Modron Lawyer's page

The pawns are pretty cool. However, there is one issue that often comes up in play:

The colors to identify different monsters of the same type. They all have the same number, but one is blueish, one reddish etc. Often during the game, it's hard to identify which is which, and it gets worse when playing long into the night, or use candles for the mood.

Another reason is accessibility - in one of my groups, there's also a color blind player.

But there is a simple way to solve this problem:

Add a second identifier. This might be another number, or a letter.

So instead of the duergar from Bestiary box being 72 (red) and 72 (purple), make it

72.1
72.2

or

72.A
72.B

That would improve communication at the table a lot and make the pawns a better and even more useful product.

Hi Guys,

I finally received the 'is about to ship' email for order # 2194932 and I noticed that your system has horribly mangled my address.

It seems your confirmation email system cannot handle umlauts (ä ö ü).

I'm a bit worried you might print the address label in an equally broken way, so I wanted to ask you to make sure that you send the package to the address I specified in my account...including all umlauts, or at least without replacing the umlauted-letter with some ascii symbols.

Thanks!

I get the following message:

Sorry, there was a problem handling your request. The system administrator has been notified.

Please contact webmaster@paizo.com if you continue to have difficulties.

I can repeat the situation by trying to check out my order.

I want to pay you money, to buy stuff from you. Please let me.

Please cancel my Maps Subscription.

Thanks!

Today, I logged into the monster builder for the first time in a while...and - wow.

It's finally a monster builder and not just a monster viewer!

Hi Paizo,

Looks like you've sent me the wrong item again. I received order #1799770, and instead of the Dark Sun Campaign Map, I got a second copy of the City of Tyr map.

I'm sorry to bother you again, but I would greatly enjoy if you would not mislabel my packages.

Every other package I got before from Paizo was clearly labeled to contain books. My Dark Sun order was not. For my country, books with a value of less than 276$ are exempt from taxes.

As the total of my order was clearly below that, it would not have been taxed by customs - were it actually labelled 'books' like all the other packages from Paizo.

How can I prevent this from happening in the future? Do I need to write a note? "Please label this 'books' like all the other packages, and not differently?"

Gary: Oh. My. God. I am an evil genius!

Indeed. That's so...very...funny. :(

Edit: Of course I don't think it was done on purpose. Hanlon's razor applies, I guess.

I cannot download #6 of Carrion Crown, yet I'm no longer a AP subscriber? I canceled by sub with CC #6. What's wrong?

Discuss.

Here's a link to his latest Legends & Lore article. I want Bill Slavicsek back!

Hmm...This might be good news for Paizo, though.

I made a post about this already, but I seem to have been unclear in stating my point, so unclear that it was moved to the Technology forum despite being focussed on Paizo Products. So I'll try to be extra clear this time...

The layout and formatting of Paizo PDFs is identical to the book versions. That is, it uses a fullpage-layout in portrait format. As more and more players use the PDFs on a tablet device, most likely an iPad or one of the android-based clones, a layout oriented towards tablets would be very beneficial. The size factor of tablets makes reading a full page kind of annoying, because then the fonts are getting very small and detail is lacking, and scrolling is required. In addition, landscape seems to be more popular as shown by the iPad-oriented magazines.

Since the amount of people using tablets to read/lookup their stuff is only going to increase, and Paizo already has a healthy PDF-selling business, they are in a unique position to innovate here. A special tablet-layouted PDF could even be sold extra, in addition to the 'normal' PDF, for the people who want. And layouting shouldn't be too big a problem, especially since additional white space for layouting reasons is not a problem for PDFs, while it costs pages in books...

So - any chance that Paizo will embrace the future? ;)

More and more people start using tablets for RPG PDFs. The default format for paizo PDFs is not greatly suited for tablets, as the fonts are too small to read it comfortably in full-page view, and scrolling is kind of annoying...

The solution would be:

Half-page, tablet versions of the PDFs, preferably in landscape view. Dungeon and Dragon magazines already do the landscape page stuff and have larger fonts, but it's not quite perfect (and most likely a random strike of luck, as the format predates tablets).

Any chance of getting tablet-optimized PDFs from Paizo?

Is there a reason why you don't offer bestiary paper minis, but only the cartoon ones?

I would immediately buy a PDF with all the bestiary creature illustrations, scaled correctly, for half the price of the bestiary book or so. Or more.

Here's why I don't like skill challenges as written:

They detract from the story, and focus on mechanics.

Lets say we have two skill challenges as examples:

- The party wants to convince the king to mobilize an army to counter the threat from the east.

