I'm not a purist though, so I installed mods to allow saving, and fast travel along supply lines. My free time is too precious to mess around with time sinks like that. [shakes fist - in my best John Cleese/Basil Fawlty] You bastard!
A Goblin Mouser w/ "Roll with It!" Feat. & "Elrond Hubbard" - a gnome Mastermind Investigator. I wanted to create a Prof. Moriarty-esque evil genius, but no one wanted to play an evil campaign.
I'm looking forward to the mods and Creation Kit being available on console. Maybe then those Vertibirds can be made a lot tougher! Although... That explains why the Power Armor lets you fall from any distance and not take damage. They knew their air transport was their weak point!
Aw well. Any games that are like EVE Online (without being EVE online)? I like the space exploration and sedate pacing as something to keep me entertained but without a lot of micromanaging.
Hindsight is always better, but: I wish that settlement building actually had an effect in game. In the new Survival Mode, yes - they have a purpose. But I'm talking about an actual effect in terms of: take this settlement from that group of Raiders, and less Raiders spawn in that region (unless & until they take it back); this settlement has a good spot for mining iron; this settlement has a rich supply of concrete; and so on. It would put some strategy into the game. "Take that location, even though it would be a tough fight, because it gets me [fill in the blank]." I mean, you take The Castle, and it unlocks another quest that will gain you artillery. More things like that would be very cool and worthwhile. It would have added to the factions as well. Taking a settlement away from another faction could be as useful as taking one for a faction, and deprive them of needed resources. Ah well - like I said, hindsight, what-could-have-been's...
And what are you up to, Sole Survivor? "Well, I started out trying to locate my stolen child and the murderer of my wife. But I got so sidetracked with putting up lights and decorating my community that I kind of lost focus...
OK - in all seriousness, you haven't provided what resources/assets the PC has. He's a tiefling sorcerer. 4th level. What focus? What spells? And the Duke? Any other party members? A swashbuckling swordsman, perhaps with a Spanish accent, and a half-giant wrestler?
Do you have a wheelbarrow?
I think a good question would be: How do I challenge a player with an insanely high [insert name of skill]? The game does ramp up challenges as you progress. AC gets higher; accuracy gets better; damage gets higher. So, in a way, the system itself "negates" player's improving because it is trying to continue to provide a challenge. You get more bonuses "to hit", so I'll have higher AC on enemies. You have more HP, so I'll do more damage. Etc., etc. It's not unreasonable to up the DC occasionally. But even if you do, you're not doing something the system doesn't already do in other areas all the time.
I understand their thinking, but it's based on an illusion. If you say: "I beat Fallout 4 on Survival Mode!", you think that everyone knows what you mean. You don't have to follow up with: "I mean the REAL Survival Mode. Not the watered-down version some players are playing." And for those people, that's really, really, really important, even though it means nothing outside their own consciousness. And - in this case - unless they ban all mods whatsoever - it will be meaningless because you can't guarantee that someone else who "beat Survival Mode" was playing under the same restrictions as you. Ah well. God bless 'em all!
I wonder how many other people I can Not Murder. :-) There is a No Kill playthru. Hard, but it can be done.
Awesome! Good to see other writers chiming in on the thread. Those are some really great reviews, man! Lookin' good! :) Thank you, Jemstone! "I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me
Just discovered this thread. I wrote a book - my gosh, 12 years ago! - The Rose of Camelot - that got mostly 5 star reviews on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I haven't started the second book yet, however. I guess I was hoping for more of a response, plus I started a vampire book (that I stopped half-way through) and got caught up in things like Oblivion and Fallout: New Vegas. Well, hopefully some of you will enjoy!
Stealth kills: "Huh - what's that? Aww, I must be imagining things..." Yeah - that's why your friend's head just exploded - you IMAGINED it!
I told this one on another topic, but it definitely applies here: I had a friend in college who was very wry and very funny. He'd never played D&D before, so we had him join us. He chose a cleric. At one point in the adventure, we were being attacked by some guards. This friend had his cleric cast Command (AD&D version) at one of them. He clarified that the spell had to be a single word, and a verb. We told him "yes". His command? "Masturb---!" We had to take a break.
Alien. The moment my group found an open egg and a corpse with the chest exploded outward, they freaked out. Totally captured the fear from the first movie!
He couldn't. Magic isn't real. Not according to Doug Henning. And since neither he nor David Copperfield are ruling this world (as far as I know), I'd say it would still take a world power-level of organization and means.
I was He looked at me, hurt and confused. "Dude," he replied in all seriousness, "I'm the least competitive person in the world!" The rest of the group lost it. Which helped defuse the situation for me, and I joined in.
How do you view leveling up? Are you asking "in general"? Or in Pathfinder specifically? Like most d20-based games, leveling is simply part of the game mechanics. It's not meant to simulate real life, and so doesn't have to make sense in those terms. Different systems progress you differently, some better at being more "realistic" than others. Basically, leveling up means: "I've gotten better at what I do! I can cast more spells, and/or more powerful spells. I can hit more accurately. I'm better at using [X] skill(s) than I was before." Whether or not the mechanics of that satisfy your desire for verisimilitude is completely up to you.
It could just be a poorly done trailer. God knows that happens. With nothing else to go by for now, I'd pass. Down the road, who knows?
I'd like an "Attack of the Killer Tatoes!" DLC.
You can also take out the guy by the front door before you go in. That will cause the guards inside to come out, where - if you've prepared the area ahead of time with some mines - you can wipe them out on your turf, not theirs. That still leaves the Van Graff siblings, but makes it a much easier fight. (I had aggroed the guy by the door by accident one play thru, and he came after me. Once I killed him, his 4 or 5 buddies from inside came out and kicked my ass. I remembered that when I went back to complete this mission with Cass in a couple of my FO:NV play thrus and never died when I went that route.)
A span of Time Dragons. A _______ of Alpluachra.
Dawnguard was good, but I eventually deleted it due to Spoiler:
vampires killing merchants and necessary NPCs who aren't flagged as Essential for some reason! Hearthfire was fun, but nowhere near the customization of FO4. Dragonborn was my favorite of the 3.
A spoonful of Black Puddings. A _______ of Blink Dogs.
In old AD&D: I was an anti-paladin with an assassin sidekick. We got captured by some thugs in the dungeon, and they tied me up in a throne we had encountered earlier in our explorations and determined had triggers for traps located on it. I thought: "Heck! I get great bonuses to my saves!" So I pressed the button that released poison gas. My buddy and I both saved; thugs didn't. :) At the time, my friend was like: "Are you crazy! That could have killed us!" I just smiled. "Well, I had good chances to survive. Besides, I'm chaotic evil. If I failed - I go see my patron that much sooner."
I kept thinking that I'd need paint in order to paint my Power Armor. Seems like an obvious requirement!
Prestige classes should be better than the base classes they derive from. This is in alignment with James' post that one needed to earn their way into a PrC. The problem is that most of the PrC's are worse than the bases classes they build off of. Enter the archetypes, and then hybrid classes, which attempted to do the same thing but without being as clunky or restrictive. I LIKE PrC's having steep pre-reqs, but I'm not willing to meet those if the class ends up making me weaker than if I had simply stayed in my primary class, with a 1-2 level dip to qualify. VMC has some good combinations, and a lot that simply aren't worth it, which leaves you traditional multi-classing (also often bad), gestalting (too OP), or new archetypes and hybrid classes. PrCs should be redesigned with the new hybrid classes, Unchained, and archetypes in mind, and offer something better if you qualify.
I've seen a Kerrigan body suit that looks pretty sharp. And the shorts & tops one is done with great textures and designs, all game-based. "I Edit: just looked it up. It's called "Commonwealth Shorts" and has 16 different designs. How T&A it gets is up to you, depending on what other mods you might be using.
Also, having had a few run-ins with them, the Children of Atom can all just die. Hate those guys. I'm with you on this! I was over near the Dartmouth Professional Building when a 3-way battle broke out between Gunners, Super Mutants, and the damn Children of the Atom. It sounded like a fireworks display! I crept over and finished off the Gunners - mainly the Gunner Commander. I went in, grabbed some loot, and as I came back out, MORE Super Mutants, Gunners, Scavengers, and Children spawned. And, of course, they focus on ME! The 3 Children were all pounding me with their Gamma guns, and I jumped behind a counter, downed some RAD-X and RAD-Away, and tried to let them fight it out again. Great day of looting, but almost got cooked to death by the damned Children. I hate those guys, too!
There's a new patch on the way, and the notes say that building wires will no longer require copper. !?! That should certainly help some!
Sorry - very early here, so my answer may be a bit brusque. Not my intention. The versatility the fighter needs is in non-combat areas. So giving them "free maneuvers" doesn't address this, it just gives them one more thing to do in combat - where they already excel. Give them more Skill points, and improved saves, and now you're starting to address it. A Wizard should fear a Fighter as much as the other way around, not the current: "I hope he doesn't attack my WILL save since that's where I'm vulnerable!" A Wizard should think twice about attacking a Fighter in any way, unless they have combat-oriented mooks of their own to handle them when & if the spell(s) fail.
I thought that casting him as Tesla in The Prestige was a brilliant choice, and gave a double-meaning to much of his dialogue.
I get excited when I find "Industrial" or "Military" anything! LOL
Otherwhere: I've been interested in running a "rescue from the burning building" scenario myself. Can you talk about how it went? It went surprisingly well, I must say! I'd read how much players hate chase scenes in PF on the boards here, but wanted to try it with my group to change things up a bit and they loved it! It allowed them to: feel heroic without resorting to combat; and to use skills they seldom, if ever, used - like: Escape Artist (to squeeze through broken passages, where beams had fallen, etc.). It gave the Monk an excellent chance to display the benefits of his using ki to high jump (to get to a second floor without risking the burning stairway); one of my players had a potion of Fire Resistance, which he used here rather than saving for later; the Dragon Disciple with his 24 STR would carry unconscious victims out, up to 4 at a time. All-in-all, I think they rescued nearly 30 people in about 1 minute (10 rnds) before the inner structure collapsed. Once the campaign ended, that was one of the events they all remembered favorably. That, and the Haunt that I used at another location. Again, it gave them a challenge that was not combat nor social, had unusual threats and challenges, and we spent almost 2 full sessions on it when I thought it would be a simple diversion. LOL Never assume.
Maybe FO4 will help foster recycling!
That comes dangerously close to saying that people aren't playing "right". Not at all. If you're playing Kirthfinder, are you still playing Pathfinder? There's no "right" or "wrong" about it. I have no judgments about changing or modifying a system. I do it all the time to make the system work for my campaigns and to tell the stories I want to explore. Pathfinder is, itself, a home-brew of 3.5. And the group that developed it published it, and many people liked it and adopted it as well. And they realized: "Well, we're not playing D&D any more, so we need to call it something else." Not that this furthers the discussion on how to "fix" the system.
Just saw that Simon Pegg (Scotty and one of the writers on Beyond) also did not like the trailer.
Spheres of Power helps with the arcane side of things, bringing it down a bit closer to the realm the martial deals in. (thanks, Malwing!) Bringing martials up is the other half, and there are 3pp systems that do that. Either way, though, you're no longer playing Pathfinder really. It may be better - for your table - but it's just like home-brewing your own solutions. (Kirth's is a great example of professional-level home-brewing imho.)
Tasha Yar was Chief of Security on the Enterprise. She was killed off toward the end of the first season. The actress was welcomed back in a few subsequent episodes, both as Tasha and as Tasha Yar's human/Romulan daughter.
Like thejeff said, setting DC's is a version of "mother-may-I". GMs can make it nearly impossible to do something, even when you have the skill or feat for it, except for a few spelled out DCs that are in the book. So that aspect still exists in both systems.
ST: The Motion Picture was simply "I, Nomad" done on the big screen. It wasn't even an original story. I liked the first J.J. Abrams remake tremendously! It was tons of fun! "Out of Darkness" was such a disappointment. This one looks like they're going back to action/fun as the focus.
Despite your best of intentions, Jiggy, this thread seems to be falling prey to the same disputes as every other C/MD thread. "It's REAL!"
I'm not seeing much "uniting rather than dividing" going on. Which is likely why there has been such a proliferation of these kinds of threads. Those of us who see the disparity want to mitigate it; and those who don't see it seem to want to dissuade anyone from wasting time on an imaginary issue.
Seems that many people equate "disparity" with "problem" - which is why they argue (sometimes vehemently) that it does or doesn't exist. Some groups manage it better than others. Some GM's compensate for it better than others. But there are excellent examples given above and in other threads about how it is real. Whether it is a problem is another issue. IME, it is inherent in the system and not a shortcoming on the part of the players &/or the GM.
"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton
So many people expect the game SYSTEM to handle something it can't: the temperament of the people who are playing, both GM and Players. It's the people who make or break a game system. Usually. There are bad systems out there. 5e is good, and has its own set of problems. And it, too, will eventually develop "bloat" as they continue to come out with new supplements and develop new classes, races, etc. Pathfinder, like all good RPGs, is an evolving system. The additional books have added a lot of useless, situational, fringe material but also some good stuff as well. The new hybrid classes are an attempt to address the multi-classing issue inherent in almost all d20 systems. Some of them are quite good, some are OP, and some are still clunky as hell. 5e doesn't have that issue - yet. And 5e has more caps in play, restricting the wild bonuses one can give yourself in Pathfinder, which helps the GM. The main thing is that you want a balance between GM power and player agency. Pathfinder swung farther to the Player end of the spectrum, the idea being that everyone knows the rules going in, so less is left up to GM fiat. 5e put power back in the GMs hands, back to the "we didn't spell it out, so adjudicate it yourself 'cuz you ain't gonna find it in the rules" mode of play. (Yes, you can do that in PF. But PF is more rules-based, hence the proliferation of Rules forum questions and FAQ requests. The community relies in the rules being clear and spelled out, and less on "decide for yourself/your table".) I know what it's like to GM for a player who is stomping on the campaign. I had a player who went Master Summoner, and it killed the fun for everyone else at the table, myself included. That player relented and created a new character, but it left a bad taste in everyone's mouth because that player really didn't get WHY it was no fun for the rest of us. Which has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the temperament of those playing the game. So I don't know if switching will really resolve your issues because one can still create an OP character in 5e. It just won't be as OP as a PF character is all. It all depends on the players.
What's funny is that sometimes Command can be much better than Suggestion. Use "Approach" on a target from behind your whole party. The resultant AoOs actually killed a PC in one of my games (or brought him low enough to be one-hit killed the next round). Suggestion would in many games block that as being "obviously harmful". Ah, Command used to allow such funny options! I was in a game a long, long time ago - back in the old D&D days - where a friend was playing a cleric. We ran into a patrol of guards and he pointed at one guy and said - well, the word for self-pleasuring that ends in "-bate" - and we all were stunned by the brilliance of it. We had to take a break because we were laughing so hard!
I often "borrow" from Michael Moorcock - the whole Eternal Champion mythos. And then there's Monty Python. I once ran a campaign where the players wound up on this island nation and were insulted by some French soldiers, could only travel by knocking two halves of coconuts together, and had to face the terrifying Vorpal Bunny!
I find I can't play as casually as I did the previous games. I really have to keep my eyes open for junk as well as enemies, and even then something will surprise me - springing up from the ground, climbing in through a window - boy! This game really requires a lot of focus!
Not even remotely. It's saying that requiring the Player be convincing to the GM is discriminating against those people who are not naturally good at swaying people. He gave an extreme example to make his point is all. Why have mechanics (ranks in Diplomacy/Bluff) if you're going to base your call on "how well the Player rp'd the interaction"? Good to hear, because there are GM's who don't. They go by the Player rp.
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