Rhothaerill's page

About the same time I had to choose a screen name, I'd read and enjoyed a section of Gygax's second novel, "Artifact of Evil," that featured a sage called Savant Iquander, of the Society of Sages and Scholars of Nellix. I loved everything about that, so I decided to adopt "Savant Iquander" as my online name, and as the "voice" of a lot of the stuff I was writing at the time.

It's been a very long time since I read Gygax's Gord series. I don't remember the Savant Iquander name from the book (or really much about the book at all anymore), but that makes sense that it would be a Greyhawk thing. ;)

I can't even comprehend the amount of free time I had back then!

I know that feeling well too.

Hmm, questions only. How about:

Who is your favorite personally created Pathfinder/D&D character of all time? And why?

I'm not lost at all. I'm just eager to figure out what I did to get to 12th level is all.

Do we really want to know? ;)

I've personally always wondered what is the etymology of "Iquander"?

So you've described the daily life of a Paizo developer. What is the daily life like for a Paizo creative director?

Funny. :)

Ghost Story - Jim Butcher

I just hope that the fun stuff isn't all in the trailer like it was for Your Highness.

Temple of Elemental Evil (the original) :D

The Deryni stuff holds up pretty well for fantasy written 30+ years ago actually. A bit dry at parts but overall well thought out and entertaining.

I would agree. I still re-read the series every so often when I feel like it.

About the only thing I didn't like about it was:

Just finished rereading the first three books of A Song Of Ice And Fire, and finally read the fourth book, in preparation for A Dance With Dragons in a couple more days. :)

I will second Dresden Files, the Mercy Thompson series, and American Gods! All good reads, and all different.

magnuskn wrote:

Lotsa internet tough guys out here today, I see. So, how did you react to Neds death when you read the book? I was pretty damned shocked for a while, I can tell you.

** spoiler omitted **

As for your spoiler, yeah I didn't see that one coming either. I expected something to happen, but not that.

@John Kretzer - she will continue watching. She likes the show a lot, and as with me her favorite characters are Tyrion and Daenerys. I'm not sure if she'll read the books, but she might. She tends to prefer lighter fantasy, but she also really likes some meatier fantasy like the Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman.

As for the other question about reaction upon reading about his death for the first time - I was shocked. I didn't expect it at all.

My wife leans a little bit more toward the roleplaying aspect of gaming than the combat, but she also really enjoyed putting the smackdown on opponents with her fire monk (a monk/paladin with a homebrew legacy item that added fire to her fists among other things).

I've gamed with several women over the years and most of them tended to lean slightly more toward the roleplaying aspect as well, but that may also have been a part of the groups I've been a part of since they were all often roleplaying heavy (though with plenty of combat thrown in).

Exactly how/where did the folks in here meet their gamer spouses and how old were you at the time? Was it at Gen-Con, in college? I know some of you mentioned you turned your spouses on to gaming which also seems encouraging.

My wife and I met while in our mid-to-late twenties. We met through work. She didn't game at the time, but her sister did, so she knew about gaming and was interested to learn more. We started gaming together after we married. She is now taking on her first DM's duties, starting a new campaign as of this past weekend. :D <-- proud gamer hubby

I didn't meet my wife through gaming, but we started gaming together soon after we were married. She's now DMing a brand new game (started yesterday) :D

As with the majority here I subscribe to the "first was good, second was meh" opinion. I'd like to see the third one, but not so much that I'll pay for a movie ticket. I'll wait for this on Netflix and go see a movie that I do want to see in the theaters.

Personally, I sort of expect zero more.

...at east within the next five years

TV Buffy no question. Better writing, better friends, better Buffy.

Can't wait! :)

Ah, got it. :)

I read somewhere that, like Feist's "Riftwar" series, Brust's early Vlad novels were based on his D&D campaign. That's all hearsay, though; I can't vouch for it firsthand.

If I remember correctly Dragaera is supposedly based on a friend's world, not his own (at least not to begin with).

I have to admit, I expected more from it. It was a fun movie, don't get me wrong, but it seemed like all of the funniest bits were part of the trailer. My wife felt the same way.

They also need to stop playing "I Will Always Love You" (most recently by Whitney Houston) and "Obsession" by Sarah McLachlan -- Same reason. Does anyone actually listen to these songs?

I think "Insatiable" by Darren Hayes (formerly of Savage Garden) would be a good wedding song. ;)

Regarding HPs, instead of just maxing them you might also try "high-side" rolling (i.e. for a d6 any roll of 1 would mean you get 4hp, 2=5, 3=6...you can extrapolate that for all other types of dice). It has worked out well for my party since I tend to run difficult fights. They feel themselves strong enough to survive even though I regularly run them out or nearly out of their hit points.

Police were investigating a crime at a local SPCA. The investigating officer went up to his lieutenant and told him that they had discovered Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend surrounded by empty dog cages.

"Really?" asked the lieutenant. "What happened in there?"

"Well sir," replied the officer, "it appears The Who let the dogs out."

Reading Iorich right now. Yep, it's not as action-packed as some, but I still like it. I love Vlad the character, and all the little touches Brust puts into his novels. The book (Dzur I believe) where he started each chapter with a vignette about eating at Valabar's was great, just that little bit about Vlad's love of food, and then how his food philosophy tied into the novel, was great. Very character driven.

Valegrim wrote:

DARN IT! next book moved back all the way to JULY! ARGH!!!

Nooooooooooooooo!!! April just won't be the same without my annual Dresden fix!

First I heard about it too. Darn it!

The Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman is one of my favorites. The main character, priest Damien Vryce, is well written, as are the rest of the characters.

The first book is called Black Sun Rising.

Arol Ravendark, a paladin of Sune in a Forgotten Realms campaign. Unlike the "average" paladin he did not see his mission as furthering the cause of justice, fighting evil, etc. His mission was to uphold the ideals of beauty and love, and to leave the world a little more beautiful.

He took under his wing an ugly half-orc druidess (played by my wife). Among other things he kept trying to offer her makeup to "help with her affliction".

Alas soon after he was introduced that campaign was forcibly ended, but I still talk about him today.

The Buffing Imp: Early on in our current campaign the party was fighting an imp at the top of a tower. In the middle of the room was a column of "fire" that concealed a teleportation stone to the tower dungeon.

The party was winning the battle, though they didn't know it yet, and the imp was about to make his escape into the fire. The party cleric cast a buff spell on the party fighter, a somewhat dimwitted goblin, but she cast it while his back was turned. The next moment the imp flew into the fire column and disappeared.

The goblin fighter was totally jazzed. He thought that the two events were connected somehow and started talking about the "Buffing Imp", who would make him feel stronger and then leave. Every time the cleric would cast a buff spell on him he would thank the Buffing Imp, not the cleric.

It's a WAR horse: Before the group in the Buffing Imp story got together we were trying out what turned out to be a pathetic 1st ed. PBP. One of the characters purchased a horse as part of her starting equipment, intending to eventually become a mounted warrior. In the first encounter (with some kobolds) the horse ran off, which wasn't a problem until the DM arbitrarily ruled that it could not be found and left no tracks to follow. He attempted to justify this with the fact that it was not a WAR horse.

We ultimately left the PBP soon after and formed a sit-down group. Any time anything turned out to be less capable than it looked someone piped up with, "Well it obviously wasn't a WAR XXXXX (fill in the blanks)"

without the level scaling that makes high-level OBLIVION utterly hilarious to play with its glass armour-equipped bandits and full plate-wearing goblins

Yeah, you'd think those bandits would wise up and sell their armor. Then they'd have enough money to buy houses in some of the cities instead of living in tents. ;)

Just finally purchased this. It's on sale on Steam until the 2nd.

My players (except for my wife's monk character - yeah go figure) all have used charisma as a bit of a dump stat. One of them plays a homebrew race kind of like a half dragon and she manages to be obnoxious and get on everyone's nerves. She is also very quick to anger and doesn't forgive easily. Another in my group plays a goblin that is all about the id and saying what is on his mind even if not at all appropriate.

My wife's character's dump stat was intelligence, which is not always good since she herself is very intelligent. She sometimes forgets that her character isn't the most intelligent. She has played it off for the most part that she has a lot of common sense (high wisdom) but no book smarts (low intelligence).

I think both social stigma and maturity have something to do with why most girl gamers don't start until later in life. In high school (2 years ago for me) any type of gamer was looked on as a nerd or geek. I tried to interest a few girls in our game, but none wanted to be in the "boy's club" or be associated with the geeks. Later in life, as both genders mature it seems to become less of a problem (this in my experience though; your experiences may differ).

Since getting back into gaming as an adult, all three groups I've been a part of have been at the very least 50/50 in terms of gender split (my wife and her sister have been a part of all three). My first one back was 3 women/3 men. The second was 4 women/3 men. My current group, which started as 2 women/2 men is now 4 women/2 men. None of them feel any social stigma of being associated with geeks, or feel like they are going to be set upon by immature boys.

Regarding female DMs, I've actually only ever seen one: my sister-in-law who ran the second group above. She was a pretty awesome DM. My wife was considering being the next DM in our current group when I step down, but she spoke up too late.

The party I currently DM for:

Female azurandi monk/paladin: (homebrew race similar to a sea elf), My wife's character. Unlike other monks she views diplomacy as the way to nirvana (a racial trait of the azurandi) and consequently has the highest charisma in the group and serves as party spokesperson. Started out as LN, but moved toward LG as time went on and started picking up paladin levels. In combat she likes to move around a bit and uses magical fire bracers, but has also started using a sword of late and can dish out a decent amount of damage. She also has bat-out-of-hell saving throws thanks to the base monk saves now mixed with the paladin's ability to add her charisma bonus to her saves.

Female lucavi cleric: (homebrew race similar to half dragons), my wife's sister's character. She is a cleric of a flight and tolerance dragon goddess, but the tolerance is based on her race's humongous ego (they believe they are the chosen race) so she has a high ego and it is very easy to rile her (a DM's dream). In combat she primarily summons creatures for battlefield control, buffs others, and heals when absolutely necessary, very rarely dealing any offensive damage herself. Recently she took a couple of racial paragon levels that allowed her vestigial wings to fully develop to be able to fly (at the cost of a caster level), which has caused me to have to think harder about how to keep that from being unbalancing in her favor.

Male goblin fighter/rogue: the essence of the id-centric chaotic neutral type at the beginning of the game he is a little more controlled now (but still has CN moments). Personality-wise he is a bit like a child who occasionally has startling insights, though he also believes in the "buffing imp" and refuses to believe that the cleric is the source of buffs. He is the traditional tank type that has a high AC, but he can also dish out a lot of damage with his "shiny" magic sword. He also rolls a lot of criticals (in front of everyone) which is annoying. ;) Absolutely refuses to use his bow anymore.

Female elf evoker: Joined the party after about three years of gaming by the first three players, but fit in well. She is an elf that likes "gathering experiences", and wants to try everything at least once, even if it is something the rest of the party would cringe at. She is nicknamed "Squishy" as soon after she joined she irritated a friendly dragon the party was speaking with so the dragon flicked her into a tree, nearly killing her. :D In battle she tends to go for the kaboom spells, completely eschewing buffs, etc. Unfortunately the player is about to leave the group so I have to decide whether to make her a DMPC or have her fall in battle somewhere.

Female halfling rogue: Just joined the party two sessions ago, and the player herself is brand new to gaming. Not much personality to the character yet since she is so new. Plays a highly mobile tumbler who tries to get in place for sneak attacks.

As a whole the party is pretty good at working together to combat their enemies. They tend to take a lot of damage (since I pit them against difficult encounters) but can dish it out well too. Probably their biggest achilles' heel are creatures with damage reduction or fire resistance (or both)

For a very long time the party was completely inept at dealing with anything that could fly or attack from range as the the monk doesn't have any ranged weapons, the goblin hates his bow, and the cleric only had summon spells that could affect others at range, but recently they've become much better at dealing with ranged enemies thanks to the cleric gaining the ability to fly, the wizard joining up, and now the rogue who is decent with a bow.

Rhothaerill wrote:

Late next year thought, which means I still have a chance to purchase and play Fallout:NV before it comes out. ;)

If you're picking up the PC version, go through Steam whenever they've got some sort of sale active; the retail disc just contains a Steam installer.

That's my plan. Unfortunately I missed the Black Friday sale as it was $10 cheaper than the current price.

Late next year thought, which means I still have a chance to purchase and play Fallout:NV before it comes out. ;)

DrDew wrote:

roguerouge wrote:

I got called a min/maxer for playing a straight cleric...

I don't get that. What is the logic behind calling someone a min/maxer for NOT multi-classing? Isn't the point of multi-classing usually to get the most out of combining abilities from different classes?

And it was from a fellow player!

Next time play a gay cleric. :)

Sorry, couldn't resist. I'll try harder next time.

Y'know, I have to empathize with the DM a little bit on the horse issue - not on it being completely untrackable after the fight, he's on his own on that one. But having a player complain about how the game is set up based on some external knowledge they have about some relatively marginal aspect of life - like gradations of horses and training between riding horses and warhorses - can be a major pain. The game treats a lot of things with some abstraction and people really should be satisfied with that.

But having a riding horse, even one the character has grown up with, get skittish and bolt in a fight seems fine to me. I'd probably have it run off about 50-100 meters and just abide. I'd probably also be content to have it return to the PC if she whistled for it when the fight was over rather than have it simply be lost.