- The party needs to catch a pickpocket that bumped into them at the great bazaar.

Using the skill challenge rules, the DM would define a number of maximal uses of each skill. Here's the situation that might occur:

DM: "The thief escapes your grip (failed previous athletics check) and jumps onto the next roof."
Player: "I immediately take up and jump after him (starts to roll acrobatics)."
DM: "Oh, you've already used the maximal allowed acrobatics successes."

WAT?

Or in the other example, the players use very good arguments and have good rolls to convince the king, and he's almost convinced, except for one thing: he's still two successes short of the goal, and bluff, diplomacy, insight and history have been 'used up'. Now the players should use nature (e.g.) to convince the king that the swamp between the threat and his kingdom is easily passable at this time. But what if none of the players get this idea?

Obviously, any good DM will adjust on the fly, but 'house rules cannot be used to excuse defects in a system'.

For my own campaign, I've only kept a few things: the basic mechanics of a 'cumulate a number of skill check successes and failures', and level-appropriate DCs. Everything else is open - which skills can be used, and how many times they can be used, what explanations are behind the skill uses...

Another thing I think skill challenges do very well is that they emphasize that even failures move the story forward, just in a different direction. For every skill challenge, I try to think of at least three reasonably different paths forward, and will the one taken to reflect the players action in the game during the game.

I'm not very happy with healing surges as they are - only recharging them at extended rests gives a hard limit, no character wants to no anything once he's down to 0 surges. Sometimes, a looming greater threat in the gameworld might convince them otherwise, but repetition makes that stale, too.

Another problem is that sometimes, the session might only include 1-2 fights, so they never reach 0 surges unless the fight is truly one-sided. And tracking stats over sessions is problematic for various reasons.

So I thought that the best way would be to just divide the number of healing surges by the expected number of encounters, and make them replenish every short rest. This would mean that for the party I'm currently DMing for, the Wizard has 2 surges (7/4 ~ 1.75 = 2) and the warden has 4 (14/4 ~ 3.5 = 4).

Did anyone here try a similar system? Comments?

Oh, and story- or non-fight-encounter-based loss of surges would just be a penalty/curse/... to the healing surges available each encounter, and would have to be solved/restored in story.

Necromancer and Nethermancer Preview

While I was severly unimpressed with the other Heroes of Shadow previews, this looks very cool.

DO WANT!

Mike Mearls[/url]] The idea behind the gnome effect is simple. Let’s say you’re planning on releasing a hypothetical edition of D&D. You want to determine which races are important to the game, so you conduct a poll and find that only 10% of gamers play gnomes. That might make it seem obvious that you can safely cut the gnome without much trouble.

Is it possible to use (greater) Shadow Conjuration/Evocation to duplicate an empowered Spell?

Assume that the caster does have the requisite metamagic feat and the level of the metamagic'd spell is equal or lower the limit set by the shadow spell.

I originally posted this in the 3.5 board but didn't get any answers - maybe i'll get more now that I (hopefully) posted in the correct place...

Is it possible to use (greater) Shadow Conjuration/Evocation to duplicate an empowered Spell?

Assume that the caster does have the requisite metamagic feat and the level of the metamagic'd spell is equal or lower the limit set by the shadow spell.

On wizards.com, you can find the announcement that you can win a chance to portray your evil character in the new Dungeons & Dragons Film, "The Book of Vile Darkness".

Sounds interesting. While the first D&D film was total crap, the second one was kind of fun, in a trashy way...

I just received my latest shipment from paizo. Initially, I was very happy about it, but then I opened it. The battlemat I ordered was bent twice and twisted in the worst possible attempt to fit it into the (much too small) box it was sent in. A small, square box, not the cardboard tube that is commonly used for posters or ... what a surprise... battlemats.

I unpacked it and behold: your method of shipping actually managed to make the battlemat unusable for play: Photo here.

Needless to say, I don't need a broken battlemat - how shall I proceed?

Sending it back will mean that only reimbursement of the costs of the two shipments is already more than half of the new price of the mat. But then again, the mat as is is clearly broken and unfit for its intended purpose.

Edit: Surfing on your site, I noticed these posts here. It seems that sending these mats inappropriately is a systematic failure on your part, and not just a single case of someone being too tired to think in the morning...cardboard tubes are cheap, guys. Seriously, why make your customers angry and disappointed when the solution is so simple.

PAX Game videos

So I finally got Essentials, and I'm torn.

