Simcha's page

I would like to discontinue my subscription after issue Skull & Shackles 6/6. The APs are really great, but I need to cut back a bit.
Thankyou in advance!

Cheers
Simcha

I still feel cheated. I have not played then ending yet and I have not downloaded the EC. Because I am angry. And because I am sad.

I understand that ME is supposed to be about sacrifice.
BUT! it is also about HOPE, forcrissake! Shepard flipping DIED in ME2 and came back. So she has to die AGAIN because an old machine thinks it knows better?

I could have lived with being bombed to the stone-age. I could have lived with making peace with the Reapers.

But this pseudo religious mumbo jumbo nonsense from the conduit!? Honestly? There is peace between the Geth and the Quarians - stupid conduit proven wrong!

I feel like I was promised little blue children and BW/ME fail to deliver - big time.

The whole ending sounds like they wanted the thing over with, move on to greener pastures, whatever.

Yes, they are a company that wants to make a profit - but sc**ing over their fanbase?

And to add insult to injury, to be able to choose at all, I need to play a buggy multiplayer game, I am neither good at nor like?

I agree with magnuskn, I will be very careful in the future ordering a game in advance.

Fellfoil

Raventongue

Crowfeather

Throatslitter

Stabbity Doom

or more dramatically

Souldrinker

Locke Lamorra (The Lies of Locke Lamorra)

Sorry (Gardens of the Moon)

Arthur Simon Simpson (The Light of Day)

F&S? Like in Feder & Schwert? Are they still allowed to translate rpg stuff?

oh em gee

The same guys who translated Deathlords as "Fürsten der Finsternis" (Princes of Darkness), Exalted as "die Hohen" (instead of "die Erhabenen", because it allegedly looked better with the logo) and Obtenebration as "Schattenspiele" (Shadow Play)?

*sigh*

to each their own, I guess

This may have been asked before:
I want to run this with 6 goblins, how do I have to spice up the encounters?

Thankyou for your opinion.

I do not intend to slander the effort you guys made in translating all the rules in such a short time.

It is the same problem I had when reading the german translation of Glen Cook's Black Company or books translated for Vampire.
It just doesn't "feel" right.

In the groups I play atm we use a mix of german and english books, and I almost always have to re-check in my english version, because I don't get the translation.

Maybe it is just cause I am used to the english terms. I never find anything either in the glossary.

I am surprised the big comic shop in Nuremberg doesn't have any german Pathfinder products.
... or buy online at Dragonworld.de

I have never bought a german translation since I am generally underwhelmed by the execution. Not overly fond of the german Pathfinder translation tbh.

Is there any need to beef up the encounters for a party of six or is it enough to add an encounter or two?

Does anyone have an idea where I can get life-like winegum slugs? I wanted to add a RL challenge to the game. But the life-like gummy banana slug seems to be no longer available.

Arthur C. Clarke's 3rd Law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

except that unless its sustained it doesn't catch things on fire at all not even dry kindling covered in oil. you scorching ray that you get nothing. Flaming sphere however different story.

You mean like fireball-like explosions that do not necessarily ignite stuff IRL?

Oil doesn't burn btw, the fumes do.

But I agree, the physical effects of many elemental spells are unsatisfactorily vague.

What kind of electricity is it then? Source?
Fire damage seems fairly real world to me...

I once looked this up for an underwater encounter with a giant eel and a party with a sorcerer with lightning bolt.

In conclusion, it depends on the water's salinity. The current travels through the better conductor. In salt water the water's conductivity is greater than the body's and thus the effect on a person would be minimal as the current would only travel along a body's surface.
In freshwater the the conductivity of a body is better than the water's so the current would travel towards the better conductor.
In brak water the conductivity of the water and a body are almost equal.

The encounter took place in an estuary (brak water) so I ruled that the Lightning bolt would in fact emanate as a burst from the caster's fingertip affecting all inside the area.

I admit some official ruling on underwater spell effects would be good to have. Another case where rules and RL physics don't match well.

This is my character in our (doomed) RotRL campaign:

"Old Rolyn Bester was in search of a slave, someone to keep him company and someone to help him in the field. He bought the young half-orc girl, because she looked strong and that gleam in her eye bespoke of intelligence.
Rolyn named her Salora: Hope, in the language of his grandmother’s people. Within weeks he grew attached to the girl. Unlike others of her kind, she was very bright and asked questions from dawn till dusk. Soon Old Rolyn’s knowledge was at an end, a farmer only knows so much. So he bought her a book and then another.
The winter of Salora’s first blooding the demons came to the little farmstead. Rolyn locked her in the crawlspace beneath the floorboards and she witnessed helplessly as the monsters tore him apart.
Unlikely as it seems, Salora was found seven days later by a paladin of Iomedae and her cleric retinue. They were at once taken with the frightened girl and offered her to accompany them.
Salora travelled with them to Magnimar and entered the temple of the goddess. She took an oath to hunt down the demons that prey on the weak and the innocent. Her vendetta is fuelled by her orcish rage and her zeal to someday find the demons that killed her father.
Salora Bester is on her way to Sandpoint now, to pay her respects to the local clerus. Her travelling party was delayed by a small band of goblins. When she arrived in Sandpoint, she met with Hemlock. Salora can sympathise with the town’s anxiety and is eager to help rid the region of its goblin menace."

Did anyone read "Prince of Nothing" by R. Scott Bakker?

just my 2 c

Uhmm....

Awesome!

Only bad thing... Shepard won't look right. :(

Speaking of conversions... I don't have my books to hand, but
is there a PF version of the Giant Gecko in any of the newer APs or the Inner Sea Guide?
It starts to become a major bone of contention in our group, cause there seem to be several contradicting conversions.
One is from the PFSRD, is that one "canon"?

By checking the bridge before crossing it.

Scratch that, by checking the rope goblin bridge.

That is what I meant by stupidity...

Helena Healadin

Healing in a can. Not a ZOMG damage build, but will act nicely against hordes of undead. Also good to patch up loads of allies.

Name of PC: Rogar
Class/Level: Dwarf Ranger 3
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Rope Bridge/Bunyip/Stupidity
Story: After triggering the rope bridge the party is trying to rescue the Paladin out of the waters below.
Meanwhile, Rogar inches towards the far edge of the bridge where the party knows goblins are waiting. Rogar fails his climb check and hits the water 80ft below.
The bunyip bereft of its tinned snack (the Paladin) swims over to sample some dwarf flesh.
Rogar is bitten for enough to damage to knock him out and subsequently drowns.

Party is finally able to establish a bridge head on Thistletop.

I still wonder how you are supposed to do this with 4 level 2 characters. We had 5 at level 3 and we struggle mightily.

So what exactly are you doing?

What am I doing?

I just cancelled the CotCT AP I ran, cause the players were not able to follow the plot.

I am wondering how long the RotRL campaign I play in will go on, cause we wiped twice on the druid, and I don't have the slightest idea how the party will ever tackle Thistletop even at level 3.

I am making do, I play PF at the moment, because I frankly have the choice between bad parties and not playing at all. I am sorely tempted to chose the latter soon.

What would I love to do?
Continue the Delta Green campaign my old friend ran. We had a blast for over one and a half years - without one single bloody combat!
I love investigative style. Heck, I love Vampire for all it's dark, romantic, evil, megalomaniacal, angsty awesomeness.
I love rpgs in which you don't have to "fill a slot". I think that evading the monster and talking your way around violence is as valid, if not more rewarding than killkillkill.
I want to tell a story with my friens.

When I want to smash things, count my dps and optimize I play WoW.

The game is, largely, about killing things, taking their stuff so you can kill more things and having fun along the way. In order to do this you either have to

Kill stuff
Make your friends better at killing stuff for you
Make the stuff easier to kill

Thankyou! This is a combat simulation with rp elements. I can have that with Descent.

Not my cup of tea, thankyouverymuch.

Simcha wrote:

Roleplay, roleplay and optimise all you want, please; but in my book, a brute with Int 7 and Cha 5 (and not a single rank in diplomacy) will never succeed in woeing any (sane) princess, never sway any (sane) king with soothing words, no matter how silver-tongued the player may be.

They don't have to. It isn't their job. Their job is to kill things. To death. That's why they are Fighters instead of Bards.

Why doesn't everyone expect the Fighter to be a suave, debonair character but the Barbarian gets a pass? There is no real difference between the focus of the classes other than the flavor.

I said brute, not fighter. And the fighter I quote is an example. Barbarians at least get more skills than the fighter.

Hell, the Ranger and Druid should be more charismatic than the Fighter because those classes are designed to deal with animals - which involves being Charismatic if not Intelligent, but no one ever gives them crap about it.

I do. I give a crap. Cause I don't think anyone should get away with having their cake and eating it when it concerns fighting prowess optimization by "just winging the roleplay aspects" (i.e. being a suave player with a character without suave stats) whereas non-number-crunchers are insulted by being called sub-optimal!

If you think you can get away with dropping attributes ridiculously low, feel free, but don't expect to not suffer any negative consequences for it. That goes either way.

Let's face it, over half of the optimization defenders optimize to "better kill things to death" and not to "better represent their roleplaying concept".

I am done with this!

Maybe it is my fault for loving to play Jacks/Janes-of-all-trades.
The optimization concetpt is all but new. It happend in Rolemaster, it happened in Shadow Run, it happened in WoD. Of course it happens in DnD and in PF, too.

Nothing is wrong with building along a concept and making that concept work well inside the given rules' system. If that is optimization, I am ok with it.

I have a problem with stuff I have seen on this forum, not this thread maybe along the following lines:

Skills are redundant, spells do that way better.

80 to 90% of all the feats are combat oriented.

When the word optimization is brought on the table, it does concern combat prowess in 99% of all cases.

As close as it may be; this is not a combat simulation game. It is a roleplaying game. But if building a socially adept character with an emphasis on skills and mental attributes is considered sub par, then this system is crap.

I know D20 is about killing things first and foremost and other things to a lesser degree. At least this seems to be the root of the whole conflict.

Sorry, in 3.5 a fighter could fight, climb and ride - period. PFRPG has improved that at least.

Someone who wants to play anything other than a fantasy super hero, look elsewhere, you won't find it here.

I have realised this is not my kind of rpg, I have never felt at home and I more and more realise, that it is holding me back.

I've had it with the inhumanly strong freaks with the amoebean intellect and the lizard charisma, who believe can walk unnoticed among the populace.

Roleplay, roleplay and optimise all you want, please; but in my book, a brute with Int 7 and Cha 5 (and not a single rank in diplomacy) will never succeed in woeing any (sane) princess, never sway any (sane) king with soothing words, no matter how silver-tongued the player may be.

Optimization:
GM: So, this is the first session of our new Robin Hood campaign. What is each of you playing?

Player 1: I play an exiled nobleman who wants to help the oppressed people of Sherwood. He is chivalric and a little mischievous. He's a great archer, too. I spent some feats on archery and leadership.

Player 2: I play an outlaw. He is a giant of a man and good with his quarterstaff. He is trustworthy and outgoing, albeit a bit loud at times.
I spent my feats on stronger attacks and I took a low Charisma, cause the guy is wont to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Player 3: I play a monk. He loves his food and his ale. He is concerned for the people of Sherwood, too. He is not a great fighter, but a good diplomat.
This guy is a little fat, so I took low dex, but I put some feats into improvised weapons and diplomacy.

- Characters built for the setting and campaign. Able to do what is likely to happen during adventures. Where is that bad optimization?

