Taolin's page

Although my DS3 link is not being overwhelmed, I have gotten a couple dozen files this evening, so it is clearing up nicely.

I still proclaim the faith in Big Iron, but this adventure has been as many a PFS scenario: The Boss Fight wounds everybody, but only kills the foolish or miserably unlucky.

...owser you are using may not be requesting using the latest encryption. You can browse https://www.howsmyssl.com/ to see what version your browser is attempting to use.

Thanks - good note. (for "normal" work my browser rates 'good' here ... for professional work, I don't even go on a non-DARPA circuit! :) )

Yeah, my frustration isn't getting to the Humble Bundle PDFs, but PDFs I actually paid full price for. :)

Maybe a priority queue would be good too. If a customer pays full price, they get their own queues for requesting PDF generation?

Bwahahaha! YES!

Nah, seriously (well, I *am* serious: I *love* being serviced at beck & call) - Paizo got surprised - I'm not pleased, but I have other things I can do. (... and, YES, I appreciate the GMs who have major plans for the weekend) but chill, guys, it's not like it was incoming 4.2".

Thanks for removing the wording "simply click" at the top of the download page ....

Yep - The inability to download anything, even those things I bought many moons agon that have been updated, is a pain,

...

Perhaps it is time for setting up an alternate download system for bulk purchases, where you click once to place your download order, the system runs in the background personalizing everything for you, then you get sent a link in an email or message in "My Account" for downloading your order after it's all done and compiled. .

Makes an old mainframer warm to hear talk like that! :)

GM for a 1.0 game @ MAGCON - also want to play a PF module :: Am a PF Soc. member (5708) but have no PF group near my home in Hearne, Texas.
Trying to get on Warhorn, but having problems since ISP change.

Anyway, best wishes to all and hope to see you at MAGCON.

The site linked above seems to be gone.

I had an early Beta of this character sheet (Jan 2009, if it was the same guys), but nothing since. Does anyone know where I might find the last version?

Thanks.

Thanks, Majuba - I'll take a look at that site.

Seventy-some-odd posts is a lot to wade through, but I guess I take a mixed view of PrC. I think specialization is very plausible (I tend to be an unreconstructed 1st Edition DM, emphasizing role play), but when rules lawyers use PrC to make implausible, over-buffed, campaign spoiling characters, I tend to dump a 1st Edition "Immortal" on them and the problem goes away.

I love the Bard and the Troubadour of Stars Prc that goes with it. I think it is reasonably balanced and one can develop a very useful, moderately powerful, very playable team member, not just a portable buffing machine.
True Polymaths are rare and brilliant ones rarer still. If you build me a Hollywood Rambo, I will shortly kill him with what I learned as a plain old Army Ranger while I was studying for my degree in computer science.

I see some players in big Texas cities, but it is $35 or more (nearly $70 to Dallas) in Diesel fuel for me to visit them. Is anyone near Brazos or Robertson Counties?

I'd love to host a game, whether for another DM or acting as one myself.

Interesting thread ... and overall I see more "you can do both, but it depends a bit on the group or the game" than anything else.

I tend to play fast and loose with the rules anyway, the better the RP the more so, but I certainly don't mind "bulked up" characters as long as they are not ridiculously out of keeping with the needs of the adventure. Anyway, it isn't much of a deal to handle it as a GM simply by shading the outcome of combat or really bearing down on literal or semantic errors.

I, also, give bonuses, sometimes XP, sometimes clues, sometimes finding good things ... whatever ... if the game is more characterization, and I tend to make things very tough for rules lawyers. I can enjoy just about any game that is fun, well run, and where players are enthusiastic. The only game I ever quit in my life was one where the GM set out with malice to embarrass me over a disagreement about a minor issue in Exalted Deeds.

My role playing participation predates D&D by several years. Some games have been slayfests, my last, at Rice's Owlcon this year had 8 player characters and there was only one combat in a 4 hour game (and even that one was only a result of an NPC doing something very stupid). It was a dead heat for all teams, although each solved the puzzle by quite different means.

No possibility of avatars of your own, but the stock is indeed quite big...

True, but still limiting and prone to duplication. I'll just watch the stock for a while and see what might appeal.

Thanks!

I mostly do maps by hand. I used to make them for a living (circa 1965), but they were mostly so people could throw hot steel and unpleasant chemistry around.

Roleplayers' Home had a decent mapper on the web site (PDF output), but they are shut down. I have tried a couple of Java-based things, but they are horrid performance dogs. The hardest thing is to find cartographic software that runs on my 64-bit Linux systems.
Not being an artist, I need a lot of symbols, textures, icons, and so on included in the package. I can envision what I want, even draw it fairly well, but trying to create that same image in electronic form is frustrating.

The current Epic Level rules are a mess.

The way to make the game more mythic in scope is not to make it more bloated with math.
... With that in mind, I'm very curious to hear what people think about the idea of play beyond level 20.

Go back and look at the original 1st Edition D&D "Immortal" handbooks.

The reason I stayed more than two decades with 1st Ed., not even AD&D (which I always called "Accountants' D&D) until I was, reluctantly, driven into 3.5, was that the DM ruled the roost and, to quote Masters Gygax and Arneson, "A common error while Dungeon Mastering is the use of random dice rolls to determine everything. An entire evening can be spoiled...."

The Epic levels are a whole lot like karate above San Dan, it becomes character, not just technique.

...

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Sparkle, his magic scimitar, cut deep into the dog's armor, a spray of blood gushing from the fresh wound.

I'll have to work on it... ;)

ROFL!

As a long-time writer and editor (mostly technical, but some early D&D), I understand your Brad Pitt comparison, but there is a very good niche for "Fanzine" writing. It rarely makes any money, but it does provide the very satisfying "I've been *PUBLISHED*" feeling.

I'll be glad to be a (small) part of this effort if I can aid in any way.

Erik Mona wrote:

We're shooting for an official GM screen in September.

Photo screen, eh? Can we get a video of the shooting? :D

Heh! I have some video of shooting, but it would fit the "Gut Shot" Old-West RPG better than it would Pathfinder.

We're shooting for an official GM screen in September.

Outstanding! I will buy it in a heartbeat.

I'm running a game at OwlCon next month that is going to take all my old screens (1st Ed. !) and a handful of home-made to keep things separate. I'd love to have some Pathfinder screens to replace the hand-painted, I-Ain't-No-Artist cardboard I'm using this time out.

... "Realism" as per the rules has never been a strong suit in D&D, and I don't think it's never been a design goal either -- feeling "heroic" when I play,...

I agree. That is one of the main goals. I also allow for the fact that getting in way over your head is usually a Darwinian moment.

I wouldn't expect the GM to take the possession of "spare" characters as an invitation to kill off anything I put on the table, but that's just my experience. I *DO* have three long-running characters and I have carefully played them, resurrected them a time or two, and adjusted their levels up and down to fit the game I was in, even writing new biography as needed to fit the new game into the appropriate place in the character's development and chronology. Tarkas Gygar (1983) is a 32nd level Immortal human mage/gold dragon avatar, T'aolin (1985) is a 15th level elf bard (and a bit of a slut).

Overall, I feel that one should play each character as well as possible, making him try his best to survive and prosper, but accepting the risks of adventuring. Some days this results in wealth and minions, some days it results in heroic ballads and a lot of ale consumption by the survivors.

You may make it to the fox-hole 364 straight times, but the one day you take a 155 SP round on the noggin, you're fertilizer.

Wow! What a list of ideas to peruse and try to absorb.

Thoughts on Prestige Classes:
I like the things that they bring to the game, but I would be quite happy with something that was suggested way back in this discussion, i.e., provide most of the capabilities as feats, skills, Special Abilities, etc. that can be chosen as level or points allow. My favourite character wouldn't have to be a level 10 Bard and then, some stacking, some paralleling, some limiting, a level 5 Troubadour of Stars. She could just be a level 15 Bard with ToS vows and feats ans SA's.

Subscriptions:
That might be tough on my budget, too. It's not that I don't have some play money, but I can't predict when, how much, or what else will be in the wishlist. I'd probably want to go with PDF for most of what I buy, although I do get gifts of hard-cover from time to time.

"Flavoured" books:
I very much like the idea of a series of short books on adventures in various societies. For example, I am (still) using the original TSR Gazetteer series from the mid 1980's, for which I have updated stat's to 3.5, in three long-running campaigns and a rather hairy tournament module for OwlCon this year.

Heh, my biggest need is *players* rather than books, but that's another entire thread and the gazetteer for my local environment reads more like a Drow crack house handbook than a place to find intelligent life.

Please pardon my commenting after only reading about 1/3 of the posts in this thread, but I think that an SOD spell really should be just that.
If the game is balanced, then the characters will run into threats that are appropriate for their levels. High levels means high-stakes adventuring. "You betcha dupa" takes on a literal meaning at Epic levels. The GM really is the final arbiter of what a character will face. Usually, there will be sufficient clues to make a character with a decent WIS score back off. If he's really a dummy, well, then he's prolly gonna die.

I think the range of spells, from pansy at first level to earth-shaking at the top is a good thing. I think, having been through 4 years of infantry combat, that it is quite realistic to expect some things to simply and instantly destroy you (and you don't *get* any saving throw).

Yes, Finger of Death, with a missed save, puts a character down, but how often does a character way below the caster's level get it cast at him?

I suppose part of my attitude comes from playing in a bunch of games where nobody thought much about trying to keep a single character alive from Level 1 to Immortal over years of play time. Taking a break for a drink or sandwich and whipping up a new character doesn't take very long and you can always make up two or three characters in advance (assuming that the DM will introduce them because the object is to *PLAY* not sit around).

Another question is: Can I upload my own avatar?
If so, what size and format?

(Sorry if I just haven't found this somewhere, but it isn't obvious in the short while I have been delving into the site.)