Ron Dawson's page

Thanks! I received the confirmation messages and things look good now.

Is there a proper/easy way to add or change to a new payment method and delete an old payment method that I may have missed? This is the second time I have run into this problem, but I am sure that I have been able to do this in the past without problem.

- Ron

Hello Ron,

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Hi,

I would like to switch my payment method. I've added a new payment method but there doesn't seem to be a way to delete the old card or to actually change from the old to the new card. There is a "change" button, but it doesn't seem to do anything. I assume this is supposed to allow changing between payment methods that have been added, but it doesn't do anything. Any help would be much appreciated.

- Ron

I put down other in my vote. I make heavy use of my BlackBerry Playbook when running games. So, that would be QNX/BBX/BB10 based.

Also around our table, we have iPhone, ipad and android devices used regularly on the player side of the screen.

I generally prefer printed RPGs over PDF only RPG products, but I do buy PDFs. If I buy a PDF version, I generally print out a copy as I don't enjoy reading on a computer. However, I really do like having a PDF version of a document on a computer to look up things.

I especially like how Paizo lets you have a PDF version along with a print copy. It lets me have the best of both worlds.

If Spell Resistance doesn't affect Psionics, then a Psion is more or less automatically preferable to a wizard, because way more monsters have Spell Resistance than Power Resistance, for instance.

I'd have to side with Ross. Initially we played things so that spell resistance didn't affect psionics (and psi-resistance didn't affect magic), but there started to be too many problems with opponents being cut down too quickly because they didn't have any resistance even though the creatures were designed (and assigned their CR) based on the idea that they had resistance. Strangely though, the problem was more often with some psionic monsters going down too quickly because they didn't have resistance to magic.

In the end I concluded that I would probably have to retool a slew of monsters so that some had both psi and magic resistance, but in the end I decided that it was just easier to allow psi resistance and spell resistance to work interchangeably. I did keep psi-craft and spell-craft mostly separate though. Spell-craft might allow you to identify something as psionic but no more than that. Similarly, psi-craft would allow you to identify something as being arcane/divine, but no other details.

I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of the other posters. For me a lot of the appeal of psionics (as a player) is that it *feels* different than magic. I honestly don't think I would be at all interested in a system that made powers work just like spells. Note that I'm not arguing against psionics-magic transparency, which I think is good, but allowing the psionics mechanics to feel like their own thing, rather than reskins of the sorcerer or wizard.

I'd like to echo Owen's comments. I think that it is important that psionics feel different from magic. If the system were altered so that powers became identical to spells, it would certainly lose a lot of its appeal.

That doesn't mean that the XPH version of psionics is the only way to achieve this, but of all the versions of psionics to date in the game, it seems to work the best.

One thing I did find broken with the XPH version was that it was all too easy to burn through a massive number of points in a single combat to create a short lived superbeing, especially for a psychic warrior in one of my games. I was always a bit uneasy about that because it allowed the psychic warrior to outshine just about everyone else, albeit for a very brief time.

Getting back to Eric's original questions, psionics have played a major role in most of my campaigns, the recent exceptions being the two Golorion campaigns/adventure paths I'm currently running. I've toyed with the idea of running a game where there is no magic... just psionics.. so it is important to me that the psionics system be complete enough so that I could do that if I wished. This would not be the case if they were reduced to being "mentalists" or such with a bunch of telepathic abilities only.

Would I buy the pathfinder psionics update? You bet I would. Is there a deal breaker? Well, I would be very unhappy if Pathfinder reverted back to the 1E version of psionics, and I'd dislike if they became too similar to some kind of specialist wizard, but other than that, there are no real deal breakers for me. I've been missing psionics in my Golorian games...

Oh, and I was one of the authors of TNE. ;-)

Just yesterday I was musing about starting a Traveller campaign in the TNE era. Which TNE books did you work on?

One of these days I'll manage to complete my TNE Traveller set. Never did manage to get a copy of Vampire Fleets.

Lensman wrote:

I think they giving Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance as examples of campaign settings and are not calling them the first ones released.

Not with that sentence structure.

That it later mentions other campaign settings released using "including <examples>" makes it rather clear that the intent is to label those two as the first campaign settings.

Yes, I'd have to agree with Samuel Weiss. I was reading that passage just this morning and they certainly were saying that Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance were the first campaign settings. Either the writer of that section doesn't really know the history of the game or something got dropped (perhaps the sentence originally said the first post-Gygax settings)? At any rate, it kind of floored me to see such a blatant mistake in the history block.

KaeYoss wrote:

ShakaUVM wrote:

Did you know? Some people play "Dragonborn" because they "Look like dragons!" WoW.

No, they don't. I've seen the picture they have beside the racial entry. They look like frogs or something. Definetly not dragons. At least, not my kind of dragons

Our conclusion was that they looked rather like hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs. Hedgehogs. Hedgehogs.

Great, now I'm imagining Sonic the Hedgehog as a Paladin.

Now I want to take a look at the books just to see how dragonborn could possibly look like hedgehogs. Is this the MM or PHB picture of them? (assuming they are in both books)

Ron Dawson wrote:

Vic Wertz wrote:

Ron Dawson wrote:

...with places like [edited] there are safe havens for it.

Please don't talk about where to get such things.

Ah, sorry about that. Thought it was common knowledge - I didn't mean to encourage people - it was mainly a comment on the futility of trying to contain the leak. Will be a bit more careful on the references in the future.

It IS common knowledge for a lot of people on the boards, but Paizo is a seller of PDF products and as such its bad form and business prectice for references to places like the 'edited' to be found on their site is all. I recall something similar said when it came up in a different thread.

Oh, I agree. I certainly understand why references to 'edited' are risky things for any publisher and should be highly discouraged and I think it was appropriate for Vic to edit out my reference (which was more in passing and not the point of the post). But even so, I think Vic did the right thing so I'm not arguing the point at all.

Ron Dawson wrote:

...with places like [edited] there are safe havens for it.

Please don't talk about where to get such things.

Ah, sorry about that. Thought it was common knowledge - I didn't mean to encourage people. It was mainly a comment on the futility of trying to contain the leak. Will be a bit more careful on the references in the future.

For those of you who ran the Alpha releases in-game, what kind of negative feedback did you receive during and after play from your players on the rules?

I just ran our first Alpha 3 game and I think the main negative feedback I received was :

* Power creep. There is a definite upswing in power. This was a concern expressed before characters were rolled up.
* Concentration and Spellcraft rolled together don't really work. The cleric in the group was especially irritated by the change.

Things I'm not so sure of from the other side of the screen:

* Overhead chop was rather impressive, perhaps too impressive for a first level character.
* The cleric has an at will fire bolt from her domain and she said afterwards that she might never need to use a crossbow again, well, so long as the enemies are within 30'. Is this bad or good? I don't know yet - it feels kind of like a 4Eism but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I was running the "Rise of the Runelord" adventure path and I could really feel that the characters were much more powerful when playing through the opening scenes with Alpha 3 characters (compared to 3.5 characters the last time I ran the first adventure). Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The players certainly seemed to be having fun with their new abilities.

I think the leaked PDFs are going to HELP 4e. There are a lot of people who said they'd never buy this game but they're going to download PDFs of it and, IMO, they're going to like it enough to at least buy SOMETHING. Maybe they'll buy supplements and use their knowledge of 4th edition to convert it to 3.5 or PRPG, but these leaked PDFs are only going to help. It's a matter of making the rule books a commodity for this audience and then getting them to buy the add-ons, so to speak.

Perhaps. I know that music downloads do work that way for me. If I hear something I like, I might download a bunch of songs by the artist to see if I like more of their material. If I do, then I buy the CDs. I suppose I could do the same thing with leaked PDFs of 4E. However, if I didn't like what I saw, I wouldn't buy in to the game at all and they'd never even get the initial sale of even the starter adventure or PHB.

I would have to agree with you that those that are excited by 4E aren't going to cancel their orders (unless they have financial issues and this is a way for them to still play the new shiny without paying for it). It depends if they make enough converts from the fence sitters who download the pdfs to make up for the lost curiosity sales.

Hmmm. If this is true I wonder what illegal downloads will do to sales?

My guess is that it will hurt quite a bit. All of those people who were going to buy 4E because they were curious, but were already leaning away from liking 4E now will be out there downloading to see if its worth it (for them). If they don't like what they see, then that is a lost sale. If they had purchased the books and not liked them, then at least WoTC would have had that initial sale (even if not sales for follow up products).

I foresee long nights ahead for the Hasbro lawyers trying to get websites hosting this material shut down.

It's too late. Once out there, there's no real way to shut it down. Peer to peer sharing is far too widespread and with places like [edited] there are safe havens for it. When one gets shut down, the pirates, er, sharers just move elsewhere.

Unless this is a deliberate leak by Hasbro themselves as a publicity stunt?

I highly doubt it. I really think that given the vocal crowd of 4E doubters, this will hurt them so they wouldn't risk such a stunt. Besides, it kind of steals the thunder of the grand release.

To tell some more of how 4ed feels degrading. Does anyone agree with me that these books feel like there was no effort at all invested in them? They feel and read like a 3ed starter set (with fixed hp and abilities and such) or even more accurate, like a D&D miniatures game dressed up in distasteful artwork? Cause i've had both of these, and the average 3.5 splatbook had more effort invested to make than any of these. It's like a cheezy supplement for children, like a bad 3rd party campaign setting or simplified rules variation then an edition basis.

While I haven't been impressed with 4E overall, I don't think this is really fair. The books, especially the PHB, seems to be written to a much lower level than the previous version of D&D. That doesn't mean effort has not been put into it. I'm sure that a lot of effort has gone into this version. All it means is that they are targeting the game towards a younger demographic as you alluded to.

For those who received the 4E core books early (*cough* BUY.com *cough*), has a readthru of the books affected your decision in continuing to play 3.x or the future Pathfinder RPG?

Not really, no. It seems that the early reviews (both pro and nay) have been pretty accurate. If you've liked what you've been hearing, you'll be happy. And if you've been worried that the game has moved too far towards being something very different (tactical minis game, etc), then you'll probably still feel that way.

As for me, after reading through the PHB and some of the DMG I'm not really impressed. The PHB in particular was especially underwhelming for me - there was something about the writing style and organization that just caused me to tune out. The DMG was better than I expected given what some people have said. I haven't really read through the MM yet.

Will I play 4E? Definitely a little bit just to see how it plays. Will I actually run a long term campaign using 4E? Not too likely. I'll be sticking with 3.5 and Pathfinder for that. So have my opinions changed? Nope, not yet. Perhaps after I've finished reading the DMG and MM and played with it a bit, but at the moment I think that is doubtful.

Alright, I am a heavy pro-4e fan. I have noticed the many mechanical flaws in 3.5 which make it 'not fun' and just how time consuming each round is at higher levels.

<snip>

I am looking to see if someone can convince me to spend my money on Paizo and their adventures/ruleset, rather than Wizards of the Coast and the actual Dungeons and Dragons ruleset.

Well, if you're already sold on 4E and see many mechanical flaws in 3.5, then I don't know if going with Pathfinder is right for you or not. One of the goals of Pathfinder is to maintain a level of backwards compatibility with 3.5, so they can't veer too far from the source.

My personal beefs with 3.x are the high level slow down of the combat round and the time requirements for game preparation. I think that there are definitely solutions to the latter that we're starting to see in the alpha rules. As for the first, I haven't seen anything yet, but I don't think it is something that can't be overcome.

What 3.x and its offspring need is some kind of shortcuts and hints for speeding up higher level play that don't take too much prep time. Will Pathfinder RPG achieve that? I don't know yet.

I really like some of the tweaks to classes I've seen so far. There is a bit of power creep when compared to 3.5, but I think the changes will make some classes more interesting.

As for the Paizo adventures, the Pathfinder adventure paths are easily the best adventures you can buy these days. Perhaps the adventures will be enough to convince you to buy in to Pathfinder (whenever they switch over to using the Pathfinder RPG rules).

Thraxus wrote:

I would argue that opinion. The ranger in my Planescape campign was one of the highest damaging characters, occasionally outclassing the rogue. The character had Rapid Shot, Manyshot, and Improved Manyshot. Combined with a Strength bow, this allowed them to stand and deliver a barage of arrows or move and still get multiple shots. The ranger's role was that of artillery support. The Precise Shot feat allow the character to assist the front line fighters. If an opponent closed on the ranger, the rogue maneuvered for a sneak attack.

I have to agree. In one of my Planescape games, one of the more memorable combat encounters I ran was against a single ranger sniper in a valley. With the right mix of feats and terrain, he was incredible - much more so than I expected. The players had a long running battle moving all up and down the valley before they finally managed to defeat him. If not for their many healing wands, the ranger certainly would have killed a few of the players. As it was, he came really close to killing three of them.

I am going to admit that I am pretty entrenched on this one. My question for you is, do you give you characters so much wealth that they can pull this off. XP is not much of a cost all things considered, compared to GP.

Ever since I first realized that XP was removed as a cost in magic item creation, I've been wondering whether the amount of gold pieces was a sufficient game mechanic. In my games, it would probably work fine because I generally do keep pretty good control over loot doled out. When the players are making magic items (and they always do), it us usually money that is the issue more so than experience cost.

