head.

I have to say I'm extremely thankful that so much of my gaming experiences have been what I'd call positive and devoid of this sort of behavior--I've had some low points in my life and had I encountered any of this insanity during those points I may very well have been tempted to ditch what has become my favorite hobby.

I suppose what I really want to say with all of this is a thank you to Paizo and her Community. This really is the only forum I have ever posted on and not only do I feel safe in doing so, but I'm encouraged to do so; that's because they do such a good job moderating and because they've fostered such a great community.

Of the 84 items in my Keep folder, only 12 made the Top 32.

I'm a bit dismayed that my tastes are so different from those of the voting public and the judges. (I'm not angry or bitter about anyone's preferences, mind you; I'm just dismayed that I operate on such a different wavelength when it comes to wondrous items.) In previous years where I didn't make the Top 32, it was disappointing, but in the end, it was just a single idea being rejected. As a freelancer, individual ideas I propose get rejected all the time, to the point that it doesn't phase me anymore.

But this year, the voters and judges didn't just reject my item; they rejected 72 other items I thought had Superstar potential. That doesn't feel like having a single idea for a wondrous item rejected. That feels more like having 73 consecutive ideas for wondrous items rejected. At that point, I have to wonder if it's even worth trying again. I could submit an item a year for the next 72 years without creating a single one which impresses the voters and judges.

I'm in the same boat here--it's gotten to the point where I just don't think I'm cut out for the sort of flexibility that this contest requires. I know I'm creative, I know I'm a good GM, but having such obviously different tastes I just don't think I'm capable of developing things that are what is wanted for this particular endeavor.

Mind you, I mean this in no way to be any sort of insult, flame, or any other sort of negative commentary about anyone--it is merely a realization and acceptance for myself that what I create just may not be "right" for this contest. And that's okay.

I'll probably check my email and the forums tomorrow like everyone else but after five years I know better than to get my hopes up. I still wish everyone that does make it the best of luck and good job. There were a lot of very interesting items this year, a lot of potential, and a lot of things that made me think--while I wouldn't use it as was in my games I certainly liked the ideas behind them enough to do some tweaking. So thank you all for that as well.

MidknightDiamond wrote:

Shadowborn wrote:

I've spent time...lots and lots of time. On my item, voting, sketching out archetypes, voting...did I mention voting? Why am I still voting? I have writing to do!

Because we failed our Fortitude saves.

I think it's a Will save. The Fortitude save comes later when you're worn down from voting that much. And, for those who make it to the Top 32, they're the ones who have to make Reflex saves. Lots and lots of Reflex saves. ;-)

Actually I was thinking of the Addiction rules subset which would be Fortitude.

Link

When a character takes a drug, he immediately gains the effects, an amount of ability damage, and must make a Fortitude save to resist becoming addicted to that drug (see Addiction).

I can see where that could be the case, I just wanted to be certain that people weren't mistaking "game balance" for "bad design". Filigree and gossamer don't mean it's a bad item either I suppose, but it does mean that those people will be getting thesauruses for their next birthday.

As you mentioned, it can be a fine line to walk. I just like to see the more outside the box type uses--competency, while useful for many many reasons, just feels safe to me, low risk.

I'll still take all the filigree, Fleur-de-lis, gossamer, shadows of doom over the Doctor Who and Mary Poppins items I've seen.

If you're voting at pretty much the same time it's been known to happen and was covered in this thread.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2pbc3?Odd-voting-sync-behavior

At least I hope that helps some.

Almost makes this old grognard pine for the days of yore when crafting magical items was a strange, arcane affair full of DM fiat...and collecting all sorts of rare ingredients to use in the construction, like demon's blood and dragon bones, and vials of raw aether.

Depending on the item, I still make my players do stuff like this and they love it. Their adventures to find the materials to make their special items provides me with ample opportunities to toss in story elements and it helps them customize and flesh out their characters--make them more than just words and numbers on a piece of paper.

Okay... so there's some 18 different types of bonuses (alchemical, armor, circumstance, competence, deflection, dodge, enhancement, insight, luck, morale, natural armor, profane, racial, resistance, sacred, shield, size, and trait) as well as the plain "bonus" so... 19 total.

I understand that not all of those bonus types are appropriate for some items types but something, anything, other than "competence bonus" would be a nice change of pace.

I think it should also be mentioned for the purpose of this that the "Phrases that are driving you bonkers" thread isn't meant to indicate any one item and that anyone who submitted an item that might have one of those qualities shouldn't be overly disheartened. The only reason most of those things are being brought up as irksome (most, a few because they've been specifically advised against) is because of the repetitiveness of them. After seeing it a dozen or more times it can get to you. However, that doesn't mean that an item with any of those things can't be stellar, or isn't stellar. I've seen and voted for a number of entries that match that because they weren't bad, or were much better than many they were paired again. As it's been said in many threads, Clark specifically, everyone who entered with a legit item (not a joke, etc.) is a winner just for submitting. This is my 4th year, and though I haven't made the first cut yet I keep going, and I've been guilty of some of the pitfalls discussed--but every year I keep trying, undaunted. Every year I learn something new, my work gets a little better, and even though I don't make the cut--I get something out of it. And that's a great reward too.

For your consideration:

** Joke Item **

Bravo!

Even having to trudge through all the entries that just make me wince--I'm actually rather happy to be able to get to do the voting this year.

If nothing else we do get a prize by voting, even with all the evil repeats, we get knowledge--we get to see our competition. And we get to see all of it (save the auto-rejects for rules violations), not just the top 32. It's been said in another thread but I think this experience is definitely going to help a lot of people work on polish and make the contest that much more of a challenge in the future.

Backstory... like two thirds of the ones I've seen so far have a huge chuck of backstory.

Why...?

:sigh: