Snowbeard's page

My apologies then, I thought you were objecting to feeding your char. When one goes offline they should be in suspended animation and not need to feed themselves, or their pets. Taxes, tithes, or levies could only last as long as the money held out and then they'd lose whatever bennies that belonging to a settlement provided them. I would hate to come back to the game in 10 years and find a char I'd spent 2 years on dead of starvation, but I could cope with needing to find a new settlement.
Hmmm, new thread: how to handle chars that aren't played for years and come back? What if the settlement is gone? what if the settlement now has laws against their alignment? If I logged out in a CE town and came back in 3 years would my alignment be LG (drift mechanic) make me instakill by the town guards?

I really don't think that having to explicitly take care of basic survival necessities is particularly cool or immersive. Should we have a slider for controlling inhaling & exhaling, too? The more strenuous activity you do, the faster you have to move the slider from "inhale" to "exhale" and back, or you pass out....

Grow from your cocoon, little larva. Maybe if you looked at it from a different angle you might see some merit. That is, eating and drinking could consume resources, create markets, provide meaningful interaction, justify NPCs and settlement levies, augment game mechanics, involve chars with the world, and develop storylines?

Resources from farming and hunting would be consumed, disappearing from the surplus and creating value for land. Markets could be created to supply grains, meats, vegetables etc. This would give cooks a reason to interact and develop ties to farmers, (and legitimize Tony's Bakery and bring protection money for transport through Bluud's band), creating meaningful interaction. NPCs (and slaves) could have a role and make their being well fed a factor in a strong settlement (if your guards are hungry they might not want to risk their lives). You settlement taxes could provide you with some measure of comfort knowing that while you are out slaying gobbies, your town has at least some measure of defense against the Goons because the watch is well fed. Those who want pets might need to feed them to keep them loyal and healthy, not to mention that it might be a way to tame a beast or cause your pet to grow in power just as you do. Starvation could be a viable mechanic in warfare/siege.
Yeah, its an inconvenience to clik a button every game day, but think of all the interaction you are stimulating with just one clik. You have become the butterfly.

If you're gonna have crits you need fumbles too.

Personally I land on the side of FF being a positive thing. It means folks have to pay attention to what they slot and AoE may not be the spell or feat of choice. It means thinking before spamming, it encourages alternative spell/feat uses. It encourages you to act within certain alignment strategies. It opens up possibilities and improbabilities that add flavour to the game. It takes nothing away, it only adds. Personally I'd like a game where spamming fireball isn't all there is to do. And if that's all I do, or want to do, well there's an alignment for that.
If you do hit a friendly, well, shame on you. Learn to play your char better. (no flame intended...or pun) Besides, depends on what you hit 'em with. Mass heal with undead around sounds sweet. Burning hands when they are trapped in a web, not a bad thing maybe. Elemental druids burning down a gate while mages spam fireballs at the ramparts, cool...err, hot! Tank has to pull off the dragon to get some TLC, time for that "jack of all trades, master of none" to step up.
As for the align/rep hit, I guess that's dependent on if you kill them, and even if you do, you're probably getting it back from all the bad guys you're killing. Just like a pally needs to be very careful about how he/she dispenses justice, so do you. As for the real enemy attacking you without consequence, if war is declared, or you are in an unsettled hex they could have anyway. (Curious choice of words tho...is your real enemy the group you're in? - 'cause yes they could choose to turn on you. Maybe)

Necromancy is a subdiscipline of Wizardry. A wizard who raises the undead as his minions is what is being called necromancer. A Necromancer who does not raise undead is a wizard.

From the PFGuide: "The magical field of necromancy is one of the eight schools of magic recognized on Golarion today. It deals with the manipulation of the essential life force which infuses all living things. Its darker aspect is the creation and control of undead creatures. Wizards who specialize in necromantic magic are known as necromancers" Bold is mine

I read that to say that creating and controlling undead is just an aspect of the school, not a requirement of the school. If it is not a requirement, if it is not an essential part of being a necro, then a necro wouldn't have to use them to ply his trade. If he choose to bring them out, oh well, suffer the possible arrows. If a pet wasn't required to be viable in the class, then there wouldn't be a need to rely on the pet and voila, then no problem to being a necro.

So far there isn't much of a place in the game for Druids, as near as I can tell. 'Traveller' flags are really the only kind of flag currently represented and that is pretty irrelevant for non-teamster druids.

My suspicion is that the jury is still out on these matters and we may see something in the future or if there are issues involved I don't yet see then maybe Druids will just not have a clear role othr than neutral clericsism.

The traveller flag might be handy when you're out berry picking - you can pick more berries (^encumbrance) over a greater area (^ travel) and minimize the impact. Just Kidding ;)

At some level it depends on how you want to engage in the world. Do you see yourself as a fence sitter, doing nothing, or are you going to take a more militant approach? Are you going to allow attended harvesters free resource depletion or gank 'em occaisionally to allow everyone to have equal opportunity. Are you going to lease rights to an area and provide protection? Are your a protector of wild beasts - many animals/monsters in PFRPG are actually neutral- so will you spare none who come to kill for sport? What is your position towards settling hexes? Mayhap you don't want to see the wilds tamed and will do whatever is possible to protect them and provide a third "axis" in warfare games, aligning with attackers until a settlement is destroyed then fighting the winners in an attempt to reclaim the wilds. If so, some of the flags may be of benefit...maybe?

Never stand under a druid on a tightrope - you don't know which way he's going to fall.

Or I suppose the evilest of folks will need to work together like the bad guys in a good story...establish a heirarchy and delegate the suffering :)

Yep, and we better get started soon. We had a poor showing on the landrush boards. Need a strong guildleader to come forth and marshall us minions.

@Areks - Good can throw the first punch. Nothing is stopping them. Sure they take an alignment/rep hit and set themselves up for a bounty but they can probably kill enuff gobbos to get the hits back. And it costs them less to "nuke" than us "evils". (see below) If I was going to be a ganker I'd start out as LG and watch my alignment gradually change until I had to move on. That could net me some phat loot.
Also the statement "This leads to evil advancing at a faster pace then good resource wise" is not necessarily true. For every caravan some evil might hijack, there could be many more getting thru. Plus if you don't want to kill and opt for stand and deliver, well all you are getting is money, or a small portion of the resources.

There is another mechanic in the blog that is a bit disturbing to me should I want to be an "evil" archtype. It will cost me more Rep points to level Calistra's Curse than for a good aligned person. "The reputation cost is proportional to the reputation of your killer, and increases over time."

I gotta agree with Danneth and there is starting to be very little incentive to RP evil. Poor towns, poor training, poor equipment, untrusty companions, small undisciplined guilds, poor and costly access to safeguards, (yeah, the rules were made for me too) and even simply playing my class (forget about any kind of banditry) hits my alignment and rep sending me spiralling towards CE. And if they don't allow antipaladins we get one less class archetype to persue. (Haven't seen anything that says they are in the game and they weren't a core class in first PFO guide)

Lookin' really dark on the Darkside.