Old Guy's page

Personally, what I like about D&D and PF is that characters start out as normal people who are striving to become heroes. They don't begin as heroes, nor does everyone attain that goal.

If your whole group wants to start out as heroes, you might try starting characters at 10th (or higher) level. Otherwise you might want to look at 4e or some other game that is geared more towards a "superhero" feel.

If memory serves, that sounds like the Dragonquest system.

I'm a huge fan of letting players do whatever they want. Therefore, I wouldn't do anything to stop them from attempting such a scheme. As has already been pointed out, this scheme isn't as profitable as first thought and at some point the PCs would discover that (most likely after having wasted some time, effort, and gold in the process).

Even if a particular scheme is profitable there may be unforeseen problems. In this case, I suspect that the deity would have a problem with such a venture. In any money-making scheme there is always a risk that there won't be any market for the goods being offered. Even if there is a market, it could quickly become saturated causing the value of the items the PCs want to sell to drop drastically (or cause the market to dry up completely).

But those are things for the PCs to discover. Let them try whatever they want. If they don't do their homework up front, they may end up losing a bit of cash discovering their folly.

On the other hand, if the PCs discover a venture that is reasonable, well-thought out, and is unlikely to dry up on its own, I'd let them pursue it to their hearts content. Keep in mind that others, seeing the profitability of their plan, may emulate it and offer competition (that could easily become confrontational). Others may simply take offense at some aspect of the scheme and attempt to stop them. Yet others could see the PCs success at the venture and view them as targets for all sorts of larceny.

Hurray for PCs that invent their own subplots. :)

Sounds like you have the basics covered.

One thing we started keeping on hand at games though is a stack of very basic (throw-away, non-scientific) calculators. You can usually find some at the dollar store.

Dividing up loot alone makes them worthwhile.

There's a lot of art in the PF books that I consider to be "bad" art. But there are a great many more pieces that I consider to be excellent. Compared to other versions, I think the proportion of pieces that I like is much higher in the PF books.

But honestly, all I really care about is having a high quality picture of each monster to show my players. Those pictures don't all have to come from the same book. I have digital images of every monster from every edition's books and among them I have a image of every monster I need. Naturally, I'm always looking to increase my library and I'm very happy with many of the additions gained from various PF books.

As far as the non-monster filler art goes, I like some and hate some but over all I'm far happier with what PF presents than what I've seen in other companies products.

I have a friend who adopted d30s in place of d20s for attack rolls (players and monsters both) in a 2e game. Honestly, it didn't have nearly as much impact as I would have expected.

Fighter characters (and higher level monsters) were hitting most of the time anyway so the bonus wasn't really noticed by them. Low level monsters and non-fighters started hitting more often but they still missed a lot as well.

The most noticeable difference was that potential crits were less frequent. In games that implement a wider threat range for certain weapons or through feats, I think this would help rein in runaway crits.

I never implemented it in my own games (at least in part due to the fact that I never bothered to buy any) but I would certainly recommend trying d30s as attack dice for a night and see if your group likes them. If it were me, I think I would be tempted to bump up all ACs by five (to compensate for the average roll changing from 10.5 to 15.5) but from what I've seen that really shouldn't be necessary.

There may be all sorts of skills that lend themselves well to a bartering situation. However, imho, bartering is something best handled through role-playing.

Heh, my immediate reaction is "well, play 4e then! It's a great game and does all these things!"

+1

People that like those silly concepts already have a game that incorporates them. Why try to force them into this game too?

I've never cared for psionics and I think that the presentation is largely responsible. Psionics always "felt" wrong but I never gave it enough thought to determine why exactly. Now that you point it out, I'm sure that is the reason.

Changing the language and descriptions should go a long way towards changing that. I like what you have so far. Looking forward to see what other ideas pop up.

I don't know about anyone else, but I rather enjoy having an ability or two that are just horrendous. It also makes character creation a bit more interesting. But that is my two cents.

+1

I always roll for stats because it's more authentic. My method is to roll one hundred complete sets of stats and pick the one that fits my concept. This avoids the cookie-cutter aspect of point buys used by lesser roleplayers.

LOL

As far as the game goes, I would rule that arrows could be yanked out without incident.

However, many arrow heads are actually designed in such a way that "yanking them out" would probably do considerably more damage than the arrow did on the way in. In most situations, you would actually snap off the shaft just before the feathers and jam the arrow completely through, removing it from the other side.

You're gonna have a lot of one-legged, one-armed, characters wearing eye-patches.

As a last resort, right click | Save Image works amazingly well.

No, I do not allow characters to buy magic items.

Many contend that by restricting access to magical items the characters will be underpowered and encounters will have to be made easier to compensate.

Another way to phrase that is if you shut down Grizzlebeard's Chain of Magical Emporiums,characters will cease being overpowered and it will no longer be necessary to compensate by making encounters harder.

"A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities."

What you quoted says that the summoned monster cannot use certain abilities. I can't imagine how that could be interpreted to mean that others cannot use certain abilities on the summoned creature.

I vote for "None of the Above".

Campaign Cartographer 3 and/or Dundjinni allow you to make whatever types of printable maps you can imagine. Chip board and spray on glue turn those printouts into tiles. Self-adhesive lamination sheets allow you to write on them.

Far cheaper and more versatile.

250 daggers don't constitute a 250 pound object. They are 250 individual one pound objects. In a 10' x 10' x 30' deep pit, most would miss the victim completely. The victim could easily use a shield, backpack, or other object to deflect the rest. Most would be separate impacts occurring in rapid succession, and therefore would be much different from all of them hitting at the same time.

Aside from the damage caused from falling into the pit, I would consider the damage from the dagger barrage to be quite minimal.

Many people have suggested splitting the group in half. That is certainly a good suggestion, especially for a newer DM.

However, running a game with 11 players is quite doable. I've never personally DM'd a game quite that large but I was a player in one with considerably more. Most of the players were even quite new to the game.

When running a game with 11 players, a module designed for 4-5 players is not going to run smoothly. You'll need to come up with something more appropriate for that number.

You actually have a unique opportunity to run types of encounters that just aren't practical for small groups. Being a small army themselves, the players have the ability to take on a small army of creatures, or employ more complicated tactics that just aren't possible with a small group.

If you go that route, I hope you'll come back and post the results. I'd be curious to hear about it.

Keep in mind that you are quoting the original text of a spell written over thirty years ago. It says kind instead of type or subtype because, at the time, there was no type or subtype.

If I had to pick something to ask for in future Bestiary books it would be for something new. It's easy enough to convert monsters from previous versions or even from other games. Another book reprinting existing monsters, modified to account for rules changes, isn't nearly as exciting to me as new and different monsters would be. Bonus points for pronouncable monster names, extensive backgrounds, one-page-per-monster entries, and separate artwork for each monster.