Mxyzptlk's page

Topic says it all. Not parting with my accounts, just resigning from my company which happens to control a settlement.

I’m auctioning total control of my player settlement by making the lucky RL auction winner its new leader.

https://cryptothrift.com/auctions/video-games-digital-goods/pathfinder-onli ne-player-settlement-96485/

Various individuals have been begging me (or threatening me) to do this for months now.

Note, I won’t be checking emails, or forum responses, because this crowd tends to waste A LOT of time and energy trolling.

So I apologize in advance to the rational, reasonable bidders. I will caution bidders not to take running a settlement lightly.

If you don’t already have a few dozen people willing to follow you to your new home, don’t expect them to fall from the sky later.

Settlement Name: Blackfeather Keep
Settlement Philosophies: Parables of Erastil
Government Type: Theocracy (Church of Erastil)
Alignment of Settlement: LG
Alignment of Citizens: LG, NG, LN
Alignment of Visitors: All but CE
Favored Classes: Clerics, Paladins, Rangers, Druids

Blackfeather Keep is a simple but uncannily unyielding wilderness stronghold. It was established as a defensible foothold for the local hunting, farming and logging hamlets. The Keep’s current stewards, the Agents of Erastil, actively patrol its vicinity with righteous zeal, making free the neighboring lands of barbarous or unnatural interlopers.

Services:
In addition to fine wares, the Keep provides facilities and training on crafts and skills befitting of Erastil. For the general public, those trades include woodworking, tanning and provisioning. For the Keep’s honored citizens, training in archery, axe-wielding, wilderness survival and divine spellcasting domains (Animal, Community, Good, Law and Plant) are extended as well.

Governance:
The Keep’s leadership is composed primarily of high ranking clergy, compelled to conduct themselves in alignment with their deity. A modicum of leeway is granted for the behavior of the Keep’s citizens, as the extremely hostile surroundings sometime call for less than savory acts to maintain peace. Infamously chaotic, evil individuals trespassing within the Keep’s borders are given fair warning--once. Thereafter, the individual’s safety cannot be guaranteed.

Trade is the lifeblood of Blackfeather. Forces that would menace local roads, and thereby commerce, are warned, then bountied. By the same token, Keep citizens (or leadership) convicted of similar nefarious acts against neighboring allied hubs face stringent consequences, up to and including exile.

As followers of Erastil, the Keep’s leaders have no penchant for senseless acts of aggression, demonstrations of power, or waging war. But they are not naïve to imminent threats; have orchestrated treaties with local allies, and prepared numerous defensive countermeasures. Diplomacy will be exhausted before any offensive is ever undertaken against a neighboring unfriendly settlement. Blights however will be purged as presented.

Holidays:
Harsh times weather the soul. However Blackfeather is not all toil and strife. The Keep celebrates Planting Week on the Vernal Equinox, Archer's Day on the 3rd of Erastus and Harvest Feast on the Autumnal Equinox.

Several years back I stumbled on a novel implementation of nonlethal damage rules on a popular Neverwinter Nights 2 server. As you’d guess, that meant not every single game interaction necessarily resulted in someone’s death—what a concept.

Gone being the “do or die” mandate, it opened a variety of new quest types (subdual, arrest, abduction, extortion), new combat strategies, unique character builds, and play styles that actually allowed a PC to honor their alignment. PvP was more thrilling, and usually ended mercifully, if not downright amiably. There was also logic to prevent repeat griefing against a recently disabled player, since they technically hadn’t died so they hadn’t been magically whisked away, out of reach of their attacker.

As I recall, some weapons could only deliver NL damage, like saps, batons, and fists (if untrained in Unarmed Combat). For the rest, a NL damage “mode button” could be clicked during combat to prevent opponent death. Some NPCs even refrained from delivering a coup de grâce, like good and neutral guards.

In terms of reputation, bounty hunting, etc. a petty thief would be able to stay under the radar much longer than an openly murderous bastard via setting the appropriate flag at combat’s end.

Given the expected investment in time just getting from point A to B in the world, were Pathfinder Online to implement NL damage, a bandit encounter (PC or NPC) could be significantly less infuriating, were the ambushed party allowed to simply stabilize a few minutes after the robbery.

Looking at the guild index it appears the vast majority of settlements have unsustainably low player counts.

I realize the genie is out of the bottle, and it’s too late to impose caps on the number of guild members (for Alpha/Early Enrollment).

My question, should there be any consideration to help low pop settlements with their defense and resource collection? [a buff]

Otherwise great lengths have been gone to designing the land rush for settlements that won’t survive the night.

With a total sandbox comes the potential that this degrades into a fantasy-medieval version of “Rust”.

There has to be some artificial incentive in not making the obvious choice and having all players join one or two massive guilds.

Haven’t seen it mentioned in an official Dev blog yet, so I thought I’d throw it out there early.

I hope the engine Pathfinder licensed allows realistic 3D collision detection between characters and NPCs, not just the walkmesh and other static game objects.

Currently playing GW2. One of the common ‘techniques’ (exploits) I feel totally destroys the suspension of disbelief happens during WvWvW. The commander yells “STACK!”, and you’ll have 40-60 lethally armed players of various sizes all clown-car into about a square foot of grass for the purpose of concealing numbers and/or buffing. FOUL!!!

It will be impossible for Pathfinder to provide a realistic ground warfare experience if it behaves the same in that respect. Tanks wielding tower shields should be impenetrable walking walls, protecting their squishier squad mates. Unless under some intentional “etherealness” effect, all player avatars absolutely must have tangible substance.

It’s a fantasy game, yes. But let’s not lie to ourselves, this departure from reality is nothing more than a technical shortcut game engine makers take for performance reasons. Minimum PC specs for a game releasing in 2016 shouldn’t need this.