Sieglord's page

I have always felt that the prevailing attitude with regard to the "magic vs. tech" dichotomy (that is, that "Ne'er the twain shall meet") points to an almost debilitating lack of insight.

Why do wizards throw fireballs? (Or cast any other spell in their repertoire?) They do it for the same reason that a gunslinger hauls out his pistol, and the same reason that Spaceman Spiff reaches for his trusty atomizer: TO EFFECT CHANGE IN THE WORLD AROUND THEM.

That is to say: Wizards and scientists are trying to do exactly the same thing, they are simply taking different paths to get there

With this insight in mind, it becomes extremely difficult to imagine any fantasy milieu where magic is a major factor NOT becoming extremely technologically advanced in a very short period of time.

Think about it: Wizards (especially those who reach the vaunted level of "Arch-Mage") are by definition extremely intelligent...and intelligence, by its very nature necessitates an innate curiosity about the world around them. It is utterly inconceivable that in a milieu like Forgotten Realms, which has more "Arch-Mages" in it than I have fingers; that there wouldn't be at least ONE of those mages who didn't have that insight.

Consider, for just a moment, how much easier scientific exploration would be with the aid of magic (for those of you who need a guide to your imaginations, just think about what Einstein could have figured out had he been a Diviner...). Once you roll that thought around in your head for awhile, it (logically speaking) becomes very difficult to accept a milieu that includes magic WITHOUT highly advanced technology, barring the interference of some CONTRIVED obstacle (like a coalition of divine magic users banding together, or some such). Treated organically, the dove-tailing of arcane magic into super-advanced hyper-tech is absolutely inevitable, and something that would happen in a matter of decades (yes, DECADES...NOT "centuries").

...and just because I don't care enough to read the whole thread to find out if I've been Beamo-Chopped...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sir Arthur C. Clarke

I didn't...and wouldn't...read 7 pages of thread, so if this has already been said, consider me Beemo-Chopped...

...but the primary source of "martial caster disparity" is PLAYER EXPERIENCE...not the level of the character being played, but the ability of the human being playing that character. I've seen beautifully optimized Transmuters fail horribly at the simplest encounters because the player had no idea what they were doing.

Concurrently, I once watched a PC with 3 levels of Expert and 3 levels of Warrior (yes, the NPC classes...she INSISTED on playing a "skilled commoner" for RP reasons) utterly destroy a CR 12 encounter by herself using nothing but a few alchemical items and her feats and skills...because she...THE PLAYER...knew exactly what to do, and exactly when to do it.

Granted, there was a tiny bit of luck on her side (she did confirm one critical hit), but that wasn't what saved the party. What saved the party was the fact that she's been playing table-top RPG's for three decades, and there was (or is) very little she hasn't seen before.

Unless the GM deliberately skews the mechanics to foil one player specifically, in contravention of the rules and spirit of the game, there is just no substitute for PLAYER EXPERIENCE. It doesn't "break" the rules (indeed, the best and most experienced players NEVER have to break the rules) or the game, but it can "twist" them in the most horrifyingly creative ways...ways that can frustrate even the most experienced and sadistic GM's.

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over,
Everybody knows that the good guys lost.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed,
The poor stay poor,
The rich get rich,
That's how it goes...
Everybody knows."
Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Why are we treating any of this like some sort of revelation? Why is it that people need some D-Bag writer on a cut-rate psuedo-comedy site to tell them something that they should have already known before they were "old enough to know which side of the playpen smells the worst"? (Thank you, George Carlin)

Obviously, the game is rigged. The game has ALWAYS been rigged. If you're over the age of six, and just now figuring that out, where the frack have you been living all this time?

In the 3.5 book "Stormwrack", the entry given for the "Pinnace" (yeah, go ahead and pronounce the word and insert your jokes) approximates the dimensions given for the Folding Boat closely enough that GM's who aren't anal-retentive jerkwads should have no problem accepting that they are basically (close enough for fun gaming purposes, anyway) the same.

Using that as a basis, then yes, the largest mode of a Folding Boat is a sea-worthy vessel that can carry 15 Medium-sized creatures and 30 tons of cargo.

Certainly not enough to recreate the Black Pearl, but more than sufficient to have some good ole' privateerin' fun...

There were NINE nazghul...only NINE.

At the Battle of Five Armies, one of those ARMIES was the EAGLES...yes, an ARMY OF EAGLES. An entire ARMY of giant, flying Cuisinarts. The point that darkwarriorkarg got from a Cracked video still stands: There is no viable reason whatsoever for any of the events in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy to have taken place...except that Gandalf, Elron, Boromir, Aragorn, and that Cate Blanchett elf-chick were all abominably stupid.

No great struggle, no "journey of heroes"...just stupid decisions by stupid people. That's your "epic".

OK, once again I re-read every post in the thread, and I STILL don't understand why people are talking about the OP's game as though healing were something rare, or that can only occur through natural means...CHANNEL ENERGY STILL WORKS JUST FINE!

There's plenty of healing available...any Paladin of sufficient level can do it (it's actually the least of what they can do), and Clerics are MORE important to a party than ever before, even without their spells (especially without their spells).

Channel Energy is neither a spell nor a spell-like ability (I checked...), it is a Supernatural Ability. The OP stated that "mortals could not cast spells or spell-like abilities"...supernatural abilities are not mentioned...and not one single line of one single post in this thread deals with Channel Energy specifically, or with Supernatural abilities in general. This entire thread has operated under the premise that supernatural abilities (such as a Monk's Ki...) still function normally, while simultaneously failing to specifically exclude (or even mention) Channel Energy.

Yet every post about healing in this thread completely forgets to even consider it...why?

Yes, the Android Paladin's "mind" is nothing more than a collection of binary instructions and recursive subroutines. Here's the thing: You won't know the difference, because those binary instructions and recursive subroutines might number into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It won't be repetitive, mechanical or stiff in conversation or interaction. If you do not specifically know that you are dealing with an artificial construct, you won't know the difference (and that's not cyberpunk sci-fi speculation, that is the expected state of real-world programming and processing wherewithal in about 25-30 years).

...and we are engaged in speculating what's possible in a milieu that allows for magic, dragons, gods, and most importantly of all, alchemists, psions and golems...

Those are great classes (except for the Bard...the Bard is a stupid class and a stupid hold-over from the Gygax days that should have been dropped ages ago...), but they are all very much more complicated than a Fighter to play.

That doesn't detract from how awesome they are (except for the Bard, which still completely sucks and is stupid as a PC class), but it DOES make them more difficult to play for a novice than a Fighter (who has a plethora of options, true, but NOT a plethora of new or different mechanics).

Fro question 2, the answer is probably "no". Whether or not a creature can be used as a mount has less to do with actual strength than it does with size and shape.

Sure, a medium sized bear can absolutely bear the weight of a human rider (for instance), but he doesn't have the room on his back to make it a comfortable (or even useful) ride.

Anatomy, far more than muscle mass, comes into play when determining suitability for use as a mount. (This is why those rules are determined using Size categories rather than Str scores.)

Now, once you've got the size thing worked out, then the Strength score does come into play, and if it's simply carrying capacity you're worried about, then there's no problem. But no spell is going to allow a Medium-sized creature to serve as a mount for another Medium-sized creature without special rules.

*Edit* There is one addendum to all of that: If your druid has the Powerful Build feat, then the Medium-sized creatures he/she Wild Shapes into can totally bear a Medium-sized creature as a mount, because Powerful Build specifies that it applies to carrying capacity.

I'm attacking the darkness!

Are there any wenches in the darkness? If there are any girls there, I wanna DO them!

I once ran a campaign where one single session after learning the BBEG's name (Prestor Fenn), he was renamed "Mongo, the Dildo-Licker". That was the moniker he carried until the day my players finally caught and killed him.

