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I love the idea of the witch, but I also prefer spontaneous casting. And with the oracle running a game with only spontaneous casters (sorcerer, oracle, bard) seems very easy to do. But would simply switching the sorcerers spell list have any unintended side effects I'm not aware of just now? Anything I would have to look out for?
I'm kind of partial to a New World sort of new world. Namely, how about a campaign set in an age of exploration and discovery. A whole new continent has been discovered. I agree - something like the Forerunners in Andre Norton's books. Take that idea, and mix it with a genuine Neolithic / Antediluvian culture (like our world, but with magic). We can see what they left behind, but don't understand it and no - or few - written records mean no history, no king lists, no knowledge of heroes or the movement of peoples. I love both concepts and kind of combined them for my setting. Most humanoid races have left the late stone age just a couple of centuries ago and some (goblin-likes) are still at that level. Most existing civilization started with humanoid slaves of native outsider races that where left behind when the last ancient cities were abandoned. They managed to preserve at least some pieces of advanced knowledge from their former masters, and just 300 years ago the descendants of those freed slaves started to establish long-distance trade relationships amongst each other. This enabled an exchange for knowledge that also became accessible to the primitive people of the lands the caravan routes pass through. Now that the major routes are relatively secured and the network of trade relationships has become relatively stable, people are for the first time able to explore the continent beyond just the coasts and great rivers. If there's anything that would be valuable or useful, everyone will want it, so everyone wants to find them first.It's a setting for exploring overgrown ruins that havn't been thouched for thousands of years, securing alliances and trade agreements, and defending claims on resources. It's good for exploration and wilderness adventures, but also lots of politics, but without the fancy ettiquete and paperwork. "Agressive negotiation". ^^
And mostly it doesn't matter. It's really not so much about the actions that are performed, but the context in which a characters decides a course of action.
Ooh, and not to give the impression that I'm picking on your idea, Neithan, but this is a common trope in fantasy worlds. In Greyhawk, two vastly superior magically-advanced cultures were able to wipe each other out with the Rain of Colorless Fire and the Invoked Devastation. In the Realms, magic was explicitly better 'back then' with 10th level spells and sentient mythals and people able to cast spells that had the possibility of turning them into gods. But that's not what I'm talking about. Every historian with 10 ranks in Knowledge (history) can tell you the entire history of Netheril, Myth Drannor, and Imaskar. There's nothing mysterious or unknown about them, they are perfectly researched and recorded. Their magical effects can not be replicated in the present, but that's because the laws of magic have changed. They wouldn't be able to replicate those effects either and everyone knows perfectly well who they were. I'm thinking more of towers and castles that have been ancient long before recorded history, without anyone even having an educated guess what race the creators were and what they looked like. They are one of the four generic standard sci-fi races (humans, religious warrior-aliens, ancient destroyer-aliens, extinct science aliens who knew how to kill destroyer-aliens). But I never saw them in fantasy settings.
You could make up anything you want to, because such a weapon would be impossible to use in reality. It's going to be purely made up fiction anyway.
I don't think spellcasters need anything that makes them better. The were extremely powerful to begin with, and PF made them even better.
One thing that's very fantasy-like but apprently appears mostly in sci-fi, are ancient forgotten cultures that left behind huge buildings and advanced technology/magic, that people of the present don't completely understand.
You also don't get any Hit Dice, which really is a considerable price to pay, especially at low levels. What level are the characters supposed to start at anyway?
I really like "ancient" fantasy settings. Bronze Age or Atlantean fantasy is great, but seems to be very rare with victorian settings being themost popular kind of the day. Having a world with barbarians, rangers, sorcerers, druids, witches, and oracles, and no clerics, paladins, cavaliers, and such is what I'm currently working on.
The "problem" with such settings is, that not all classes and equipment is appropriate, and publishers seems to hate settings that don't allow all options provided by the rules.
If they ever do make another setting, which I doubt they will do as goloarin seems to be going strong. I would love to see a setting based more on the renissance/early modern period, similar to the musketeers. I only looked at the basic things about a year ago, but isn't that what Golarion is?
Puzzles can be fun, but they rarely make any sense. If you want to guard something against intruders and only want it to be accessible by specific people, don't guard it with a lock that can be opened by anyone within 20 to 30 minutes.
Riddles are even worse. It worked in LotR, but only because the secret to open the door was to know that there's a riddle in the first place. When you allready know there's one, anyone can overcome that obstacle in question.
Two times I was the only guy in an otherwise all girl group. No idea why, it just happened.
Dig a small grave in the garden, inscribe 'irony' on the gravestone.My mother loves D&D books. Especially monster manuals, because they have the most pictures. ^^My mother thinks that RPG's are somewhere between Nazi-stuff and satanism. To quote her: "I'd rather have you running around with a rat on your shoulder." So I have all my RPG stuff up in the attic where I sleep. Thank all gods of all D&D-settings she's afraid of heights. :D You talk about irony? Listen too this: My mother is a pastor and she introduced me and my brothre to our first dungeon crawl board game. she loves fantasy stuff and lets my dad play heavy metal in the living room all day. ^^ (This calls for another "USA vs. Europe" motivator. ;) )
My mother loves D&D books. Especially monster manuals, because they have the most pictures. ^^
It depends on how much you boast yourself to be able to know the writers real thoughts.
You can use every one-handed weapon two-handed. Waraxes and bastard swords only have the exception that you need a feat or racial trait to be proficient with the one-handed use.
I said it here, but apparently it can simply be labeled as 'house-ruling' and not 'GM doing his job'... In my understanding of RPGs, this is exactly what the gm is there for. You can't play any RPG by RAW. Of course you can, but then it seems not much else than an overly complex chess game.
Using a 15 point start means you will have more min/maxing in order to stay effective. Is that what you want? More min/maxing? Maybe it is.No what we've shown is that the 15 point build is viable, even for builds that are a little creative. Min-maxers will do it regardless of the PC creation method they're given. Being "effective" must be measured against the DM's challenges. It's up to the DM to provide an appropriate challenge for the group of players at the table. It's a compromise and balancing act on both sides of the screen. Without knowing your target, it's meaningless to discuss effectiveness. Finalle someone who says that.
I think this is really just one situation in which the gm has to handle the situation by thumb. Yes, the rules say that once a character in combat has all round vision. Which I assume is a very sensible rule for most situations.
But in many situations a person does not spin around all the time to check behind his back. And it's the gms job to determine when a character pays attention to things behind him and when not. You can't make a hard rule for that, so the gm has to decide it. That's the very reason the game has a gm. He is not just playing the NPCs in a combat trying to defeat the PCs, but its his explicit job to judge situations that are not covered by hard rules. Yes, the rules clearly say no as written. But it's one of the situation in which is seems completely clear that the gm is supposed to handle it outside the written rules.
Also, Feats that require another feat as a prerequisite, also require the prerequsites of that feat. So even if you can take Deflect Arrows as a bonus feat without having Dex 15, you can't take Snatch Arrows as a regular feat, as it also requires Dex 15.
How unneccessary. This kind of makes the additional +2 to one ability score for races even more limiting instead of providing more power.
25 is probably what you wanted to say. Point Buy 15 is the average of rolling 3d6.
Must be you, looks all fine to me. And thanks for answering my question.
I was refereing to these: http://paizo.com/store/downloads/pathfinder/adventurePath/v5748btpy8bd8
The one for Legacy of Fire is indeed filled under Companion and not Adventure Path.
Is there a Player's Guide for Second Darkness? Every AP seems to have one for free download and though none is listed for Legacy of Fire on the APs page, I have it in My Downloads. Probably added it when I saw an article that announced it's there.
Because if there's one, I'd really like to get a look at it.
As much as I like E6, how do you handle monsters with class levels? If you only have bugbears and lizardfolk, its rather easy. 2 racial HD + 4 class levels are 6 HD and you start giving feats from that point on.
But how would you handle that?
I searched a lot, but this seems have never been dealt with by the creators.
Regarding proficiency, I think simple weapons are simple, because they are easily available so most people can train with them a bit in their backyard without needing to have access to a well stocked armory of very expensive weapons. Except for bows and crossbows, which are categorized by handling instead of availability.
In my games, I simply increase the slings damage to 1d6 and the critical modifier to x3.
I entirely disagree with this sentament. I find that craft, profession, and knowledge skills are some of the most useful skills in the game. They allow players to try new things and come up with wierd ideas. The problem people seem to have with them is that they are vague about what they do. The answer is, whatever you want them to do. Craft (engineer) can solve almost any problem in a creative way. ^^
Simply accepting paypal payment would be much easier, but I'll try to find out more about that.
It seems that you can only buy something in the Paizo store with a credit card and that you can't buy Paizo products at RPGNow. Is there a way to get the pdfs without a credit card?
