Orcwart's page

Long time D&D fan and PF convert looking to get back into playing after a break of a couple of years. Local RPG group which runs PF is always oversubscribed so thought I'd give this a go.

I'm 41 but young at heart and (I think) I'm easy going. I've DM'd for most of my gaming life (since the the Red Box days), but due to work and family taking up all the brain space I have, I now want to just concentrate on only one character and be a player.

The type of campaigns I enjoy include heavy character development, deep plots and lots of intrigue. I am definitely not into min/maxing or pointless hack 'n' slash.

So please, if you think I might fit into your group, drop me a line.

:)

And I'm fine, thank you for asking. You?

Very well thanks. Our group's having another camping meet over midsummer. can't wait!

And thanks for your input, everybody. The comments make sense and I'll take them to my group.

Thanks!

Cheers, Aubrey (and I trust you are well?).

What reason do they not stack? I'm sure to be asked.

Do multiple Ray of Enfeeblement effects stack?

In the spell description, the penalty to Strength is unnamed, which should mean it stacks, but in the Magic chapter of the PHB it gives Ray of Enfeeblement as an example of when a spell effect doesn't stack (don't have page number as I'm at work).

Which is correct?

If any of you are from the UK, I saw SCAP HC in Orcs Nest (London) going for £10. I think they're getting rid of a lot of non-WoTC 3.5 stuff.

*Yawn*

Yay!

1) No/Maybe. My group and I don't want to convert. However, I'm honest enough to never say never. If 4e looks fantastic and fits in better with my busy family life I will be tempted to give it a look. My reticence is down to my belief that 3.5 is an excellent system and my group love it. Also we haven't explored all it can do and I have a ton of products yet unused.

2 & 3) Depends on above. I have trust in the Paizo brand (more than WoTC's) and want to buy your products. However, few of these are available in hobby shops in the UK and postage is expensive from US. If you can resolve this you'd make a lot of us happy.

As a matter of interest, what was it about 1st ed that made you enjoy it so much? Was it nostalgia or the system or something else? I haven't played 1st ed for years so am really interested.

I have to agree with all of the above. If 4E was what I saw in 2000, I wouldn't have bothered re-energising my D&D games with a new system. It would have just been too much a departure from what I was used to.

3E/3.5E took all the good and classic elements of the game, took out the ambiguity of a lot of rules and turned D&D into the best edition of the game so far. 4E will not be able to replicate that.

I'm not sure what the question means. Do you mean:

1) If 4e rules were closer to 3.x rules?
2) If the 4e rules were released as 3e, instead of the 3e rules that were actually released at the time?
3) Something else?

He's saying, Imagine WotC just bought TSR and they announced 3E. If 3E was what we know to be 4E, how would you have felt?

Precisely. :)

Discuss...

Good to see you Rodney, appreciate you being here for clarification.

Why? Who's Rodney Thompson?

Anyway, I'm not happy with what I see. As mentioned above it looks like a skirmish game - kind of like D&D miniatures with a bit of roleplay thrown in...maybe.

As for tracking durations outside of encounters, if I'm asked by the players how long something took to do, I tell them. I haven't tracked it, I've guesstimated and they accept this.

Okay. I'm going to ask first.

Christine, are you married???

I tend to think that there will be more entrants next time around. We've seen a lot of people post on these boards saying they didn't know about RPG Superstar before it started, and I've spoken with people ignorant of it who expressed an interest.

Agreed. This will raise the profile of Paizo and draw people that won't get a similar opportunity elsewhere.

Well done. You had me with your walking math golem equation thing. This abstract idea was truly inspired.

Just to add my 2gp...

I'd like to see the information about where 'Superstars' are from removed from their names. If I'm honest, I think it effected my voting, being from europe and all. I think this information should be kept private to prevent any such tendancies as I'm certain I couldn't be the only one.

What happens if you solve a math golem???

I like it. It get my vote.

In a recent Call of Cthulhu campaign that just wrapped up, my girlfriend played a gay cowboy from Texas. I kept waiting for her character to hit on my ruggedly handsome, pudgy French linguist, but sadly that never occurred. :\

That's because he wasn't a cunning liguist. ;)

Thats a cool character.