How did I react? By making him steal the most important thing in the PC's lives...and then throwing them a golden dildo he had just licked to announce it. (They never did get that thing back, btw...)

"Plus, now that i think about it, all fire damage spells generate heat OUTSIDE of the character. This spell generates heat INSIDE the character. No amount of fire resistance can protect him from that."

You can quote some source, from the RAW, that states that Fire Resistance ONLY applies to a character's skin? It's a ridiculous notion, and once again, falls completely outside of basic logic (or, more appropriately, is a desperate contrivance). By your line of reasoning, the aforementioned Balor (who is NOT "made of fire", but has Fire Immunity), could swim all day in a pit of lava, and then die inside of a few minutes by drinking a mouthful of it. By that same token, an elder wyrm red dragon(who is also "not made of fire") could be easily killed by waiting for it to open its mouth and then throwing a Fireball in at the right moment (because a Red Dragon's fire immunity applies to its scales...but not to the very place that its fire breath comes from...)

Stop trying to defend the devs because they're the devs and actually think for a little while. They aren't perfect, and if our ability to meaningfully play the game they've developed (not "created"...we create the game by playing it...they merely developed a convenient framework for we DM's and players to work within) hinges upon our willingness to accept that they are perfect, then we should find another game.

Truth is, it's just laziness. It's easier for them to make a silly ruling on the fly than it is to double- and triple-check their work. Given the scale, I can see their problem, but not excuse it. We pay our hard-earned money for these books. It is not unreasonable of us to expect them to make those books better, or to correct them when they are not.

I am sorry, BigNorse, but I am afraid you have started your discussion from at least two fatally flawed premises: That Gore would not have done the things in office that President Bush did, and that there is any such thing in America as a "third party".

Gore would have helped to put exactly the same tax cuts in place, his military budget (his budget, period) would have been precisely the same as President Bush's, and if Gore had been elected, we would have had the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is no "third party" in America, because in order to have a "third party", you must first have a "second party", and in America, there is only one majority party. It has very cleverly split itself into two entities that, in public, do a very good propaganda job of acting like two separate parties, but that in private, believe exactly the same things, act in exactly the same ways and actively collude to ensure the same outcome no matter which candidate wins the (meaningless) popularity contest.

I have a truly hard time understanding how anyone who's actually been paying attention (to deed, not rhetoric) to the presidency of Barack Obama could possibly believe otherwise. Bush's tax cuts continue. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued (and have been expanded, largely through drone bombing, into Pakistan). The torture continues to this day, and there was not even one single day of investigation into the tortures of the previous administration. Camp X-Ray remains open. Wall Street continues to run roughshod over all of us. The NDAA passed with Obama's signature. Domestic surveillance has been dramatically expanded (to include funding for local police departments to field military drones), and you can't even get on a plane in this country now without the very reasonable expectation that you will be sexually assaulted by a pervert in a uniform. The "most transparent administration in history" is publicly acknowledged to have failed (at least, by 19 out of 20 Cabinet-level agencies) to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (not in isolated incidents, mind you, but as a pattern of behavior). Julian Assange and Wikileaks itself have both been declared "Enemies of the State"....

I mean, really? I though President Clinton was the most Republican guy to ever hold the office...but President Obama beats him in a walk.

Simple fact of the matter is, that until you are willing to openly recognize and admit to the kind of system you actually live within, nothing you do, say, or try will ever effect any meaningful change because nothing you will be able to do, say, or try will address your real problem (that of plutocratic oligarchy).

Now, for my most offensive statement: Until you have read a first-edition printing of "Tragedy and Hope" (first-edition only...later editions were heavily edited), you really aren't qualified to talk about politics in the United States.

'The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.'

- Carrol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

I banned ninja and samurai, both for the same two reasons: I detest "fanboi" crap, and there's really no need for either class to have ever even been written. They already both existed in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook: Rogue and Fighter. Simply put, they were pandering and extraneous. I am currently banning guns and the Gunslinger class, not because I don't like them, but because Paizo totally screwed the pooch when executing both. (Super Genius, on the other hand, is in the process of nailing gun rules with expert proficiency in their Anachronistic Adventurers series. Once their rules are fully-formed, I will be using those, rather than the train-wreck that is the Paizo rule-set.)

I have carefully read the rules for Synthesist Summoner, then I read the threads concerning the class, and I honestly cannot understand what's so confusing about its mechanics. Seems pretty straight-forward to me. That's not to say the IDEA isn't kind of silly...it is, but the mechanics are sound enough. It MIGHT be possible to make the case that a Master Summoner is over-powered (depending on the campaign, really...I tend to run tough-ass games, so my players tend to welcome the help), but the only reason for a Master Summoner to be slowing down game-play is if its player isn't doing his homework. If you have a player who wants to run an MS, make sure he's got his creatures statted out before hand, and make sure it's a player who understands combat, movement, actions, etc...in other words, the only people who should not be allowed to play an MS are novice players. The archetype really shouldn't be a problem for experienced players or DM's.

I'm generally pretty flexible when it comes to unusual races or character types. This is a fantasy setting, after all, and that gives a lot of leeway with regard to what is deemed "acceptable" or even "unusual". I tend to base NPC reactions on how characters act, rather than how they look (not being a big fan of racism personally, I tend not to let it be a factor in my campaigns).

My over-riding goal is for my players to have fun, so I would rather do a little extra homework making an unusual character type work, rather than forcing a player to "settle" for something he or she didn't actually want to play. Counterpoint to that, though, is the need for balance (a maddeningly non-specific idea, but of course, but important nonetheless).

By way of a for instance, I had a player who insisted he wanted to play a werewolf. Since the campaign started at 1st level, I agreed, but made him play an "afflicted" lycanthrope...and took control of his character whenever he changed forms against his will (which, at 1st level, was nearly every time he transformed). It turned into a brilliant subplot, with a Neutral Good heroic type struggling to gain control of a bestial condition (and suffering the consequences when he failed). Through the use of a few house-ruled feats we came up with and some stellar role-playing, he succeeded, and even though his character type might have given him more "power" (an equally non-specific idea by itself) than other members of the party, nobody felt overshadowed.

In the end, it all really depends on how much work the DM is willing to put into his game, and his players' willingness to compromise. Nearly any reasonable idea can be made to work, if both parties are willing to work.

How does all of that relate to this topic? Simple...it's extremely important to remember that the current unrest in the Islamic world is not happening in a vacuum. If this "movie trailer" were an isolated incident, then people would be right to call the violence "senseless".

...but it isn't. The people of the Islamic world have the perception that the West believes that Islam, and the people who practice it, are a mistake that has no right to exist on Planet Earth. Rightly or wrongly, many of the genuinely believe that they are fighting not just for their religion or sovereignty, but for their very right to exist.

I'm continually fascinated by the statement that the nations of the Middle East(or Latin America, or Africa, for that matter) should embrace democracy...as though they haven't in the past.

In 1951, the Iranian people democratically elected (in an overwhelming landslide) Mohammed Mossadegh as their Prime Minister. The Americans and the British organized a coup and had him overthrown and killed...for the sole crime of believing that Iranians had a right to benefit from the resources sitting under their sovereign soil. We replaced him with the Shah, whose regime was in 1976 named by Amnesty International as the most brutal and repressive on the planet.

In 1953, the democratically elected president of the Congo (the first democratically elected ANYTHING in Africa), Patrice Lmumba was overthrown in a coup (and later executed) organized by the Belgians and Americans.

In 1983, the democratically elected government of Grenada was removed by the United States in an action that can be described in two ways: as wholesale slaughter, and the single most lop-sided military conflict in recorded human history (I mean, "Mike Tyson fighting a baby" lop-sided). This example is particularly egregious, as declassified memos being circulated between the State Department, the White House, and the intelligence services at the time show quite clearly that not only did they know that Grenada was not communist in any way shape, or form; but also that there was absolutely nothing in Grenada of any strategic or economic value to the United States (that is to say, they knew to an absolute certainty that even if the New Jewel movement WAS communist, they would have been no threat to the United States whatsoever). The people of Grenada were massacred solely because the United States wanted to send a message to other Latin American countries.

I could go on...for pages and pages of this thread. Guatemala, Chile, Egypt, Panama, the list goes on and on.

So what I would like is for someone to cogently explain to me how anybody on Earth with even a cursory knowledge of the history of the 20th century would believe that Americans have any interest at all in democracy?

I understand the RAW, but in this case, it doesn't make logical sense. Obviously, a shield offers protection by making physical contact with an object (you know, so you don't have to). A ghost touch shield offers protection against incorporeal entities by making physical contact with their attacks (again, so you won't have to)...in what universe does it make any logical sense to state that a shield that can make contact with a ghost can't make contact with a ghost?

This is one of those few design flaws in the rules that I correct with a house rule...if the ghost can touch the shield, the shield can touch the ghost. Simple, and best of all, it makes sense.

This may seem like an off-topic post, but I assure you, it's "in the pipe, 5x5".

This is one of the few threads on this site that I've ever taken the time to read every post. I'm not going to comment on one or more specific posts (not even those of the OP) because I don't need to. What I DO need to do is point out that a proper understanding of the issues raised here (or anywhere else, by anyone else) cannot be obtained by obsessing over the statements of one celebrity or another, or one politician or another.

Nor can it be derived from the study of the political factions, and their stated beliefs. Genuine understanding of the political landscape (ANY political landscape, be it that of the United States or that of Zimbabwe, or that of your local school board) can ONLY be obtained by a diligent study of PROPAGANDA.

If you are not intimately familiar with the work of men like Ivy Lee, Walter Lippmann, and Edward Bernays (and many others whom I will not name here); if you have not conducted a thorough study of public relations/propaganda, then you really aren't fit to enter into a political conversation or debate, as you will not only have no idea at all where the political beliefs of your opponents arise from, you will be equally ignorant as to the source of your own beliefs.

(As a freebie, I am going to point out to all of you who are right now thinking, "My beliefs come from my mind and ONLY my own mind!"...that belief, itself, is the product of extremely sophisticated propaganda.)

(As ANOTHER freebie-I am feeling generous today-I will point out that the absolute, very last thing that I am talking about is "mind control"...broccoli cultivation is more relevant to this conversation than "mind control". "Mind control" is a term used by the ignorant, the uneducated. "Perception management" is what's at issue, here, and that is a far more subtle, elegant, and sophisticated idea than crude babbling about "mind control".)

The biggest gripe I have about my age is a lie I was told...namely, that my conscience wouldn't bother nearly so much. I was told that as I got older, the things I've had to do to other people in order to live this long wouldn't bother me so much, that my guilt would fade.

They lied. And they knew they were lying, the bastards. I've gotten old enough to look at myself in the mirror and realize that all those people I hurt probably deserved those years of life far more than I ever will. I can live with the scars, the injuries that won't fully heal, the debility, and the constant ringing in my ears. Still trying to figure out how to live with myself, though. I imagine I'll die trying to figure that one out.

Grand Magus wrote:

I see.

So how does one know if they are a Republican or a Democrat? Is there a test?

Good question.

If you think Obama is doing a good job and the country is finally on the right track, you should probably vote Democrat.
If you disagree with that statement, you should probably vote Republican.

EDIT: But for the love of God, do some research that doesn't include polling a gaming company's off topic forum! Go out there and search for whatthe parties stand for and their canidates. See what each party has backed or fought for the last 50 or 60 years. Think for yourself, and vote accordingly.

See, I actually did that (the research that didn't include a poll on a gaming site's off-topic forum). As a starting point for my research, I disregarded all campaign rhetoric and focused solely upon the policies that had been enacted and enforced once the candidates had taken office. What I found was pretty interesting, in that in the absence of rhetoric (that is, the things said by candidates while on the campaign trail, and the news cycles that follow the election), there was no discernible difference between the parties at all. That is to say, in the issue of substantive policy, candidates from both parties continued the same initiatives in all cases: nuclear detente, Israel/Middle East, foreign policy in general, military spending, actual economic policy-which as a matter of course, is ALWAYS diametrically opposite of the policy that the news cycles claim has been initiated-, infrastructure spending (this one seems to be a simple mandate for both parties...as little as possible without it being obvious that that's the goal), the list goes on. In absolutely ALL cases, (and I do mean that as an absolute and "without exception" statement), the polices are identical, even if they are cosmetically different.

Now, we as Americans know that we are essentially immune to propaganda. We have an independent, hard-charging press apparatus and a well-educated, even cynical public; and if that sort of surreptitious manipulation was occurring, the people would detect it and the media would expose it, and the effort would naturally fail. Were it not for that fact, it would be very easy for pernicious "conspiracy theorists" to claim that both parties are in fact controlled by a single secret body. In a robust democracy like ours, we know that this is, of course, impossible.

So how does one explain the similarities? I have no idea. I am not a psychologist, philosopher, OR a political scientist, so I will have to leave it to greater minds than mine to figure that out.

You GMs can't tell me you haven't killed off a truly annoying PC?

I have also witness players kill each other off for things that annoy them.
It isn't really any different. Besides gnomes are a terrible race, and players understand sometimes PCs die.

"Killing PC's" is the mark of a mediocre high-school-aged Rifts Game Master. (Yeah...I said "Rifts"...you are really only fit to run a "Rifts" game for high-school kids. I said it, right out there in front. I "lead with that", you might say.)

"Letting PC's kill themselves" is the mark of a skilled and subtle Dungeon Master of a Pathfinder game. I'm taking that word away from you, actually..."subtle". You don't get to use it anymore, Emperor Prosek, you're not worthy of it. There's nothing "subtle" about what you do, you just happen to be blessed (from your point of view, anyway) with players just a little to dim to suss out what you're doing. An insult to anyone who's ever taken it upon themselves to sit behind the screen and draw up a universe for their friends to vacation in.

"Agreeing with his basic assumptions of why requires the acceptance of some sort of giant conspiracy that has been perpetrated and perpetuated by hundreds of thousands of people for over 100 years."

I served five years in the Army, and after that I went to work for a rather large corporation. The two experiences have this in common: at my level, with the everyday work that I did, it was not necessary (or, in the case of the military, even desirable) for me to understand or even know the motivations of the people making decisions four or five steps above me, let alone those of the people making decisions at the very top of the command structure. I got orders, I executed them, and I didn't ask why. Now, I get directives, I address them, and I don't ask why. I don't know what you do for a living, but I suspect that the situation is much the same for you. It's actually that way for most of us...we do our jobs, don't ask too many questions, and we get through our days as unobtrusively as we can.

The point is: You don't need a giant conspiracy involving hundreds of thousands of people...you only need the malfeasance of a few men with vast wealth and influence. Those men can bank reliably on the natural tendency of all of us to mind our own business. The real truth is that it isn't some giant conspiracy at all...it's just business. They are ensuring a reliable work force and a reliable customer base. The fact is, any corporation in existence today would do exactly the same thing if it had the ability, these people just got there first.

Lastly, "Why?" is a question of monumental importance in a project of any kind, as that answer will have direct and indelible influence on whatever philosophy guides the engineering and implementation of the project. Case in point: Even the most well-meaning changes made to our educational system have failed to produce any improvement because they have all been based upon the premise that our educational system is designed from the ground up to produce literate, well-educated people able and eager to engage in critical thinking. As our educational is obviously designed to do nothing of the kind, changes made to advance that goal inevitably fail because they are trying to get the system to produce a result that it fundamentally cannot. Until people figure out that what's being done to their children is being done for a specific set of reasons, they will never be able to address them. In essence, people are going to keep trying to fix the wrong problems.

