Senjen's page

I'm fairly sure I'm the target audience for 2nd edition. Paizo has already sold me more 2nd edition stuff than I have purchased in the last 2-3 years for 1st edition.

I really enjoyed 1st edition when it was released, but as more options have been made available I find it increasingly hard to run the game. Improvisation, my preferred style for running a game, is increasingly hard because my middle aged brain simply can't keep up with what all of the feats and abilities do. This means that even the monsters in the later Bestiaries, some of which are quite cool, don't get used because it is simply too much work. I don't want more 1st edition content. I won't use it, so spending my money is a waste.

2nd edition is an opportunity to start again with a smaller pool of abilities. I may or may not invest heavily in the game. There are definitely some areas where I'm not happy with the direction taken in the playtest. I've made my opinions known in the surveys and we will see what changes upon release. I like enough of what they have done that I will definitely buy the core book and see if enough has changed to make me happy. If not, I'm no worse off than I was before (not buying much, if anything)and Paizo has made a little money off of me that they wouldn't have made otherwise. But if I like it I'll support it until the game again becomes too complicated to keep in my head.

For some games in the past, I've instituted a rule that teleport requires a 1000gp Emerald. By the time they can cast it it's not a huge amount of money, and therefore the spell is still useful when time is tight or in an emergency situation, but it's expensive enough that they won't use if frivolously. My players seem accepting of it.

Ultimately most of this argument is beside the point. Paizo does an excellent job of making room for minority viewpoints. It really isn't asking much for atheism to be included as one of the minority viewpoints.

Arguing from the standpoint of an atheist in Golarian: Cayden Cailean actually works against the argument for gods existing. He was indisputably human. He took the test of the starstone and became an incredibly powerful human. If he can do it, so can anyone. Why should a I worship someone just because they were lucky enough to find a source of power? What I wouldn't argue against is that there are beings of greater than human power in the world. But I see no reason to worship them. They aren't gods, just powerful extra-planar beings.

In 2nd edition there are sorcerers who have access to the divine spell list. How is a cleric objectively different from a sorcerer who can cast divine spells. From within the game world you would not be able to tell the difference.

I'm an atheist myself and I think the OP has a point. There are so many religious assumptions built into the game that it does feel uncomfortable at times. The argument that there is evidence of the gods in Golarian feels very much like arguments I hear in favor of religion in the real world. I agree that the discrimination against atheists is not as severe as against other minorities but it definitely does exist. I live in the American South and believe me that it is very possible to lose a job if the wrong employer finds out you are atheist.

I'm very glad that Ezren is a nonreligious character. As for how he justifies it in a world where so called gods make regular appearances, I've always assumed that he views gods as beings of great power who have imposed themselves upon us. If a mortal can become a god then they aren't actually anything special, just more powerful and lucky.

I consider this a design feature, not a flaw. Monsters and NPCs should be balanced to provide an entertaining encounter not forced to make changes just to make the math come out right.

As an example of why this is important, I've been running a game recently where all of the characters had very high ACs at fairly low levels (think high 20s at level 3). My choices were essentially limited to throwing them against encounters where the bad guys couldn't hit (dull), Lots of touch ac encounters (fine for once in a while, but gets old after a while) or things which can hit them reliably which due to being higher level also tend to hit harder. It gets frustrating.

Being able to do things with monsters so that I can more reliably have things hit, but not do much damage, or miss often but hit like a truck will make for a more entertaining game in my opinion.

I'd like to see more consistency in how environment and terrain types are presented. While there are nearly infinite sub-variations, it is not unreasonable to consider that the planet has 3 major temperature zones: artic, temperate, and tropical. I've been working on encounter tables for various regions and having listings for warm and tropical, or warm and temperate just makes it slightly more difficult.

The same can be done with terrain types. I'd vote for mountains, hills, forests, plains, desert, and underground.

Hello Paizo people,
The subject basically says it all. I would like to cancel my subscription to the adventure card game.

Thanks

Do it. I removed clerics from my home game years ago and have been pleased with the result. I allow wizards to memorize many of the divine spells and it works fine. I do allow many of the other divine classes such as druids and oracles.

Excellent. Thanks!