I ususally don't play humans. But I'm always surprised that I'm one of very few players who do. Most people I know always play only humans.
The big problem I see with the discontinued rule to cap classes depending on the characters race is, that it is apparently meant to get something like balance.
And restricting classes from races is fluff. In the lands of Generica dwarves don't use arcane magic. Okay, but that's the setting. There's no reason to not have homebrew settings in which there are dwarven wizards. I don't mean this to be an accusation of bad game design by the people who created these rules decades ago. But today D&D and RPGs in general are are mostly understood as a set of rules options on the one hand, and flashed out fantasy worlds on the other. And you pick the options from the rules, that you think represent the world best.
But I think we all can agree, that forbidding certain classes for certain races for the sole reason of enforcing archetypes has never been a good idea.
I'd say the only thing that ever deserved the term paradigm shift was to seperate race and class. Anything since then is just difference in how to realize said paradigm into rules.
But western Fantasy is more then LotR and D&D. Lots more!
Punishing is a great word for every game discussion. ^^
The quoted lines are wrong. A creature with the fire subtype that is invulnerable to fire is also always vulnerable to cold.
I'm with Dracon on this. When you metamagically change a cantrip, it's no longer a "cantrip" but a spell.
I'd like to raise the question again: What makes people feel that the changes to classes makes the game have a more AD&D feeling? When I look at the PF-SRD, only "niche classes" seem to have recieved substantial change.
On the first pages lots of people say that Pathfinder feels to them to be more like 2nd Ed and older D&D in general. I havn't read the book, but it made me look up the pathfinder wiki, and I don't really see how it is any different from 3.5e.
What would you people here say is the basic "theme" of Golarion?perhaps everything. It is very diverse. You can do pretty much everything in Golarion even the elves in space Not to take any fun away from people who enjoy it. But in this case "everything" sounds pretty much like "nothing" to me. In germany DSA is a very popular game, which apparently follows a similar premise. I didn't get it's appeal either. But well, this doesn't have to be a problem for anyone. Just thought I might have gotten Golarion just wrong.
What would you people here say is the basic "theme" of Golarion? Most settings have something that makes them unique, like "mingling with outsiders in the planes", "surviving in the ruins of a desert world", "kingdoms at war", or "elves in space". What is Golarion about? I once flipped through a kind of Golarion setting book, I think. But I only saw a couple of countries which are closely modeled after real world countries and societies? What's the greater whole that is made of these?
Because it's a fishs natural ability and not a "special" ability. It's usually explicitly stated for creatures you usually would not expect to be able to breath water.
In my homebrew setting, orcs are a very distant offshot of humans.
Also true. But that's "generally". Meaning, there are exceptions. And in the end, all classifications are just abitrary. In evolution there's never a point where you can say "this individual is of a new species, but it's parents are not". It's just a judgement call if you think two animals should be classified as two distinct species or as variants of the same.
In fantasy settings, there are frequent examples of creatures with wildly different genes being able to produce viable offspring. That's the part you're ignoring. There are even lots of real-world examples of animals interbreeding that are usually classified as different species. Horses can interbreed with donkeys and brown bears with polar bears. Genetic compatibility is not the deciding factor for classification.
I'm pretty sure you can request a picture and make some specifications what you want it to look like. I think most artists will make you what you ordered, so if they end up with 4E-looking tieflings, that's probably because they didn't say that they want something else.
Though I have to say I've never seen psionics mentioned when there was a discussion about the power of wizards, clerics or druids.
I do like psionic. Psions, psychic warriors, wilders and most powers are all cool. But why not call it magic? Of course a psion is not a sorcerer. But a shugenja is not a paladin, still their powers are both called devine magic.
That's all true, but once the spell is cast, it doesn't matter at all if the 20 ft spread that deals 7d6 points of fire damage is magical or psionic. A charmed humanoid is just charmed. There's no difference if it's magical or psionic. Your illusions don't work any different if another character is using magical or psionic true seeing. Okay, so a psion is not identical to a sorcerer. But a manifested psionical effect is exactly the same as a magical effect.
The difference between powers and spells is only in the rules how they are cast. The moment they come into effect, they behave exactly the same. Exact for the players who know they have spend power points instead of a spell slot, there's nothing for people inside the game, that makes a power different from a spell in any way.
The problem with 3.5e is, that psionics are NOT different from magic. There's no difference between a psion and a spell point based sorcerer. Spells and powers work exactly the same.
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