Thank you. :D

I played Spugnoir from Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil as a very camp homosexual. My conversation was filled with innuendo and double entendre and I spoke like Kenneth Williams of the 'Carry on...' films fame.

Player: I wonder if I should try this armour on...

Spugnoir: Would you like me to hold your bag for you? I've got very warm hands...

It made all the players (male) very uncomfortable, enough for one to question my sexuality! I took this as a compliment to my roleplaying though. It never detracted players from the game as everything remained relevant. In fact, the players couldn't get enough of him and always looked forward to crossing paths with Hommlet's only 'out' homosexual.

Thought I'd better add that I know that all gay men don't act like this. But it was damned funny to do and those actors who have played camp roles are very memorable.

What happened to Black Bard? Did his model fall on him or something?

Wow! That looks great. I want to play it now!!!

Okay. So let's say any 12 published adventures.

I've seen a few threads debating which of the 3 APs is the best, so how about this...

If you had to build a campign out of 12 adventures from the 36 of the APs, which would they be? You can alter CR if you want more flexibility with the order they are played.

Any idea or info on why it's still open/free of charge?

Maybe they're embarrassed to charge money for it :)

ROTFL!!

Also, I think they'll probably have scaled down verisons of the character generator and tabletop for free downloads to entice you in. The first one's free and all that...

Can I ask someone where they are getting their info from? What's the best link for what 4e offers?

ENworld has the best 4e page out there.

Thanks, mate.

Can I ask someone where they are getting their info from? What's the best link for what 4e offers?

BTW, this is an example of a great site without the bells and whistles - nice one!

Also, your geekiness is to be commended - that XP chart is something else. :D

How did a Colour Spray help against a swarm of beetles?

Well they got eyes, don't they?

C-Spray is mind-affecting. A beetle swarm is immune to it twice over, once for being a swarm and once for being mindless, and *also* immune to most of the individual effects it can have.

If it was the only thing available to the party I'd allow it, as it would be that or a TPK.

Well spotted though - I missed it.

"Today the internet is where people go to get this kind of information," said Scott Rouse, Senior Brand Manager of Dungeons & Dragons®, Wizards of the Coast. "By moving to an online model we are using a delivery system that broadens our reach to fans around the world. Paizo has been a great partner to us over the last several years. We wish them well on their future endeavors."

As another Senior Brand Manager, I see this as a polite way of saying "We had a brand review and you ain't part of it."

The D&D brand review appears to have revisited their core values whilst trying to incorporate the modern mediums and channels that are available today. I'm certain they also invested in researching customer insight to ascertain what players of the D&D game percieve as enjoyable aspects of 1) D&D and 2) fantasy roleplaying in general (online and off).

Add this to the demands of the modern D&D player, especially younger players, and it starts to lean heavily towards a system that is quick, accessible and dependant on online support (I refuse to believe that it won't be). It's the online support that is oh-so important to this new edition of D&D.

If you think about 3rd ed, it was released around the dot com boom and it would have been difficult to anticipate online engagement. So when websites developed by fans began springing up everywhere to support the game, some fans made money from programmes and similar. This just wasn't possible with earlier editions. WOTC/Hasbro would have looked at this behaviour and wondered how to take control and make sure the dollars rolled their way. Another thing about 3rd ed was that fans started to interact with WOTC more than ever; this required investment by WOTC to develop a robust website and discussion board, which needs management and therefore costs money. All this for a game that is not extremely profitable after people but the core rules - the splat books would have helped a little here, but not much.

What this amounts to as a major requirement of 4E is that online support remains profitable. The new D&D brand will do its utmost to promise a game that is better than its predecessors, with more bang-for-your-buck. How can it deliver that with just a set of hardcovers? It can't - online support will be its vehicle, and once the consumer is engaged in this new channel it will be extremely hard for them to turn away from it, especially if they have also made an investment by switching to 4E in the first place.

Anyway, to get back to basics, D&D is still a trusted brand despite some comments on these boards. This is borne out by the amount of people who say they will give it a look even though it is going to change a lot. Why? Because it's called D&D. Some might say this trust is now being abused, but WOTC are risking (a low risk IMO) that when fans engage, they won't want to let go.

It's the power of brand, dudes.

Gladiator soundtrack is good.

Appreciate the continued effort to provide these, despite your current projects.

Thank you.

Miss it too.

I keep telling my IT loving friends that however much you make available on a PC, it can never replace what you can hold in your hand.

I'm puzzled. What's so bad about it that it needs to be fixed?

They're dumbing down the game to widen the audience.

Hi there, everyone! I recently started using the big Lands of Mystery map for my game. The player characters recently left Deepwatch, and they're planning to hire on with the Darkmaiden's Dance's crew. I was wondering what other people have done in their D&D campaigns with the Maps of Mystery supplements, and if anyone has actually used the Lands of Mystery map also.

I've extracted the maps from the supplements and created a Map of Mystery PDF. I'd really like the Paizo crew to upload #146-#150 so that I can complete it. :-\

The reply to this thread is the same as always before, unfortunately. They'll go up as soon as possible. The editorial department has done everything they can to get these going, and now they're waiting for the layout stage so we can give them one final proofing pass before they go live. I've been more or less weekly pestering all the folks involved, but if they don't have time to get them done, they don't have time. There's not much more I can do to make it go faster, at this point. Trust me, I'm as frustrated about this as anyone, if only because MY Savage Tide group is about a 3rd of the way through City of Broken Idols.

So I'm doing what I can, but it's probably a good idea to steel yourself for the possibility that we'll never get the supplements up online, unfortunately. Wish me luck!

Luck!

I was thinking Sodor.

ROTFL

Thomas the Phanaton. Excellent.

disziplin18 wrote:

Tensor wrote:

You can read them for free at Borders Books. Just bring your laptop along with you and you can type in notes too. Hell, bring a scanner with you.

Wow, that was immature...not even sure where to start.

Bah...forget it...just grow up.

Here's a good place to start: ILLEGAL.

Yup. No one here would dream of doing anything illegal like this would they? No one here's ever downloaded PDFs from Limewire.

Get off the moral high ground. I think it was an attempt at humour anyway.

I know a lot of this helps with continuity, but in my experience it cheapens the subject of death and makes players not fear it.

After using the -ve level method for a while, I'm going back to the RAW death rules, as well as the RAW energy drain rules. It makes the players fear death and the dreaded undead. That fear makes particular situations more real IMO.

As for what to do when a character dies and the player wants a new one, I think the DM has to make a call based on the situation. If the PCs are low enough level, it can be at level one. If not, then having a high powered PC just become available for play will need a thorough explanation and background. It means making more of an effort, but worth it if you want to make death a more real experience that players want to avoid.

Again off-thread (sorry!), but arn't those D&D Podcasts galling? It really is gamers turned marketeers. You can almost sense that their uncomfortable doing it!

Another D&D veteren here (26 years!).

As someone said above, I've invested far too much money in 3.5 to change to another edition - and my friends have too. Besides, we have a wealth of 3.5 info to feed our habit for another lifetime, as we only play once a month.

However, I'd like to add to the endorsments of Paizo's products. I know that wasn't the original thread matter, but if I was to follow any particular RPG company it would be this one - how many companies can boast such a loyal customer base?

And if you would like a good comparison of what Paizo writers can offer against other WoTC writers, then hold Fiendish Codex I up to Fiendish Codex II. No contest - the Abyss wins everytime!

Option B.

Got years of 3.5 material from Dungeon. I only play once a month and am actually developing a homebrew to get back to the RPG roots of D&D and away from the battle orientated feel of the game that will only get worse with 4th ed.

Debbie Does Dallas.

Sometimes you need a break from gaming.

This is great! I'm going to use my monk with multiple attacks to grab items off of enemies. With 3 attacks per round, I might just end up with their pants!

The rules say a disarm is in place of a melee attack. SO if you have 3 attack per round, can you make three disarm attempts?

Thanks, guys. I've just got to the rules and it's plain to see. Thanks.

Okay, but what I'm asking is where in the turn did the attack occur? The one walking into the room is still owed a standard action. Isn't he?