Bad optimization:
Player 4: My character is a knight and ambassador. I did not spend points on diplomacy and I dumped my mental stats to buy up my strength. I will not roll on social encounters, because I am eloquent and I don't think a character's skills need not represent what he is actually able to do, with the exception of combat oriented abilities. I spent feats on exotic weapons because the katana has a better crit and damage ratio.

Guinness
Jever
Becks
Smithwick's (the real Kilkenny)

Cool, thanks!

Assume there is a rogue with a base attack of +6.
The rogue has Two Weapon Fighting and the talent

Surprise Attack (Ex): During the surprise round, opponents are always considered flat-footed to a rogue with this ability, even if they have already acted.

My question is this:

The rogue gets a surprise round against an enemy: he can attack once for weapon damage + sneak damage.

What happens in the first round of combat?

When the rogue does a full attack (mainhand/mainhand/offhand) does he add sneak damage to all three attacks?

It's ridiculous to say that someone is oppressing you for expressing their preference for more esquilaxes in an appropriate forum, though.

Yes, you are right, polling different opinions is a good approach. What you get from that is the smallest common denominator (modified by the tastes of the developers), that is what gets printed. Being against that would be ridiculous indeed.

Saying, "I don't like ghouls, and I would not use them and would like to see them used less in publications.", is expressing an opinion. That is fair, and I am not saying the least against that.

What I oppose is the attitude, " Ghouls are rubbish and outdated, no idea why they are used as we have so many other undead to chose from, and anyone who thinks different is a numtard." - that is beyond the pale!

Simcha wrote:

Can't people go back to playing the game as they like and stop forcing their style on others as "the only true and approved" way?

Stop having opinions, guys! Can't you see that it's driving us apart!

Nicely painted black and white. There is a difference between having an opinion and having an attitude.

This thread makes me sad.

Can't people go back to playing the game as they like and stop forcing their style on others as "the only true and approved" way?

If you don't like a particular creature in a particular AP - change it.
Where's the problem? Has your well of creativity run so dry that you can't think outside the box?

There is a gazillion monsters around, why not substitude one for the other?

I personally am sick of all the splat-book orcs and elves and cliché dwarves and halflings (especially those). In the CotCT I ran I substituted creatures where I felt them to be inappropriate for the style and mood I wanted to create. I replaced the Derro with crazed halfling necromancers, I replaced the hag with a giant morray - and guess what - people had fun!

Why not use things to your advantage? Toy with your players expectations. I was shocked to read the preface to Ashes at Dawn, where it was said, so many people had trouble getting their mind around working with vampires towards a common goal... hello??

This hobby is all about creativity - why adhere slavishly to written material? Can't we finally agree to disagree? Can't we finally admit that there are as many ways to roll this game as there are players out there - and that it is a good thing?

Name of PC: Kyenna
Class/Level: Half-elf sorcerer 2
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Gogmurt's kitty
Story: The party (human rogue 2, half-elf sorcerer 2, human monk 2, NPC human fighter 2) ventured into the briar cave and made short work of the goblin refugees and goblin dogs.
Things turned sour as they ran into Gogmurt. The druid trapped them with a well-placed entangle and set his firepelt on them. Unable to reach the druid, they tried to make a hasty retreat. Kyenna stayed back, trapped in the thorny vines and surrendered herself to the mercy of the goblin druid. Obviously, there was none to be had.

Name of PC:Sheul
Class/Level:Human Monk 3
Adventure:Burnt Offerings
Catalyst:Gogmurt's kitty - again
Story: The party regrouped with their comrade (inquisitor 3) and returned to the goblin refuge with reinforcements. At that time the party consisted of human rogue 3 (Dex reduced from plant poison), human monk 3, half-orc inquisitor 3 (strength reduced from run-in with shadow), dwarven ranger 2 and elf bard/sorcerer 1/1. The party stumbled into the briar and alerted Gogmurt's cat of their presence early on.
The druid, expecting them, hit them with an entangle (again). Sheul the monk rushed the druid failing to down Gogmurt with his stunning fist. That left him between the rock (druid) and a hard palce (kitty). The group was catching up quickly, avoiding the entangle to the best of their abilities. A nasty fight ensued with Gogmurt running into the briar to heal himself, then reemerging to hit the party with his flame blade. Monk and ranger hit the ground below 0 hp, but the former was healed back to fighting condition, only to be felled again by the cat.
The encounter ended with four characters on the ground, one dead and three below 0 hp, the cat getting finished with a magic missile from the elf.

That druid and his cat surely pack a punch, especially against a party that so ill-suited for such an encounter.

The PRD states for intimidate:

You can use this skill to frighten your opponents or to get them to act in a way that benefits you. This skill includes verbal threats and displays of prowess.

Boldened for emphasis.

By RAW there is no such thing as a "nice" intimidate. Intimidate is the use of a threat to get your way. How do you threaten someone in a nice way?
"Please, don't make me hurt you."??
However nicely the "request" for information has been spoken (and I know enough threatening people who'd scare you senseless without raising their voice one bit) it still involves a threat, namely the danger the city was in.
The rules further state:

You can use Intimidate to force an opponent to act friendly toward you for 1d6 × 10 minutes with a successful check. [...] If successful, the target gives you the information you desire, takes actions that do not endanger it, or otherwise offers [u]limited[/u] assistance. After the Intimidate expires, the target treats you as unfriendly and may report you to local authorities.

The use of force (either verbal or physical) is implied here. Tomake the opponent act (as if) friendly.

That is the major difference I think between Intimidate and Diplomacy. The latter uses reasoning, the former uses force.

[cynic]
Is your deity ok with it? If so, you're set.
[/cynic]

Come on, Come out - A Fine Frenzy
Must be one of the most beautiful songs ever...

The water is wide

Keep it precious - Melissa Etheridge

12E

Looks like I opened the box of Pandora...

Yes, of course the D20 system (in almost all of its indisputably various incarnations - and I call it D20 to steer the discussion away from the edition war trap) is VERY versatile.
It can simulate a lot of things, yes, but not everything! And no one says so, at least not to my knowledge. And the things it can simulate vary in degree of perfection.

But, and this has been my impression ever since 3e hit the shelves and I started playing D&D, it is best in simulating tactical combat, it is less well adept at simulating the application of (social) skills.

I cannot even disagree that the system does not reward roleplaying, nor does it penalise it. I do not agree that skills are useless.
I don't say that optimization (as opposed to power-gaming) and role-playing were mutually exclusive, they are not.
But! When you say that a BAB of +10 is better than on of +2, then a skill X at +10 IS better than one at +2. You have a 5% chance to hit/succeed despite your skill - by sheer, blind chance, but in the remaining 95% of cases a difference in BAB/skill/save level is of consequence.
So a character with a high skill in diplomacy is better with words than one with a low score. And a character with a high attribute will have a better chance at succeeding in a task than one with a low attribute - no matter what the attribute is. It is a bonus or malus to any task (skill/attack/etc). And it is my opinion that the relative value of an attribute/skill/save should be reflected in role-playing.
It is up to the player to define by what deficite a low score is reflected in the characters behaviour, bearing or appearance, but reflected it should be or the whole system having any value in anything is void.

Be that as it may, I am not telling anyone how he or she should play, or what to like. I don't say that any style is superior to any other. But I may like a different style than someone else and I am entitled to do so, as is everybody else.

I don't like the way D&D (D20) handles skills. I see how it handles tactical combat situations, it does so in an abstract that does appeal to me in a lesser fashion than do other abstract ways in which other systems handle tactical combat situations. I am not judging except for my own personal taste.

So I will move to a different system for a time, maybe I will return to PF or I may not. No harm done...

You might want to check out some GreenRonin stuff. They made a Black Company campaign setting a while back, albeit with a modified D20 rule-set (not a bad thing in itself). Maybe you can get your hand on that.

SilCore (Tribe 8) the rules system is great, the setting is cool, but the scope is, alas, too small...

Adventure! - my, did we have fun flying that biplane into that old temple!

Spycraft
True20

Again: I was not insinuating that either play style was inferior or superior to any other! To each their own, so to speak. It wasn't my intention to insult anyone, if I did, I am sorry.
I did not mean to sound that I am looking down at optimizers and "number crunchers" (mind, this is not meant as name-calling).

All I was wanting to say was that, after quite a while of playing it neither D&D nor, alas PF, can satisfy what I am looking for in a RPG. No more, no less. I am just not into the tactics/simulation thing. And my fondest memories are of other RPG campaigns. And I always felt something vital missing from D&D - vital for me. It is hard to put a finger on, really, what it is.

- And I am not using many supplements either. I played 2 D&D campaigns (using PHB, PHB2, UA, and Complete Mage), and I GM'd the CotCT AP (with PF Core and APG). -

Maybe it is what Cartigan says about D&D/PF being a numbers game.

I want to thank all posters for their system suggestions, and I will look them up.

I'd also like to thank all for keeping this discussion so civil! :D

First of all, thank you all for the support!

Truly, I think the party is at the heart of my discontent. And surely it is a question of what you do with a system as much as what said system has to offer.

I cannot stress this enough, I was not saying that D20 or PF in particular was a bad, inferior or restrictive system. It is not.

What I said was, and I will stick to it, it is obviously not the "right" system for me.

And also, yes, you can build a character who excels at what he does in some fields and this does, of course, not make the character bad for role-playing. It is a given that each and every one of us wants to shine at times and have our moments in the lime-light.
I will not fall into the pit trap of saying, being good at something (even excelling) and optimization were different things.

I love well-rounded characters, Jacks and Janes-of-all-trades, people with flaws and perks, and I like to see that reflected in "the numbers" too. I have always had difficulties with the linear scaling concept of level and hitpoints. I am in favour of health levels. Not saying either is better in general, both represent reality in a very artificial fashion. All I am saying is, I can identify better with health levels than with hitpoints.

Yes, a character that is good at what he or she does can be founded on a good concept, and be fun to play, too. A well-rounded character has flaws, too. And I feel flaws and merits should be balanced in a way.

But I do not want to discuss about drop stats and optimization. That is totally beside the point.

I am discontent with my "gaming life" - one reason for this is that I cannot regularily play with my friends at the moment and have to "make do" with colleagues. D20 seems to be the smallest common denominator here. I am afraid of doing the game a disservice by judging from my party. But then, as I said, D20 has never really been my cup of tea.
Ruining anyone's fun and enthusiasm in the game is furthest from my mind. It really is a sound system.

So I think it best, as some of you have suggested to take a break and move to "greener" pastures. Distance promotes affection.

I apologize if I may have stepped on anyone's toes. I had to have my "coming out" and I felt confident I could do so here.

I have never been the greatest adherent to D20 systems.

Maybe that has to do with my RPG origins, Rulemaster and Vampire.
Maybe it has to do with my latest parties, all 3.5e devotees.
Maybe it has to do with me reading the boards and getting fed up with people telling other people how to play the game.

Whatever it is, lately I feel a rising estrangement from all things D20.

I know the game is what you make of it.
I know that the rules don't make the play style.
I know there is no perfect system.
I know that PF APs are well written.

Still, I am so fed up with edition wars, optimization, drop stats, void classes, balancing, brokeness, monster PCs, and whatnot.

I really liked what Paizo did with 3.5e, it made so much sense when it was announced. I thought to myself, finally I can make a character in D20 and not just an elaborate combat sheet.

Maybe it IS the people I am playing with. Maybe it is me. I find myself starting to think in optimizing terms, and I hate it. Because from a game theoretical point of view, I see the benefits of optimization for combat effectiveness. But that is not the point of the game, is it?
Or is it?

My PF days are over, for now, I guess. I want to tell stories, and for me, personally, D20 is not the means to do that. It may well be for others, and the APs tell great stories in their own right. But in the end, not for me.

Cheers all! Game on!