HI Paizo people,
You had an expired credit card # when this was first placed. I have updated things so it should process now. However, my order is showing as three separate shipments. Does it need to be? If possible I'd prefer a single shipment.

Thanks.

Thanks Katina, that looks good. Ship it whenever you are ready.

Hi Paizo people, I was making some changes in my sidecart today in preparation for telling it to send me most of it now as opposed to waiting for my next subscription shipment.

I was deleting a couple of items which are not due to ship for several months with the intention of adding them back in once I've committed to shipping the rest, because I've had delays in the past as a result of similar items being in my sidecart.

I hit delete and the entire sidecart vanished. It's not in my shopping cart, it's not on my subscriptions list and it doesn't show up in a sidecart that I can find. If it's gone, then I don't mind reentering the orders, but I don't want to end up with duplicates. The initial orders which said to send it to the sidecart were 3605361 and 3611531. There may have been other items as well, but those are the ones I'm positive about.

Let me know what I need to do and I'll be happy to give you my money. :)

The three iconic heroes sets are not showing up in my sidecart even though the order number shows that they should be there. Please make sure that they are not hung up on something so that they can ship with my subscription when they are supposed to.

Thanks

I need Dungeon Magazine #92 removed from my sidecart. I realized after I submitted that I already own a copy and do not need another. Thanks

Please cancel my subscription to Pathfinder Campaign Setting and Pathfinder Player Companion.

Thanks

I will be doing a bit of both I suspect. If someone else is willing to run the game I am perfectly happy to play Pathfinder, but I will never GM for Pathfinder again. It finally reached the point that the amount of time required for preparation in order to provide a challenge for my players was simply too much.

5e seems good to me so far, and provides a closer fit to what I want in a game that I am running.

Maybe send out an update to the Rappan Athuk Kickstarter (or any of the others) letting people know this is live. I will admit that I expected it to have funded by now, but may be that was just optimism.

There is another thread where Vic (I think) officially states that you cannot recharge magic armor after it has been buried. What that power allows you to do is recharge the card instead of discarding it when you reset your hand at the end of the turn.

Edit: found it http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q5e0?Recharging-magic-armours#2

Decanter of endless water. Move to the desert and start a water company. Make more decanters as needed.

Add me to the list of those with this problem. I only noticed it recently when I tried to open the adventure path forum and was unable to do so. All I get is a blank page. I can use workarounds to get to the forum, but it is somewhat annoying.

The linked description lists them as being 1.5 inches tall, so definitely on the tall side, but not completely out of line.

I will probably continue to buy all modules for the foreseeable future, since I can always use more sources of inspiration. However, I would also like more higher level options. After about 12 is just seems to dry up. There are a few higher, but no where near the variety.

I wish there were a way to pre-order this. I don't object to paying for it.

My local gaming shop refuses to participate in Free RPG day. A friend and I even offered to pay half the cost asking only that as long as we were there at opening we get first crack at the offerings (otherwise with the same limits as everyone else). They were not interested. I admit that it confuses me because the shop does a lot of traffic related to games and always has an excellent turnout for Free Comic Book Day. Hopefully there will be leftovers again this year for me to order.

I agree with the basic premise of your blog post that having some idea of what is coming can be beneficial to the story and increase everyone's enjoyment. However, I also feel that it really depends on the quality of roleplaying that the player is capable of. I have some friends that I would not want to have prior knowledge. For whatever reason they have a hard time separating in-character knowledge from player knowledge. Others i would happily let read the module ahead of time because they can keep the two separate. I wish you luck on your experiment.

My group tried something similar to this. We gave an extra 50% damage for each extra attack. A character with 2 attacks would get rolled damage plus bonuses times 1.5, 3 attacks would double damage, 4 attacks would be 2.5, etc. For damage reduction I simply multiplied it by the number of attacks the character would have had so an attacker with 3 attacks against DR 5 would lost 15 off the attack.

It did have the advantage of speeding up combat, but there were still flaws. The biggest was with the kensai maximizing his damage which resulted in some huge hits. I'm fairly good with math on the fly so the multiplication was not an issue for me, but I can see it being a problem for some people. Creatures with high DR were also a small problem. One bad roll by the attacker could result in almost no damage being done whereas multiple attacks would have averaged out more in the long run. In the end we decided to drop the system, but it was an interesting variation and I am glad we tried it.

While I don't believe there is any one true answer. A couple of things that have worked in my group are to refer to the player by character name, especially when doing initiative, and regularly asking players if that comment was in character.

Also entertaining is to have npcs react as if the stupid thing the player just said was in character, though I'm not sure if it is really effective in encouraging roleplaying.

I can comfortably say that in my experience (I've painted several bones) you do not need primer.

The biggest problem I have run into being a GM to a witch is that much of the flavor of the class leans toward evil. This is not to say that you cannot play a good witch, just that it is a bit harder because a number of the options, especially the hexes, really are meant for evil characters.

GM burnout happens to the best of us. I run for our group the majority of the time, but every year or so I just need to take a break and someone else runs a different game for a while. Sometimes we go back to the game I was running and sometimes we don't.

I'm speaking entirely from my own experience here, but there is a possibility that the problem is that you are running an adventure path. This is not intended as a slam on adventure paths in general or Runelords in particular, I own all of the APs and have enjoyed reading most of them. However, my experience is that after a couple of books in an adventure path I begin to feel overly restricted by the plot and get bored as a result. This usually results in dropping the campaign. I use adventure paths as inspiration and to pull encounters for my home grown campaign. I find it more creatively satisfying. My suggestion is that you use adventure paths as a springboard for ideas. Weave several plot threads from them together and throw out others that do not interest you. Add spice with plots you made up yourself and you may find that you are having fun again.

On the other hand, you may not. Some people are just not meant to be GMs. Only you can judge whether that is the case for you. I do think that you have made the right choice in the short run by having someone else run something for a bit. We all need a break once in a while.

Another possibility is the round robin GM. It sounds like none of your friends are highly enthusiastic about running a game, however there is at least one who is willing to run one occasionally since you got your friend to run Tomb of Horrors. Perhaps the two of you can both play and GM a game together. Alternate weeks or months and make sure you leave lots of plot threads for the other to build upon. One word of warning if you go this route. Make sure that while you are the GM your character is either not involved at all, or gets less than the other players. Doing so significantly reduces the chances of hurt feelings and claims of DMPC.

Ultimately the best advice I can give is just to experiment with new ways of doing things. Different things work with different groups.

On a related note, you mention that one of your players still has trouble with calculating for the 8th level character. My question would be if this player is having fun. If the answer is yes there are two ways you can handle it. The first is to just ignore it. Some people just go through the numbers every time and there is not really anything we can do about it. Just try to stay patient. The second approach is to help create a cheatsheet on a notecard and break down all of the calculations so that all the player needs to do is find the proper action and roll the die, then apply the single modifier.

If the answer is no, then you need to determine if the numbers are a cause or a symptom. If they are a cause then the notecard I suggested above can be a great help. If they are a symptom the you need to find a way to get the player more involved in the game. Perhaps tailor some plot points to directly involve the player and give him a chance to shine. Lastly, it may be that Pathfinder is not the right fit for this player (or group). Some people just do not enjoy all of the number crunching involved. The next time you are all together calmly discuss what you expressed here on the messageboard and get input from them. The feedback they give you may be surprising.

There have also been some indicators that even if there is a 2nd edition of Pathfinder they intend to stay reasonably close to what is currently there, though I am too lazy to look up the actual quotes.

Think of it more like the transition from 1st ed D&D to 2nd ed or from 3 to 3.5. Not everything will work perfectly, but the core of the game will stay recognisably the same. There will definitely be some changes at some point but that time is not now and even when it comes you should still be able to play your old characters without having to recreate them from scratch.

Personally, and this is pure supposition on my part, I think that Paizo is a transparent enough company that they will announce any 2nd edition plans well in advance and will most likely have some sort of playtest for any new rules being considered.

Mythic for example is scheduled for release next August and we have known about is since last August, at least in a general sense. The playtest is getting a lot of screen time because it is a new approach to raising the power level of characters, even so it is still just an optional supplement.

My experience has been almost exactly like Bugleyman's. I want to like the map packs, but there are just too many I dislike for me to keep a subscription. Now I buy the occasional map pack (vehicles was exactly what I like to see) and all of the flip maps. I would happily subscribe again if there was a purely flip map subscription, especially monthly, or if more of the map packs fall into the multiconfiguration style.

there was quite a bit in second darkness about how they dont sleep, I just don't feel like going back in there to re read it all. Figured it was covered in elves supplement.

Elves needing sleep is one of the things that changed between 3.5 and Pathfinder, so yes there are references to them not needing sleep, but the majority if not all of them are from 3.5 materials.

In my experience the only wands that ever run out of charges are the ones which either started with very few (less than 10 when found) or wands of Cure light wounds. Everything else has a limit, but is used rarely enough that they never get used up. So for practical purposes wands are already perminant magic items already in my games. Perhaps it is just a result of my DM style or my player's style but that is how it seems to work out. This change would just make it official.

This is a fairly minor issue, but I would like it if there were a way to set items I purchase to default to sidecart/ship with subscription instead of ship immediately. Perhaps I am missing something. I dislike having to change the item status for multiple items in order to save on shipping.

I have been contemplating adding a stitching effect to them. Then I can say "yeah it's flesh, human flesh" helps add to the creepy vibe.

Don't be afraid to screw up. In most cases (in my experience) the mistakes are small and another layer of paint will cover the mistake. For those occasions where the mistake is larger and you feel like you want to start over, it is almost always possible to strip the paint off of a metal miniature. I use Simple Green, but there are other products out there. My understanding is that many of the plastics can also be safely stripped, but I have never done it so do not have details.

I like the idea of pregenerated characters and single encounters. I very fondly remember the old D&D book of lairs. I would find something along those lines quite useful. I homebrew so more complex adventures such as modules or adventure paths are significantly less useful to me.

I would like class acts wizards.

I noticed a typo in the catalog. For pathfinder battles rise of the runelords the case lists 4 boosters when presumably you meant 4 bricks or 4 booster bricks.

Banned: Summoner - I just don't like them

Cleric - I have never been a fan of the cleric as written and they do not fit my setting very well. Cleric is more of a role playing option. There are a few traits and feats which can provide limited access to some of the cleric powers. These can be taken by most spell casting classes.

Monk/Ninja/Samauri - None of these work well with the setting (a mashup of Greek and Roman influences)

Modified: Wizard - The wizard/cleric spell list is combined. If a spell is on both lists it will typically be cast at the higher level.

While it is definitely on the high end, 200 is not that unusual for a very limited special cover for a popular comic. It all depends on where your collecting interests lie I suppose. The price is too high for my personal collection, I've never been a collector of alternate covers, but I would be quite surprised if Paizo has any of these left a few years from now.

I'm really looking forward to this one. I hate creating npcs, so this will save me a lot of time. Sure I will probably have to adapt some or all of them on the fly while I run my game, but when my other (realistic) choice is just making stuff up from scratch on game day, this will be great!

Wise Tiki, Because Skull and Shackles 6 and Shattered Star 1 are scheduled to ship at the same time you will not be able to sign up for Shattered Star 1 by clilcking on the button until after they start shipping (or at least authorizing payments, I'm not sure exactly when the rollover occurs). However, Paizo has awesome customer service and if you contact them at customer.service@paizo.com, I would bet that they will be able to get you set up right away.

It looks pretty good to me. One thing to keep in mind is that just because the invasion is not going to happen for months yet does not mean that there will be no giant attacks in that time. Some giants acting as scouts ahead of the main army would be a good way to keep your players on their toes without necessarily turning up the heat so much that they decide to change their plans again.

In the house campaign I am currently running the group is leveling at fast until they hit 7, then dropping to medium until something around 12 - 14 at which point we will move to slow. This allows us the character development that comes from starting at a low level, but gets us to the (for us) more interesting mid and high levels fairly quickly.

For the other campaign I am running Kingmaker so we have been at medium, but I may have to adjust that as I am starting to add more and more extra content.

I only saw two voices speaking up about what was worth buying, and what wasn't. I got nothing but respect for End and D_M, but it seemed to me that more opinions were needed.

+1

I have to admit that I have thought off and on about doing some reviews for exactly this reason. Thank you for starting this thread and giving me the reminder that I needed to stop procrastinating and just do the reviews.