Format I really like the rules compendium. The format is great for a book that will see much use, and while it is and looks cheaper than the old PHBs, this makes it easier for me to put in notes or stickers and other helpful stuff that will 'ruin' the book. I never did this for any of the old books; they are simply too beautiful and must be kept in perfect condition...and since there is the character builder and print-outs, that wasn't really a problem.

But this is also why I really don't like Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and why I cancelled my order for the second Heroes' book. It is NOT nice enough. Its ok to use, but doesn't have the DO WANT-factor of many the old books, and since I'll have all the options with DDI anyway, why bother.

I'm also a bit ... hesitant ... towards the monster vault and DM kit, but I did not cancel that order.

Content Meh. I like the new builds, and I like the old (PHB) builds. I don't really care about errata because of CB, and I don't really care about the rule changes. As a DM, I have never used the parcel system but given out optimal, personalized loot anyway, so...yeah.

I'm looking forward to play an essentials wizard for a short module or so, and I will allow all essentials stuff when I DM.

Summary So in my not-so-humble opinion, the rules compendium is essential, while the heroes book is clearly not.

The Prestidigitation cantrip lasts for an hour and can be used to do various minor magic tricks, in the spell text it uses soiling an object as example.

Imagine this situation:

Prestidigitation was cast half an hour ago, so it will still be active for another half hour. A noble holds a speech. Now, my caster wants to soil that nobles clothes using prestidigitation. Would any of the NPCs / bystanders present notice that the soiling of the noble's clothes was caused by prestidigitation? Does the caster have to use some additional gestures/words/... which would be noticeable?

Does the fey sorcerer bloodline arcana apply to spells cast from wands? Suppose I have a wand of sleep, is the Save DC 11 or 13?

I'm wondering why the international postal fees are so high. Even with the 15% off for being a subscriber, ordering from amazon saves me on average 20-40%. I would like to support paizo directly, but the difference in price leaves a bitter taste. Is the overseas volume too small for cooperation with local partners, or what's the reason?

Accusing us of lying to you probably isn't helping you win friends here either.

I did not accuse anyone of lying. I simply told of my experience.

I would have answered you in the other thread, but unlike you, I do not have the magic required to post in a thread after it was locked.

You might try comparing the time stamp of your messageboard post and the time stamp on the customer service reply (make sure you're looking at when it was sent, not when it was received, and adjust from GST if need be). Looks like there *is* such a thing as coincidence!

I did. An what a surprise... it was sent after my post. I admit that the 4 minute reaction time is impressive, so ... yeah.

Edit: I should clarify. Of course I understand that it might be coincidence. I simply don't know, and I'm willing to believe you. But I did check the mail headers before posting, and they are not as you suggest. My original thread was created :01, and the mail was sent to the paizo mailserver at :05.

With regards to this:

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo/customerService/whatTheHell

I learned that using attention-grabbing headlines when trying to grab the attention of customer service is frowned upon.

I still wonder, however, why 'What the Hell' is deemed so offensive, especially considering that Paizo actually produces and sells a guide to Hell (Book of the Damned, Vol. 1), and mentions it in other works (Guide to the Multiverse, Cheliax Companion).

I wrote an email to customer.service@paizo.com (as suggested in the FAQ) a week ago, and I haven't received a reply, nor has my request been handled.

What's wrong with your customer service?

I noticed that in some PDFs, the letter 'A' is not shown in titles. This is quite annoying, does not really inspire confidence in the product, and makes me hesitant to purchase any Pathfinder PDFs.

Is this a known problem? Am I doing it wrong?

Example: http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5423/pathfinderaproblem.png

It's a screenshot from the 3.5 to PF conversion guide.

Edit: I found out that the problem only seems to exist on Mac OS X (the PDF displays correctly on Debian and other Linuxes). However, on Mac, the problem exists with both Preview and Quicklook (the built-in PDF viewers) and third-party software such as Skim...

Soooo...if I get this right, the summoner:

- gets haste at reduced level (2)
- gets black tentacles at reduced level (3)
- gets charm monster at reduced level (3)
- gets the walls at reduced level (3)
- gets grease, glitterdust, barkskin,..

In addition, he gets a pet that is better than any fighter at lower levels...

How is this not incredibly overpowered?

I have a rule question and would be happy if someone could clarify this for me. The question is:

If I have sorcerer bonus spells per day of a certain level from high charisma, can I use these spells even if I don't know any spells of that level?

E.g sorcerer 8, cha 20 -> 1 bonus spell of level 5, but no spells known of level 5. Can I use this spell slot for e.g. an empowered 3rd-level spell?