That said though, I have problems when I think through the implications for the game world at large, assuming the same rules apply there. Let's say the old evil emperor of Lollapaloo wants to equip his army with magic arrows of flaming, spears of striking, and so on. Well, he opens up his treasury and drains it dry and gets his small cadre of mages to do it. Sure, they need to spend some dedicated time making magic, but there is no limit to how much they can produce assuming they are fed and the money keeps flowing. Heck, this evil emperor can enslave lower level wizards in a magic item making sweatshop. All they need is food and water ... and whatever money can buy.

Some people in society will have more money than they can possibly spend. If the players are hired to help these rich individuals (or governments, churches or whatever), then why couldn't the players turn the tables and say "give us 50,000 gp and a few days and we'll make a magic item for you that will solve all your problems". There is no personal cost to the player anymore in that case.

Overall, I think eliminating the experience cost is opening a can of worms unless there is some kind of other limit (other than GP cost) applied. It doesn't need to be an XP cost if there are philosophical issues with that, but some kind of craft or artifice pool might do the trick.

But it goes nicely with Search if Search were just pulled out of Perception :)

You're right there. Track would fit in nicely with search (assuming search were pulled out of perception).

However, I kind of like having skills that are useful on their own without requiring a feat to perform so I don't have a problem with tracking just being one task associated with the survival skill.

As for rangers, perhaps they have some kind of automatic bonus on all survival checks (including tracking) which would generally make them better trackers than other people.

I know that as a player, I would often take tracking feats as a non-ranger if it fit the character concept, so I haven't seen tracking as a ranger only thing for some time.

The XP cost can be replaced with exotic components needed for creating magic items, and/or access to great libraries, specific sites, rare tomes of ancient lore, etc. I use something like that i my campaign. For instance, an elven fighter/wizard wanted to create frostbrand of speed +2. For that, he needed a specific sum of gold. That he loaned from a dwarf fighter/cleric (with interest, of course). But, to capture the essence of cold and swiftness in a material object - he needed something more. After research, he found out that on the highest mountain in the world resides the god of north wind. And so, the quest was born for the breath of north wind. Trust me, he kept that longsword till the end of his carrier, always trying to find a new way to improve it, rather than replace it with some new longsword, even if it was more powerful.

Interesting story, but I suspect that if all magic items had similar component costs (essentially a quest!) then you wouldn't see too many players making magic items!

I remember back in 1st edition AD&D days reading through the suggestions for component costs for making magic items and thinking, that's a neat idea. But not one single player in those games actually made magic items because the components always seemed too onerous to obtain.

This is a fantastic change!

I never understood why a wizard would craft anything if the net result was a gain for the party (creation of a resource such as wands, scrolls, etc.), and a level loss for the Wizard.

I think you answered your own question there - net gain for the party. In our games, the players with item creation feats are always creating items for the party. Losing out on experience never seems to be a concern. I think I worry about it more as a DM, but they don't. Perhaps we just have a very cooperative group. :-)

Like in your game, my players are not rolling in money, so making items saves them money over going out and trying to buy them and they've always been willing to take the experience hit.

All that said, I'm not opposed to experience no longer being a cost, but I do think there should be some kind of limit to how much you can make just so it doesn't get out of hand and stretch the limits of the magic economy of the world. I'm worried the money costs won't be enough to maintain any sense of plausibility unless you're aiming for a high magic campaign.

As someone else said, a craft point system would be one way to achieve this, with feats that you could take to boost your available craft points - something like the Unearthed Arcana craft points system, only more generally applied to crafting items.

Instead of XP costs, I personally prefer either:

3) cost increase - which also tends to make magic items rarer if you dont tinker with the base game economics.

2) craft pool - similar to that found in the Eberron artificer with possibly feats that add points to the craft pool.

I would have to echo that I like the craft pool idea, either along the lines of the Eberron artificer, or perhaps a variation on the craft point system in Unearthed Arcana.

Ah, at least I'm not the only one missing the poster. I've been wondering what happened to the poster from the final magazine. I didn't find it in my final Dragon issue (also plastic sealed), nor was there any indication of what was on the poster. Perhaps the poster was dropped and there was a typo on the cover? Or accidentally not included in magazines sent to Canadian subscribers?

Poster or not, it was quite sad opening up and reading the final Dragon (and Dungeon from a few days before that). I'll miss them both. I've been reading Dragon since back around #45 or so, so it's a bit like losing an old friend.