Steven Hume's page

Hey our group is changing over to PF final and want to know if this is a mistake or is the new price 10k for a ring of invis?

no help here guys???

i just finish using a mind flayer in my game and they barb of the group got it in a grapple and pinned it while the rest of the party pounded on it. thats all fine but he pointed out that CMB rolls add your attack roll bonuses to the roll like weapon focus and such, for all moves. Now overrun and grapple state they are std actions and dont use attack rolls while rest do, but if you add all your bonuses to attack roll and none to defence it becomes the fighters touch attack basically. am i reading this correct??

also with the mind flayer using the CMB rules he has to make an attack in order to have one of his tentacles attach using improved grapple he starts a free grapple if hit, but if he does a full attack with all 4 can he get free grapples with each tentacle?

having him take 4 rounds to grapple someone to eat their brain really downgrades their deadly nature.

one more thing I've thought about in regards to Overrun - IF the maneuver began to allow someone to "knock the target prone" and keep going - thats not always going to be the best tactic anyway.

It's actually worth stopping after knocking the guy prone so you can make AoO when they try to stand up etc.

yep that is what i do as well, and when i get greater overrun i can get two AOO when i overrun them(one when i overrun them and one then they try to get up)

I don't believe so, but I wish it was. I've got a character with enchanted spikes for asthetics, because they're impossible[1] to use effectively.

[1] Meaning I could bash them with the spikes for 10 damage OR hit them with my claws for a bajillion damage. It's even more bizarre if I get swallowed..

why is not legal? it makes sense, in order for me to knock a foe down i need to hit him with my body, which has spikes on it, its like a slam attack how else do they get on the ground when i overrun them? you could make a touch attack if you thought it was needed(but if you do that then i would allow the touch attack even if you fail CMB as you still attempt to overrun and are stopped again them using your spikes)

I (Fighter) used Charge all the time, so much so it was second nature and most of the other melee types made frequent use of it, such as the Rogue.

We never have used Overrun, though I think making a feat tree for it would make it more used. Potentially it is a very very useful maneuver, if there were some feats to flesh it out some more.

If the powers that be say no feat tree love for Overrun, then merge the two.

my 1st lvl fighter took improved overrun and doned spike armour so now when i run over foes i get to roll my spike armour dmg and since there is no att roll just a CMB if i make the CMB their on their ass AND take dmg from spikes so every combat i use overrun to start and knock foes on ground then barb comes up and finishing them, works great with our group(too great my DM says heh)

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=681572

there is some good stuff for fighter in there, i am using the scaleable feats allowing them to take them as char feats(at 1,3,6,9,12,15,18) it lets they do some powerful thing, is based off BAB and i only count the BAB of fighter not other classes for multiclassing. am still testing it but so far seems to work well.

Honestly Jason! IT IS NOT! Dex fighter really seems to be having trouble in this game, and it needs a bit of a boost. For of us who actually try to wield a weapon in a martial art, or in a martial way, such as my self, any melee weapon can be used with dex as a basis for hit if they are trained to. This is a reasonable addition, please add it!

yea dex based fighters already have to waste a feat to get weapon fin(i use a house rule that says at 1st lvl fighter chooses which to use for melee attacks str or dex)

been toying with allowing casters to spend the money to research single spells at the higher level to learn a spell that is effected by a metamagic feat. sometimes you just want to know one or 2 spells that are max or silent, but dont want to waste a feat. so a fireball max would be learned as a lvl 6 spell and when casted BY THAT WIZARD it does max dmg. anyone see problems with this? i would limit the number of these spells to prime stat bonus(so wizard can learn 4 spells that have 18 INt each level or maybe total)

comments??

checking the D&D FAQ acid and sound DO NOT bypass hardness so case close

Correct me if Im wrong but doesnt acid splash do like 1d3 points of damage and would it not also be affected by the objects hardness? So even an object with a hardness of just 3 would be immune to the cantrip.

acid or sound bypass DR(as posted by others) so yes they can just keep attacking it and it cuts through doors much easier and faster than a axe.

why is it that if i want to make a dex based fighter i have to take feats to do it, why cant there be a choice to use str or dex for attacks, use dex or str for CMB, why do all the fighters have to muscle bond???? so i lose out on feats cause i dont want to look like a body builder.

Watcher wrote:

CMBs are easier to figure out, but are not getting used. Players say they're an inefficient waste of time and resources compared to a standard attack. I realize they should never eclipse standard attacks, but the balance is tipped because of the difficulty. They just don't bother using them at all.

I agree that CMBs aren't being used despite the simplified mechanics. My group has been playtesting since Alpha and we've tested CMBs to death(literally sometimes)

I like the previously mentioned idea of scaling opponents CMB with Hit Dice rather than the flat 15.

We also feel there needs to be more specific rules surrounding CMBs. Does fighting defensively, Combat Expertise, or Total Defense affect CMB? Should it? What about Casting defensively? What about a Bull Rush, should that affect a characters CMB as well as AC?

Some food for thought.

what is every looked at? i need o know if CE adds to the defence value of CMB as my fighter always uses CE.

houstonderek wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Jal Dorak wrote:

Yup. The only thing it affects is qualifying for epic levels in a particular class. Really, if giving a fighter the Exotic Weapon Master "kit" means they are better at epic levels than if it were a PrC, I am not bothered by it.

Hadn't even though of that -- of course, in ~30 years of playing, I've had a total of one (1) epic-level character.

you played one? i've never been over 18th!

n00b. ;)

i played 2 epic back in 2nd where it too YEARS to get them 20+ both where played for 10-12 years to get them to that level. never had any in 3.5 cause my games keep on dying(not my PC the games themselves)

For a number of years now my playing group has divided loot as follows:

1) Can someone use item X? (X being an item useful to their class or the survivability of the party -- weapons, spells, etc.) Then they get it. Sometimes they then hand back in another item that they got before for new divvying or selling, sometimes not.

2) Anything that is not in the above, jewelry, pretties, regular gear that no one wants (if they're replacing something, that falls under step one), is valued up. If someone wants a particular pretty, then that is deducted from their share of the potential sales as their cut.

3) Everything else is sold for the best price possible and the cash divvied up, so all get cash loot and purties that balance out.

We trust the GM to balance out the gear we get, or make available someplace we can trade in that magical halberd that no one can use for something more appropriate to whoever needs a new toy :)

All are happy, no one gripes.

interesting i just must be getting unlike with my groups as alot of them treat the loot like a accountant is standing next to them

I think you guys are miss-reading the power. It’s only a hop. When it says “This teleportation must be used in 5-foot increments” it means you can only teleport 5 feet at a time. No 60 foot jumps, just 5 feet. It’s only a hop. Being able to do 60 feet a day just means you can do it 12 times. That’s why it’s a first level power and a swift action, it's like an extra 5 foot step.

reread the power, they can jump a max of 5/lvl in 5 foot increments

Swordslinger wrote:

The problem of course is that this requires an advanced DM familiar with the rules set and having a general idea of how much time he should give his PCs to do various things. But that was one of the main problems with 3.5. It was incredibly hard to DM, there were hundreds of factors you had to consider, and it led to a lot of DM's being total hard asses because they became afraid to give PCs anything, because they're afraid of being burned. This actually happens a lot to novice DMs.

The rules should accommodate a lax DM style where the DM doesn't have to worry about managing things like time unless he specifically wants to. The game shouldn't be at risk of becoming unbalanced because the DM says, "OK, 6 months pass between your last adventure and now..."

That's just too much for a DM to worry about.

I would say that is the reason many people like 3rd Edition - it requires, maybe even expects, system mastery. Players argue this all the time, but I would say it equally applies to DMs. It's downright impossible to have a game that allows the players a detailed complex system but is intuitive and simplistic for DMs. At least, not one that has both sides using the same rules.

I think there is a lack of really good DMs in 3.5, and i think it is not going to get better only worst. Us older DMs need to show some of the new ones what they are doing wrong, i wish wizards instead of pumping out all the crap they do put on a book on HOW TO BE A GOOD DM IN ANY ED, maybe this company would do something like that(sean maybe u need to take up the torch heh)

quest-master wrote:

Time is already a built-in cost. The DM has final say in how fast or slow the campaign moves, so if the PC crafting magic items seems underbenefited at any given time then the DM can create a downtime opportunity. The point is that if the PCs are crafting their items to the point that it's getting difficult to keep up, then a delay or distraction can be used to slow down magic item creation.

If the PCs are moving rapidly from place to place with little downtime, then the DM can simply rule that magic item creation time is reduced for some reason or another (for example, the PCs have arrived in a location where the necessary ingredients for the magic item are more easily found or better quality in some way as to make crafting easier).

Time is a factor whether one chooses to accept it or not. Time is a tool that must be used responsibly but is a viable tool nonetheless.

The problem of course is that this requires an advanced DM familiar with the rules set and having a general idea of how much time he should give his PCs to do various things. But that was one of the main problems with 3.5. It was incredibly hard to DM, there were hundreds of factors you had to consider, and it led to a lot of DM's being total hard asses because they became afraid to give PCs anything, because they're afraid of being burned. This actually happens a lot to novice DMs.

The rules should accommodate a lax DM style where the DM doesn't have to worry about managing things like time unless he specifically wants to. The game shouldn't be at risk of becoming unbalanced because the DM says, "OK, 6 months pass between your last adventure and now..."

That's just too much for a DM to worry about.

if you want that just go back to the old 2e ways, where you had to find rare materials to make items and do away with this whole accountant style way of playing, take out the magic shops, u want me to buy what? how do i know its magcial? i only have 1k on me u want it in trade, no i dont got any magic items here ect. in my games when i give it items they got to work to find places to sell them and even then they dont always get the BOOK value.

3.5 has this problem with benign transposition from the Spell Compendium. My wife's wizard used it in conjunction with summoned celestial dogs to bypass some walls of force that I'd intended to be lowered by task completion in the dungeon they were in. It bagged them a good treasure earlier than they were supposed to have it but I adjusted.

That's what good DMs do...they roll with it and make adjustments. It's not just our game y'know.

--Gurubabaramalamaswami

its not that i cant adj, i am just reporting i am having a problem with it and maybe it should be looked it, i a the king of on the fly dming :)

i have a player wanting to use mending or make whole to fix a dead body so can speak with dead with it, am wondering what others thought of this? are bodies objects when then dead?

To powerful pc's are fun and easy to deal with let them make it then put an exp penalty on them and if they have baffled you beyond belief KILL THEM FAST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this is not GOOD advice sorry but thats for the input :)

This thread might help start you off: pathfinder basics.

I posted a quick-sheet I'd made for my players. It's in very broad strokes, though.

am really looking for hard rules changes, spells and such are easy to notice when looking them up, but i dont want to have to look up every rule now am using beta, i want to know what rules(combat rules or attack rules) have changed so i look up them, and rest i can just use my knowledge from 3.5

ok all i am needing a few good players to join our party in an ongoing game we have been running for a few months now. We use maptools and vent for voice, and board below to post between sessions and help RP and do boring stuff that is a waste of live time.

check out this area

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/...play.php?f=114

i will be running an unmodified pathfinder beta game to help playtest it, 6th lvl with only PF core books and a few of the complete books.

It is set in FR in cormyr.

take a look at the weekday group area to see the what the party has been doing so far.

We got 4 players and need at least 2 more, fighter, rogue, cleric and leadership fighter type.
post here or pm me interest.

voting on best day now

Hi Guys

Bit of a newb to Pathfinder. One of our club is starting up a campaign next month, and some of our 'Faithful' Living Greyhawk players enjoyed themselves with Pathfinder yesterday at GenCon UK.

My question is - is there going to be the support & campaign like the Living Greyhawk model? I love the 3.5 system & the idea of a larger, standardised campaign playing both at home & conventions. I know Pathfinder's at GenCon, but there's another convention called Conception, runs for nearly a week at the end of January on our (England) south coast.

You can find more info through ukroleplayers.com

Lastly, Pathfinder is compatible with D&D 3.5, does that include the new character classes from the 'splat' books & PHBII?
(I love playing Beguilers & Warmages).

Cheers
Paul H

yea i already posted about that, i would love to be able to run and play in online games with my unkilling mage from PF live( in the single mission i played all died but me heh) since not everyone can or wants to cons it would allow reg DMs to run games online(am looking at you Erik since u are moving here to uk!!). that would be so great.

i just got back from Gencon UK meeting with jason and having some chats was great. i only had a chance to play in 1 of the 4 games of Pathfinder Society and am wondering if they will be able to be run online by reg DMs like living FR to give some of the other people that cant make things like gencon a chance at the Pathfinder Society setup?
My party had a TPK other than me, who was playing the wizard, i got my 1 exp but got no loot, i hope that does not effect my PC completeing future mission as it looks like the loot was about 1500-2000 gp if you when through the whole mission start to finish.

I've been GMing a Ptolus / AE campaign for a little over two years now and my players absolutely love it.

The combination of Ptolus with its wealth of detail and information with the well-balanced AE races & classes have made for the best campaign I've ever run.

(We've been playing together for 15+ years.)

When my current campaign ends (mid next year), I'm planning to run a Ptolus / AE / Pathfinder campaign -- with Ptolus set as the city of Absalom.

Should be lots of fun. I encourage anyone who hasn't done it to give AE a try.

i tried to get my PCs to allow me to run a PF/AE game but they revolted as then they would need 2 books to look up stuff, so i saddly am running PF beta and hope to find somewhere to run AE(if any online games are going i would love to join) As it stands now i would use the classes magic and feats in a different setting(my group likes FR so)

there are some very good plug and play software board apps that many sites use and can do customizing to out there, this board is sooo hard to do anything on, i really wish they would get it sorted(from finding new posts, to finding MY posts, to losing written posts) this board is a mess(no offenence to coder but so much of these boards need fixing IMO getting a off the selve product would be the best way to go)

well here is some of the talk of my players about it

http://www.thetangledweb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1767

but when you look at it over 2 classes say rogue and druid

over 3 lvls (r2/d1) you would get 58 points with PF and 46 with 3.5 +12 points is alot. the problem is all u need is to put 1 point in a class skill to get +3 so why wouldnt you just put 1 point in every class skill first then bump them up later, since you dont have cross class skills once u get that +3 you just happily put more ranks into even if not ur class skill anymore(say by changing classes)

ok i been making some PCs and NPC for PF for a week now and i am noticing now SO MUCH MORE bonuses are given for class skills. Multiclass PCs get the best deal, u add one rank in a class skill and get +3 then can add more ranks later and u always got that +3 to start off me, i think there needs to be some limiting factor.

I am testing this: each rank gives you a +1 bonus up till +3 at 3 ranks but only when the skill is a class skill, so if a 1st lvl wizard puts 1 point into spellcraft he gets +1(so +2 total) if he takes a lvl in fighter and puts a point in spellcraft he still gets a +1 and has 2 ranks(for +3) then wizard two more lvls and adds 2 points giving him a total of 4 ranks and +3. this why it stops taking 1 rank in as many class skills as can find(say rogue 1/anything else) then gaining the +3 for a simple 1 rank.

I know that it means that PCs at 1st lvl dont have a total of +4 in a skill but if u think this is a bad idea then what else can we do with this class skill +3 bonus???

thanks and i just read about multiclassing and fell off my chair!! it actually fixes all the yells about multclassing caster in a simple way

Spellcasting: If a character has two spellcasting classes, add
the spell slot and spells readied at one time totals together. If the
two different classes use different key ability scores for their spellcasting,
the player should simply choose which of the abilities to
use; once made, the choice can’t be altered. The caster gains
bonus spells based on only one ability score (not both)

wow simple and to the point, am sorry PF but it looks like i am going this way, i may try to merge the 2 as i do like parts of PF but my plans to help betatest for then next year have just fallen apart with this better IMO product.

i just got the arcana evolved and i am loving it, so much that i may drop PF beta to run it instead, i will see how my players feel about it, or i could use it with PF but i really like the classes(not so much the races) and i have not evne got to the feats and spells or combat spells yet. its 400 pgs+ so its taking me as long to read it then PF(thought i stop reading PF to read this heh)

Steven Hume wrote:

what is with this board and post (twice) eatting cant someone fix this god!

What I do is copy+paste my whole post before I post it. That way if the board eats it (Previewing it seems to help), I can just go back and paste it in.

thats not the point, for a company that EXPECTS playtest feedback i know this have been a problem for a long time, why havent they fixed it, i mean there is alot of already setup board software that is MUCH better than this thing they call a message board here. i dont know how the PBP games deal with this i would rip my hair out using this for PBP.

anyways

Sorcerers are going to get a hellava lot more use out of Quicken Spells now than wizards do. Wizards can use the feat just like they used to, but sorcerers can decide, on the fly, if they need to throw an extra spell out when they are casting another spell . . .

I'm not sure how this works over all, but I know the dragon I used this with last night had a lot easier time throwing spells around the way this feat works now.

that is one thing that bothers me about metamagic, there got to be a way for a wizard to use metamagic on the fly, i find that is the hardest choice for me to decide if i need that quicken teleport today, if there was a fair balanced way for a wizard to use metamagic on the fly i would be soo happy !!

Wizards gain no foresight into what they will face each day, so they effectively pick a Sorerer "suite" for the day, but don't get to use the spells as often or reuse spells that happen to be particularly useful. Greater versatility comes at the expense of repeatability. Find out that Fireball is just right? Too bad you only memroized one so that you would...

what is with this board and post (twice) eatting cant someone fix this god!

anyways what i will say is i dont play socerers cause i love being able to overcome every problem with time being a wizard. I dont play specailists cause i hate losing the opp schools(so in PF i might just play one) i like having a bit fat book of spells to choose to overcome each problem, so if i have to rest for 8 hours to rememorize then so be it. But playing a wizard you SHOULD have foresight, you need to try to find out what you will be going up against in the day and tailer your spells to that. Entering a wizard tower, dispel magics knocks, and rays of enfeeb please, going underground, dark sight, lightning bolts and some light spells, ect. Wizard should find out what they expect to deal with in the day. What i dont like about socerers and why i dont play them is the fact that they cant do that, they have to settle for trying to over as many possible problems with limited spells, for me i rather have my trusted spellbook full of ALL schools of magic :)

i was thinking of using it instead of PF in my new game will show it to my players and see what they think, but ur right it could be used in PF easily enough as well.

Well i just got this book after a poster was saying how good it is and i have to agree with it, infact i am sorry to say i that i may give up on PF and try to support Arcana evolved. the classes are well balanced, the magic system is great and it allows melee and caster classes to play nice with each other. Overall its what i wanted from PF but all i got was a power up of all classes and while some things seems to be getting fix, too many other things are being changed that should not be. I know this is beta still but i dont think there will be much change from beta to final, the same as there was little change from alpha 3 to beta. this is all IMO, i think jason should look at this book and now with Monte onboard should get some of the stuff from it into PF, it can only make it better.

i been slowing going through the beta and it seems that while a few things that had outcries were fixed alot still was left, even though there was a large outcry to change them, to list 2 CMB DC 15 and concentration. There was overwheling posts to fix these and it seems nothing was done? i wont get into the various think tank posts either but it seems to be the classes didnt really get touched even though again there was a large outcry to make fighter better and monk different. so if the designers are listen to our comments why have some many not been taken into account when clearly we as the playtester had issues with them.

god i am so tired of people crying about spellcasters vs fighter types, its a fact of the game that spellcasters are better then fighter types and there is not much PF can do with this system if it still wants it to be 3.5 useable, if dont like it 4e seem to balance all the classes go play that if want every class to balance. or take a look at Temple of the Nine swords book if you really want balance for fighter types.

bump anyone???

Here is a homegrown version of the Noble base class (from Dragonlance), update for Pathfinder. If you were to remove spells from the bard, I believe you'd get something similar.

The Insightful Acclimation ability I copied directly, but I think it needs to be better defined in Pathfinder.

NOBLE
Alignment: Any non-chaotic.
Hit Die: d8.

Class Skills
The noble’s class skills are Appraise (Int), Bluff (Cha), Dipomacy (Cha), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (all) (Int), Linguistics (Int), Perception (Wis), Perform (Cha), Ride (Dex), and Sense Motive (Wis).
Skill Ranks per Level: 6 + Int modifier.

Table 1-1: The Noble

Base
Class Attack Fort Ref Will
Level Bonus Save Save Save Special
1st +0 +0 +2 +2 Bonus class skill, favour +1
2nd +1 +0 +3 +3 Inspire confidence 1/day, favoured court, insightful acclimation
3rd +2 +1 +3 +3
4th +3 +1 +4 +4 Coordinate +1, retinue +1
5th +3 +1 +4 +4 Favour +2
6th +4 +2 +5 +5 Inspire confidence 2/day, Bonus language
7th +5 +2 +5 +5
8th +6 +2 +6 +6 Coordinate +2, favoured court
9th +6 +3 +6 +6 Favour +3
10th +7 +3 +7 +7 Inspire confidence 3/day, retinue +2
11th +8 +3 +7 +7 Inspire greatness (1 ally)
12th +9 +4 +8 +8 Bonus language, coordinate +3
13th +9 +4 +8 +8 Favour +4
14th +10 +4 +9 +9 Inspire confidence 4/day, inspire greatness (2 allies), favoured court
15th +11 +5 +9 +9
16th +12 +5 +10 +10 Retinue +3, coordinate +4
17th +12 +5 +10 +10 Favour +5, inspire greatness (3 allies)
18th +13 +6 +11 +11 Inspire confidence 5/day, bonus language
19th +14 +6 +11 +11
20th +15 +6 +12 +12 Coordinate +5, inspire greatness (4 allies), favoured court

Class Features
All of the following are class features of the noble.
Weapon and Armour Proficiency: A noble is proficient with all simple and martial weapons. Nobles are also proficient with light armour and shields.
Bonus Class Skill: The noble may designate any one cross-class skill as a class skill.
Favour: The noble has the ability to call in favours from those he knows. To call in a favour, the noble makes a favour check. Roll a d20 and add the character’s favour bonus. The DM sets the DC based on the scope of the favour being requested. The DC ranges from 10 for a simple favour to as high as 25 for highly dangerous, expensive, or illegal favours. The noble can’t take 10 or 20 on this check, nor can he retry the check for the same favour.
A noble can try to call in a favour a number of times in a week of game time that’s equal to half his noble levels, rounded down (minimum one). A noble’s favour bonus is +1 at 1st level and increases by +1 every four levels after 1st.
Inspire Confidence: A noble can use oratory to inspire confidence in allies. An ally must listen to and observe the noble for a full round for the inspiration to take hold. The effects last 5 rounds. The noble can inspire a number of allies equal to half his noble levels, rounded up. Inspire confidence can be 1/day at 2nd level, plus one additional time for every four levels after 2nd.
An ally inspired with confidence gains a +2 morale bonus on saving throws and a +1 morale bonus on attack and weapon damage rolls.
Favoured Court: The noble chooses one political environment, usually the capital city of a kingdom. Whenever she is in the chosen environment, she gains a +2 bonus to all Diplomacy, Knowledge (nobility and royalty), and Sense Motive checks.
Every six levels after 2nd, the noble may add additional favoured courts, or increase the bonus of an existing court by +2. A noble may also attempt to abandon an existing court in favour of a different one. This process takes a month, during which time the noble loses all favoured court bonuses in the court that she is abandoning. The noble must then make a successful Diplomacy check (DC 20 + former favoured court bonus). Success indicates that she has established a new favoured court with a bonus equal to that of the previous favoured court.
Insightful Acclimation: Whenever she is interacting with somebody from a different culture, race, political background or religion from her own, the noble may attempt a Sense Motive check to gather or assemble information from the individual’s body language, non-verbal cues, attitude, and cultural quirks.
This resembles the bard’s bardic knowledge ability, but is more immediate and direct, and requires at least ten minutes of engaged conversation or close observation of the individual to work.

Table 1-2: Insightful Acclimation
DC Type of Knowledge
10 Common, known by at least a substantial minority of the subject’s culture
20 Uncommon but available, privately known or of some relevance to subject’s culture
25 Obscure, carefully-guarded or somewhat unfamiliar to subject’s culture
30 Exremely obscure, possible highly secret or taboo in subject’s culture

Coordinate: When the noble can aid others and give directions, he provides a +1 bonus to the task at hand by making an aid another check. This bonus is in addition to the normal aid another bonus of +2 and increases by +1 every four levels after 4th.
This ability can’t be used to assist in combat.
Retinue: The noble effectively gains the Leadership feat, and her leadership score gains a +1 bonus. This bonus increases by +1 every six levels after 4th.
Bonus Language: At 6th-level, the noble can choose a new language. The noble can choose another language every six levels after 6th.
Inspire Greatness: This works similar to inspire confidence, except it affects but a single ally. An ally inspired with greatness gains +2d6 temporary hitpoints, a +2 competence bonus on attacks, and a +2 morale bonus on saving throws. The effect lasts for 5 rounds. The noble can inspire greatness once per day. The noble can affect one additional ally every three levels after 11th.

Hmm... strange, our group is nothing even vaguely like any of those.

yea me either my dm style is keep things balance so as a DM i can make my PCs sweat and reward them when they defeat the encounters that i throw at them, i dont allow buying items in my games but give access to buying at set times to keep the party equipment level around what it should be for their levels. would say i a bit of a controlling DM i guess, i like to know the limits of my PCs and keep them in check so i can make the game fun and dangerous for them, seeing them sweat and come out alive makes them think is this life worth this pile of gold(i once had a group retire at 5th lvl cause they were tired of almost dying all the time lol, now that is a life lesson for sure lol)

Yuo need the threat of death to make the game exciting. As a DM PCs die as the chips fall although a truely unfortunate character will be 'missed' when I roll a natural 20. And as a player, it seems to suck greatly when...

DM: "The dragon's claw scythes into you" [roll of dice] "How many hp do you have?"
Story-centric PC: "I have 12 hp".
DM: "You take 11 points of damage"

...for the fifth time in a session.

Cheers
Mark

that is when i would say

Ok u take 20 dmg :)

I agree with all that is said above (Mr. Vaughan, that's amazing), but there's another circumstance that comes to mind, though I'll admit it's a little silly.

Players playing other characters can=amusing PC death.

(Spoilers below)

I ran Maure Castle a while back, and we had a Pixie sorcerer played by a good friend of mine. They were in the third level and fighting Mr. Big demon, and the rest of the team thought it would be good to send the naturally invisible pixie in to have a look around. Mr. Big Demon, however, had see invisibility, and chomped our pixie into a small snack, and was thusly annihilated in the next session.

But then my friend returned, we told the story, and he was, rightly so, pissed. It still gets him every time.

But yeah, I think that character death through the action, inaction or just plain evilness of other players can be a) amusing, b) annoying to the original player, but most c) a very viable way to kill characters or send them on a berserker rage and then just have them stand there next time (see The Gamers).

yea i try not to kill off a PC when he is not here, but sometimes it just happens, case in point party had a copy of one of the PCs in the party(shapechanger) and as the party goes to leave the cave they had been exploring the barbarian(who is the player of the PC that is copied and how i just took aside and told him that he has not been playing his PC but a copy for 2 sesson and now he attacks the party) buried his greataxe with a crit doing 48 dmg to the psion in the group who was not present for the session. 1 hit dead. player felt bad i felt bad dead player felt bad when he fond out. He was rasied and all was fine after but it was still a funny story that is brought up every one and then.

I tend to lose interest in D&D games after about 10th-12th level. Things get too swingy and encounter design becomes a real headache. Power level just tends to get out of control. I've accepted long ago that D&D was never really designed to play past "name level". 3E tried, but failed to correct this.

So for me, backwards compatibility is the higher priority. As far as I'm concerned "high level" stuff is there for making bad guys to challenge the players, not so much for the players to actually achieve that level of power.

lol maybe 3e was never meant to but both 1st and 2nd I had no problems in the 10 years of running games of high lvl like we have in 3e it seems, i ran games for 5 years in the 20+ and still had little problems with both keeping my players on the their toes and creating fast easy to run encounters that had my players talking about them for days after. as i said i am just getting into running 3e games now and right now my low level party has really enjoyed my encounters, tested each of them to the max, and they sometime are surprised they win(and so am i heh). its a shame that it looks like a design flaw of 3e is the death of high lvl play. Saying that some ppl dont have a problem with it so i guess i will find out what problems there are when we reach them as a group. But i do hope PF fixes these problems so many ppl seem to have with high lvl play cause i love running 15+ lvl games and playing in them. There nothing like fighting off a horde of demons at 18th lvl with your adventuring friends of many years, i hope 3e does not take this away from me....

Zuxius wrote:

Iridal wrote:

As DM I find easier to say: "No, you can not create this combo" than to change the whole system.

Alas, to be that firm would turn my players off. I am not so sure they are wrong in what they are doing, because they know their stuff real well. It seems a little wrong to tell them they can't use the rules "as they are written" because you are "doing it again!"

Zuxius

I understand both sides of this argument since my guys can, and have, broken everything at one time or another. It finally boiled over when we had an at the table "discussion" about the Dodge feat, and then continued it via email. Even though we only play twice per month, I ended up canceling the last session in July and all of August because that was the "straw that broke the camels back" and the game was no longer fun for me, the DM.

My last note to my players was that we would pick up the game in September, finishing off the current campaign in two sessions then start another (RotRL) using the Pathfinder Beta rules. 1st question came back as to what other books, and my response was *none*. I also added a "house rule" that I never had before. They have a minute to show me where in the books they disagree with a ruling, and if I agree with their interpretation as stated in the book, ok. If not, we do it my way and I investigate further *after* the session. The added part was, anyone that continues arguing after I make my final ruling, leaves for the night (we play at my house).

I understand what you are saying Zuxius, but the game has to be fun for the DM also, and constant over the top characters and rules arguing makes it not fun for the DM.

-- david
Papa.DRB

wow i feel for you man, in my 20 years of gaming i had to deal with alot of rules lawyers from 2e especially. i found that what you are doing works best, cause hours of looking up and trying to blend the rules to their way is not fun for DM, in the game its your game and u need to have some backbone with players like that, they bring up a rule, you look at it(either in or out of game) and tell them how you see it, end of story, that becomes a house rule and u just build them up so next time they know. i had to remove 2 players from my online game when they told me that the party advanced after a session, trying to tell me how much XP they gained through guessing the CR of the traps and monsters and then telling me that i was wrong, after weeks of 2nd guessing my rulings it was the last straw and asked them to leave, 1st time in 20 years of DMing did i have to do that. so be strong its the one way YOU will have fun, cause that is also important.

http://www.nextag.com/Encyclopedia-Arcane-Elementalism-59136715/prices-html

that is the book u want, this will allow you to favor one element but can take all, it would be hard but is doable. the rules in here dont add a new Class but make you pay XP for each circle of mastery, i reallyt like how they did it and as the last poster said doesnt add feats/prc or classes onto your PC. i got 4 PCs with elementalism circles and it really gives them a elemental feel.

This cow was killed with 3e, I'm just casting Animate Dead on it. Being a Grognard I have no particular loyalty to some of the "sacred cows" of 3e and believe that maybe older editions may have done somethings better than 3e.

i 2nd that 4 sure

or bring back old skill which worked well and balanced out for all classes :)

There needs to be better guidleines on how to run a high level campaign..ive done it effectively in 2nd ed many times. and once in 3.5. Its tough. But the kind of game HAS to change to make it fun and challenging.

see this is what i miss fro 2e, i ran hours and hours and mission after mission of 12 lvl+, at end of our games we ahd 20+ PC, i have not run many 3.5 games and it sadden me to hear that my games will fall apart at 12th lvl :( so i too want high lvl play fixed.

Yea its a free PDF that breaks down all class and races into points like a gurps game, i will have to hunt for link will post it when i find it but maybe doing a search Eclipse: The Codex Persona and should find it