I also wouldn't call it cheating if the player brought up differences in training. I'd just say that, for the most part, they won't matter much in the course of play. You want a horse you can ride into battle, you will invest in a warhorse. If that's done by buying a riding horse and then spending cash over time to reflect how you're spending time and resources training it to fighting standard in 1st edition, that would be OK with me.

Being a DM myself I'd agree about the players occasionally bringing up external knowledge, etc., but in this case she wasn't riding the horse into battle. The horse bolted before the kobolds got close. My SIL was actually content with it bolting until she tried to call the horse at the end and the DM ruled that it ran off and couldn't be found, which was baffling to all of us. That is what set off the whole exchange. If the DM had just let her find the horse off in the distance somewhere then the whole thing would have been fine.

Regarding the DM calling what she was trying to do cheating, I think part of that is conflicting philosophies. The DM didn't seem much interested in actual role-playing and as much as said that he thought role playing was something that people tried to do to "get more stuff than they should". Whereas the rest of us were into the role-playing aspect. I would have totally allowed her to use the horse as a riding horse and as she leveled up have it become more of a warhorse as she put ranks into riding, etc. (granted the game in question was 1e not 3.5e or PF). The DM calling what she did cheating was my SIL's last straw. The rest of us had no particular desire to remain either as we weren't having much fun to begin with.

Little side note though...soon after I started my campaign up, when the party got out into the wilderness they saw a horse in the distance that got close to them, spooked, and ran away. ;)

Arnwyn wrote:

Rhothaerill wrote:

/snip/

Why didn't your SIL's character just buy a warhorse?

I was also thinking that.

In tandem with "how did she lose a horse? I mean, were they fighting a herd of centaurs? Did it fly away?"

This was a 1st level character in 1st edition, so there wasn't enough starting cash to purchase the weapons and armor she needed along with a warhorse. She had a regular horse that she wanted to ride and train to become a warhorse down the road (roleplaying and probably a proficiency). She wasn't trying to ride the horse into battle yet; the DM ruled that it spooked as soon the kobolds got within 50 feet.

As to how she lost the horse, only the DM knows since he was the one that ruled that the horse ran off, wouldn't come back, and no tracks could be found.

This was a play-by-post game some 6 years ago. The group that me, my wife, and my sister-in-law belonged to had broken up a year or so before, and we, along with SIL's new boyfriend (who had never played) wanted to get something going again. My wife and I had recently had a baby so we couldn't really go out much. A PBP was starting up at a site I visited with a group of people who had all gamed on another site before. I convinced the other three to join the PBP with me so we could game without having to go anywhere or arrange care for a newborn.

Strike 1: The DM tells us he only games with original edition AD&D. Okay I can roll with this since I started playing in '85, and still have all my old books. My wife and SIL have never gamed with first edition though and will have to learn. Then we learn that the DM does all character creation himself using 3d6 in order. So I end up with a cleric with a 12 wisdom (his best stat). None of the four of us have a character with good stats. Meanwhile, some of the DM's cronies have 17's and 18's and no stat lower than 14. I try to take this as a roleplaying opportunity, but it's still kind of cheesy.

Strike 2: You begin in an inn. Oh jeez, hasn't this one been done to death? Chaos ensues as 12 people try to meet up, but the DM doesn't provide any direction. He literally has nothing in mind. After much flailing about (this going on for several days in real time) it is proposed that we head off to the east toward a dangerous mountain someone had heard about. Eventually most of the group joins the quest, except for one of the DM's cronies who didn't want to join and decided to stay in the inn, necessitating a separate "adventure" PBP for him.

Strike 3, you're out: So we all (almost all) start off to the east. My SIL, a fighter, had used a lot of her starting cash to add a horse, as she was trying to roleplay a mounted warrior (with the RP that she and the horse had grown up together). Soon after we leave the inn we're attacked by a group of kobolds (that didn't surprise us). The DM rules that my SIL's horse bolts because of the horrible monsters. Okay, fine. We take part in the combat, eventually beating the kobolds. My SIL goes to look for her horse. "It doesn't come back to you, and you can't locate any tracks after an hour of searching," says the DM.

Uh...okay. A horse that tore off in a rush doesn't leave any tracks. My SIL (who again, is playing a fighter) states that she is ignoring the obvious issue of finding tracks and asks why a horse who grew up around battle with her suddenly freaks and bolts, never to return. Another player posts that it is a riding horse and not a war horse, to which the DM essentially says, "Well duh".