Anyone interested in the state of public education in the United States would do well to read the works of John Taylor Gatto. A former New York State Teacher of the Year, he started doing research into the history and formative motivations (that is, WHY the schools and curriculum are structured the way they are) of the American public education system, and what he found (for instance, in the archives of the United States Senate) was actually pretty interesting. I won't bore you with all the details here for two reasons: 1) I'm in a hurry and that would take too long, and 2) Just hearing some of this stuff from some dude you don't know on the Internet might make it a little hard to swallow (and understandably so). Rather than bog down the thread with an exhaustive "Uh-uh!", "Uh-huh!"-type discussion, I will simply encourage you to read it for yourselves and make up your own mind.

P.S....don't ask me for a link. I gave you a name, and you have IntaWebz. That way, you can decide for yourself if the sites carrying the man's articles and essays are themselves, biased.

I have always despised the Bard ("The orcish horde is overrunning the town and slaughtering the innocent orphan children...what are we going to do?" "...well, let me get out my lute and play a jaunty tune!").

I was also so very disappointed in Paizo when they just HAD to appease all of the stupid, unimaginative gaijin otaku (99.999% percent of whom have never lived in Japan and know nothing about Japanese culture beyond what they get from their hentai) by rolling out lame versions of the Samurai (as a Cavalier archetype? Really? Couldn't even do some decent research...not even spring for the Cliff's Notes?) and the Ninja.

Let me break it down for you...want to be a Samurai? Play a Lawful Nuetral Fighter who's specialized in the Bastard Sword, and who's inextricably bound to do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING, UP TO AND INCLUDING IMMEDIATE SUICIDE (or the slaughter of an entire building full of newborn babies) that their "daimyo" ("Lord") tells them to. There, you're a Samurai, and no new mechanics required.

Want to be a Ninja? Play a Rogue with an emphasis on the Disguise, Stealth, and Sense Motive skills who has an Asian-sounding name (no need for the fancy black suit, real shinobi never wore those, anyway). Abandon ALL emphasis on combat (a ninja who had to fight during a mission was considered an absolute failure), and there...you're a Ninja, with no new mechanics required.

The Gunslinger class was a good idea, it was just stupidly executed. Didn't really bother me, it just needed a total re-write, which was not difficult at all. Witches seemed overpowered at first, but that's only because the first person in my gaming group to play one is an incomparable genius. Looking over the rules, the class is fine, it's my player who's a dirty, conniving a$$hole...I'm actually very lucky to have that problem!

Quote:

Vote wisely. Listen patiently. Debate courteously. Reasearch regularly.

Vote democrat.

Try to figure out why anyone wouldn't vote democrat.
Try to persuade people to vote democrat.
Show people why they should vote democrat.

...as though "Democrat" were somehow any different than "Republican"...

"The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so the that American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."

Prof. Carrol Quigley, "Tragedy and Hope"

Sounds to me like Ishma should be congratulated on fulfilling every proper barbarian dream: fighting the good fight and dying with an enemy's heart in her teeth! (Ishma's player should also be commended for properly playing that character to the hilt!)

That being said, as a DM, I've never killed a character. Good DM's don't kill characters...they give characters ample opportunities to kill themselves (or let their teammates die, which sounds like the situation you've described). Based upon the original post, you warned them. You gave them time to prepare. One can only hope that your players have learned the value of coordinated action in future endeavours. Don't put the "kid gloves" on, however. Keep the pressure up, and let your players know that they can EARN their way through, but that you won't GIVE them the way through. THAT'S a top-notch DM, right there!

...and keep up the good work, by the way. Sounds like you'd be an awesome DM to play with!