A nice little argument ensues between my SIL and the DM (including some discussion about search and rescue horses) until he comes up with this gem: "Sorry, but no. There is a reason why riding horses are cheap compared to war horses. Roleplaying is good, but not when it is used as an excuse to circumvent the rules."

(My thought here: what rules...he just made up that the horse left and didn't come back)

My SIL responds with: "It's really not my fault that you don't know enough about horses to know that there are differences among how horses are trained and that the two levels of horses available for purchase don't cover all the bases - or hell, any of them other than "war" and "fragile flower riding near a pond". I'm so f***ing sick of control freaks. You know, when I was a DM and I led people who knew way more about reptiles than I did, I listened to them and didn't dismiss 'em with a "because I said so". But hey, that's me, right?"

To which he responds: "Good for you. Did you let them cheat, too?"

It just descended from there. Ultimately the four of us left the PBP and a few months later started up a campaign that has been running ever since, as well as adding a few more players.

From a gaming group several years gone...

Backstory: I had actually left the group because of a personality conflict with another member, but my wife continued to play in it as her sister was the DM. I eventually resolved the conflict with the other member and came back, but by that time my character had gone off with dark elves (long story).

More backstory (in a new paragraph to avoid text dump): That character wasn't my best as I was trying to play a brooder and it didn't come out as well as I'd hoped. For my new character I decided to go a completely different way and came up with a paladin of Sune, the love and beauty goddess. In some ways he was like your typical paladin: charismatic, romance novel-cover looks, etc. Except he was very talkative and wasn't the least bit interested in justice, etc. Thievery didn't bother him as long as the thief left the crime scene a little more beautiful than before. His holy quest was to beautify the world. :)

Wife's character's backstory: She was playing a very ugly half-orc druidess who was very wild, not overly talkative, etc. She didn't know much about civilization, and was very uneasy around humans, especially humans with a high-class background like my paladin. One amusing thing (to me at least) about this is that my wife IRL is very talkative while I'm not.

Now hold on, here is the RP fun: The party had gone to a semi-large city where they were meeting with the local noble, who introduced my character as he wanted me to travel with the party to retrieve something he needed. During the ensuing celebration my wife's druidess spent the entire evening agitated, hood up, trying not to be seen by anyone in power. My paladin noticed this and started trying to get her to talk. Eventually he pulled off her hood and discovered how ugly she was. She stammered and tried to get away, but my character solemnly held her back from escaping and offered her the run of his makeup jar to "touch up a few things here and there". I completely floored my wife with the comment as she didn't know what kind of paladin I'd be playing.

From then on, until the campaign ended a bit later (for outside reasons), my paladin made the druidess his pet project as he was determined to "make her beautiful". He constantly followed her around, offering unwanted suggestions, etc. since she thought she was fine as-is. He was one of the most fun characters I've ever played before. It's a shame that we never got to travel back to the town where the druidess had an orc boyfriend before the campaign ended, as that would have been a lot of fun to RP.

Some 7 or 8 years ago I played a paladin of the love and beauty goddess Sune from the Forgotten Realms. The prevailing opinion of both the DM and myself was that paladin's espouse their deity's beliefs, not the lawful stupid paladin stereotype. So my paladin espoused the ideals of both protecting and promoting beauty.

I didn't have a chance to play him for long as the party wizard's player left and we needed a wizard more than a paladin so I started a new character, but my favorite moment from playing that character involved offering makeup to the party's ugly, female half-orc druidess played by my wife. :D

Holy symbol of a goblin priest. ;)

You forgot to push a 4th edition gamer into an unimaginably deep hole... ;)

I'd probably rank it just out of my top 5. My rankings in order: VII, VI, X, VIII, IX, XIII, XII, IV, and I from the ones I've played (never played II, III, V or the MMO).

I liked some of the concepts of the game, including the battle system being a hybrid of "classic" combat and the gambit system from XII. My main beef was that much of it was so linear. I understand it was a necessary part of the storyline, but it would have been great if you could still do other stuff while being chased around the world. I enjoyed some of the old minigames like chocobo racing in VII and Blitzball from X, and that you could often go back and forth and find other stuff while still going through the main quest.

Take VII for instance...several of the sidequests were done during the main game. Finding Yuffie and the whole of Wutai were sidequests that could be done in the middle of the main quest. There were various places to find and other things to do just by stepping off the beaten path a little bit. But in XIII you can't step off the beaten path until you get to a certain point in the game. And even then it's mostly battles not the special things like chocobo racing or the puzzles in the forest near Cosmo Canyon.

Oscar - Starring Sylvester Stallone. I think that movie is funny, I have no idea why it boomed.

My favorite Sylvester Stallone movie. :b: