Templeton Algrith's page

I'm already late to the dance, but why does this playtest class NOT have Intimidate as a class skill? That would seem a seminal part of the archetype.

I decided to put my thoughts in a love letter to D&D.

Well said.

I played with a group in Cambridge for a few sessions before my work schedule made me unable to play on Saturdays. I'm moving away in a month, but I'll let them know this thread exists (If one of them didn't start it, that is)

That'd be MY group...

We're still here, in Cambridge. Playing Pathfinder with some 3.5 elements thrown in [mostly whatever we need to refit for PFRPG on an as-needed basis]. Got two adults in their 40s, and we each have two boys, ages 11-15, involved as well.

Hope you guys are still around. Our group still plays but had been on hiatus for much of 2013.

PM me for more info if you're still around.

Aberzombie wrote:

Passing Through Gethsemane - one of my favorite episodes and one of the best guest stars ever!

Rewatched this episode with my girlfriend (who is watching the series for the first time) and was reminded just how good it is. Really powerful episode, great symmetry throughout. Probably the strongest non-metaplot episode in the series.

Agreed! Great episode. Moral questions. A little thriller-esque. Makes ya think.

Brad Dourif is SUCH an underrated actor (at least since the early 1980s, once his career somehow didn't explode after his amazing work in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").

"You know what an ilk is, don't ya, Dub?"

"A big deer?"

"That's right. And the next time I catch you loitering around my precinct, I'm gonna shoot me an ilk."

Hint. Madeline Kahn was a supporting actress in this one.

I think Tom Bombadil got robbed of glory by Peter Jackson.

Charm person.
Let someone else do EVERYTHING for you because, you know, you're a great guy.

Atheism killed more people in the 20th century than all the wars of the Bible put togther.
Stalin. Pol Pot. Hitler. Mao. 25 million + 2 million + 11 million (not counting combat deaths) + ah, well, nevermind. I'm wrong somehow I'm sure.
Have fun berating me. Bitter/self-absorbed must be the new happy.

Isn't there an old joke about someone who's too lazy to work in a pie factory? What exactly did Hostess's union bakers do again?

Option A: 8% pay cut.
Option B: 100% pay cut.

That's a tough one.

Go Galt.

Just an observation, because my only objection, so to speak, to same-sex marriage is semantic and I don't feel like that discussion right now...

If memory serves, every time there has been a voter referendum on this issue, it has been voted down, i.e., the populace as a whole has not backed it. I may be wrong, but I don't recall this passing by referendum.

At the state-legislative level, however, I think the success rate of same-sex marriage being allowed by law is a little over 50% passed.

Harry, you're alive -- and you're a horrible shot!
-- Lloyd (Jim Carrey), Dumb & Dumber

A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.
-- Mark Twain

345. Slaves to ratings and wanting instant money back on their investment, FOX ends up being even more cancel-happy than in mainstream reality, and cancels the low-rating Seinfeld at the end of its first season.

Wasn't this an NBC sitcom? Or am I being obtuse?

361. Paper or plastic?

362. The bomb thrown at Archduke Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, is batted away (as happened historically) and detonates harmlessly, injuring no one. No need to go to the hospital and vary from the planned route, then...

363-418. Every presidential election in the US since 1788 (56 of 'em, wow -- a second John Adams term, anyone? Maybe Tilden wins by a landslide in 1876 and there's no deal made to put Hayes in, thereby ending Reconstruction in a slightly different way, with a Democrat in the White House instead of a Republican thanks to a deal).

419. Garfield survives his 1881 assassination attempt.
420. McKinley survives his.
421. JFK, likewise.
422. Reagan doesn't.
423. An intransigent Nixon insists on battling through impeachment, ad loses. He doesn't survive it by one vote, like Andrew Johnson did in 1868.
424. Andrew Johnson is removed in 1868. The fallout leads to Grant not winning the election that fall.
425. I stop goin on about elections and assassinations.
426. The bra is not invented by a man whose surname is Titsling.
427. Dustin Hoffman says "no" to the script for "Ishtar." And/ or "Rain Man." Amazing how absolutely different those two films were in the context os four years of one actor's career, eh?
428. Molly Ringwald doesn't act like an idiot, and we get her and not that sow Mare Winningham in "St. Elmo's Fire." Who argues with John Hughes at his zenith? Jeez.
429. Justin Bieber learns to sing.
430. Justin Bieber learns to read.
431. Someone decides "Nah, this 'Survivor' reality-show concept is crap.'"
432. M*A*S*H is slated to run in a different time slot than immediately following "All In The Family."
433. The Spartans don't arrive in time at Thermopylae.
434. I grow up hating the taste of paint chips.

Abraham spalding wrote:

Libertarians should be upset because it ruins the basis of their free market principals. It precludes competition that is required to settle on the lowest price because it artificially removes the lowest price.

Guess what Libertarians. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ASKED FOR. Buisnesses making decisions unfettered by government regulation. Libertarians like their Tea Party cousins have been preaching that the only true evil is government regulation. There is no regulation about the price of ebooks. And we're not likely to see action from Congress in this matter for a variety of reasons, including desires to see resentment build towards Obama's administration.

Obama needs no help in earning resentment. He can earn that all by himself (with his teleprompter close at hand, of course).

That being said, price fixing has been around for a long, long time, even in the electronic media world. Anyone remember that MASSIVE class-action suit against CD manufacturers over the cost of CDs all being amazingly similar(ly high)? It got settled
And the result: a 28-year-old Def Leppard (as an example, Pyromania) CD is still $14 or so, even at 'cheaper' stores like Wal-mart.
Problem solved, huh?

The most simple rule to determining market value is this: What is something worth? Whatever someone will PAY for it.

If people had a viable alternative to paying $3+ per gallon for gas right now, they'd do it in a heartbeat. But since all the patents for high-mpg engines are bought for millions by car makers and buried, or by oil companies and buried, or if not sold to one of them, the patent somehow disappears, then we still have no such true alternative. So we pay $3+ a gallon right now. Don't get me started on the Department of Energy being essentially useless, or politicians giving the caribou their own really BIG state. That's for another time.

In the final analysis, the people - that's you guys, plus me -- have a responsibility to themselves, if not posterity, the common good or some other lofty, half-bs ideal, to save money by not overpaying (at least, in their mind) for something.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #3: Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
#141 - Only fools pay retail.

And, in my case, since I acquire (had to say that) so many books for [ahem] nothing, #109 - Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.

Excellent work, not just retrofitting stuff, but keeping the reading interesting and keeping people apprised of how it has gone for the party.

IMO, this is not an astroturf movement (unions are starting to get involved only now) like the Teaparty demonstrations, but a genuine organic movement...

Silly, spoonfed talking point alert! (Saves thinking critically, I guess...)

Anywhooo, wow. I'm astroturf. And so are the 14 people in my neighborhood who went to a protest in DC. The 15 million people in Tea Party Patriot groups... Astroturf.

Union members waving machine-printed signs in Madison, Wis., last year, a day after Scott Walker's bill went to the state Senate floor (while the Dem Senators spent weeks on the taxpayers' dime in Illinois, on the other hand) -- oh, they're right-minded individuals, though, acting independently.

[gales of laughter]

It really isn't just a river in Egypt, is it?

Keep saying it, I guess. Maybe public-school students will believe it.

Irony: at least one OWW protester landed a job on Wall Street, too. She was holding up a sign that said "ask me for my RESUME," and lo! someone did! Hmph. How about that.

The way to fix things and get us some real fiscal responsibility in government, for example, might be to get rid of withholding taxes, another bad FDR idea (thank God his Supertax didn't fly in 1942, at least!), and make everyone pay up like they used to, on or before April 15.
Then hold elections at every level of government on April 16.

And have any bank exec from a firm which got federal bailout funds serve electable terms, too. And if they don't get a majority vote, NOBODY gets the job. "None of the above" could do as well, considering how much we spent on TARP, methinks...

"Republicans believe every day is July 4. Democrats believe every day is April 15." -- Ronald Reagan

As if I didn't have reason enough to prefer Star Trek over Star Wars -- what with George Lucas having cast off all pretenses of being little more than a very successful TOY SALESMAN and devolving to the point where even the stuff he writes on cocktail napkins, in crayon, while using a rather unkempt men's room at a Denny's in L.A., are turned into merchandise lines the fanboys gobble as quickly as Jabba the Hutt with a fresh-from-the-microwave Hot Pocket -- I find out that Hooper X was RIGHT AFTER ALL!!

[flashback]

"Hooper: Bust this: Those movies are about how the white man keeps the brother man down, even in a galaxy far, far away. Check this ****: You got ****** farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!

Banky Edwards: What's a Nubian?

Hooper: Shut the **** up! Now... Vader, he's a spiritual brother, y'know, down with the force and all that good ****. Then this ******, Skywalker, gets his hands on a light saber and the boy decides he's gonna run the ****** universe; gets a whole clan of whites together. And they go and bust up Vader's hood, the Death Star. Now what the **** do you call that?

Banky Edwards: Intergalactic civil war?

Hooper: Gentrification! They gon' drive out the black element to make the galaxy quote, unquote, safe for white folks. And Jedi's the most insulting installment! Because Vader's beautiful black visage is sullied when he pulls off his mask to reveal a feeble, crusty, old white man! They tryin' to tell us that deep inside we all wants to be white!

Banky Edwards: Well, isn't that true?

[Hooper pulls out his gun, shoots Banky] "

[/flashback]

Thank you, Kevin Smith, for that amazing, yet now proven definitively to be true, conspiracy theory, though it was, I see now, thinly veiled as social satire.

41 as of October, former Army but had played for nearly a decade before going in. And whoever said the military changes you WASN'T LYING. Some for good, some for ill, but mostly for good.
Started in 1982 with my uncle running me in a one-man game, we did Basic module B4: The Lost City. Got a 3rd-level fighter to start with, and got jumped and eaten by two giant gecko lizards in room (checking the module...) 9 - Abandoned Priest's Quarters.
Here's the sentence that got me (and hooked me, because I had only gone through a handful of rooms and just HAD to see more of that daggone pyramid): "If the party enters the room without looking, they will be surprised by a second Gecko that drops down from the ceiling."
Guilty as charged. I've checked EVERY ceiling of EVERY chamber ever since, and detected slews of piercers, stirges and darkmantles aplenty.

To all my former co-adventurers who benefitted from that: you're welcome.

Warforged spellthief?

Start a new campaign and don't allow warforged OR spellthieves.

Only needed 10 seconds. What do I do with the rest of my allocated four minutes?

That's what she said...

You guys sure are ripping Fox -- but there ain't a man among ya that can tell me with any semblance of certainty what Oscar the Grouch's Touch AC is. Can ya?! NOOooOO!

Do that, and THEN AND ONLY THEN will I "listen" to this!

(It's 8 by my guess. Size Small minus Dex penalty, and I may be a bit generous with his Dex since he's a snarky, shut-in little spud)

They don't call him the Creative Director for nuthin', folks.
Kudos.

Now, game-rule question:

Aside from having him relegated to owner-operator of an anti-magical rust monster farm, what's the best way to stymie a party featuring a profoundly min-maxed warforged spellthief without destroying all the fleshlings?
(Yes, we retrofitted one from 3.5 and put him in my Pathfinder-rules world, as the only one (?) awakened by an explosion and now on a quest for answers -- and cookies.)

You have four minutes.

And did you bring enough for the rest of the class?

Apparently it was all used up at the polls in 2008.

Newt over Obama? The former Speaker of the House who shut down the government in 1995 (or was it 1996?) to get the spendthrift President then in office to toe the fiscal line, or the man who actually SAID "We're going to spend our way out of this recession" ... and after ripping the Bush administration on overspending, equaled eight years' worth of fiscal abuse in less than two?

Yeah, that's a real head-scratcher, gang.
For calling the United States Constitution "a document of negative liberties," he showed just how out of touch with this country's defining document he truly was in a TV interview years before running for the White House.

On overspending alone, Obama lost me. Wow. $200 billion in overspending JUST IN OCTOBER 2011.

On his do-nothing Senatorial record alone, Obama lost me pre-election.
Due to his complete and total lack of actual work experience in the private sector (his private-sector resume consists, in its entirety, of a part-time job at a Dairy Queen,f and as an ACORN lawyer and a "community organizer," whose job description none of his backers have ever given, but which somehow drew comparisons on the 2008 blogosphere between Obama and CHRIST -- which is funny, because the main difference between Obama and Jesus is... AT LEAST JESUS DOESN'T THINK HE'S BARACK OBAMA...)

On violating the 14th Amendment with the Affordable Care Act by creating an excluded class of citizen (Nebraskans don't have to follow it for 10 years), he should be impeached.

Simply by not knowing there AREN'T 57 states, as he claimed in 2008 -- or not knowing how to proonounce "corpsman" -- by saying "corpse-man" three times -- while presenting a medal to one of our troops, he lost me.

For touring the world -- repeatedly -- to apologize for the greatest country God ever gave Man the concept of creating -- Obama lost me.

For nominating a tax cheat as the man in charge of collecting revenue -- Obama lost me.

For appointing more Czars than the Romanovs ever got crowned, he lost me.

For his wife's "don't eat fatty foods -- I'll have the big-a%% rib platter, please!" I was lost.

For having, "hey, let's raise taxes and create more federal jobs" as his answer to EVERYTHING, he lost me.

For having a teleprompter as a Siamese twin... And sharing a brain with it...

And blaming everything he can't do (read" that means everything) on the Republicans, on Bush, yadda, yadda, yadda, well, guess what he did for me.

Go ahead and defend him. The most common response -- and one many offer first because they lack a cogent argument -- is "you're a racist!" And I actually peed myself laughing at this once, since, as we all know, his mother was white. I guess those same people playing the skin-color card in that fashion have conveniently forgotten the 1963 speech of a man few on the Left will ever, except while being waterboarded, admit was a Republican -- MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. -- who said, and let's all say it all together, that he longed for a day "when a man would be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character."

"But he got bin Laden!"
-- No. Some guys called Navy SEALS did. And I defy you to name a person who'd have gone through THIS scenario:
"Mr. President, there's an 80 percent chance that if you approve this op, we'll get the most wanted, most hated man worldwide since Adolf Hitler. And it'll help your poll numbers for a while, too."
"Uhhh, Hmm. Well, y'see... Nah. No. Let's not do that right now. Let's explore other options."

Newt may not win the nomination. He may implode and Romney, the Mormon Milquetoast, may get the nod next summer, and lose next November by eight points (thanks to a slanted media -- for instance, name a network which would've crowed joyously over 8.6% unemployment under GW Bush like CNN/MSBNC did last week!
But here we sit in late 2011, and I, a staunch conservative despite having never cracked the $40k a year barrier (hey, I love being a sportswriter; it just doesn't love me back enough every second Friday), actually wonder longingly how much worse Hillary might've been. (Answer" not worse at all. Better.)

As for the discussion of education funding, it's not the teachers' fault. PARENTS SUCK. I worked as a substitute, and lemmetellya, gang, half of American children are being raised by WOLVES. The other half? Xbox. Can't make chicken salad with THAT part of the chicken, campers.

Here endeth the rant. Let the condescension from myriad parents' basements by twentysomethings who don't go to work at Taco Bell yet begin..... NOW!

Having literally just finished what you're about to start, here's how it went.

They blundered into one of the little guard posts, thanks to having a druid who can go through the bramble thicket without any trouble. Landing directly on top of one of the goblin guards, the fire bolts cast by one PC missed and caught the brambles on fire.
Fleeing the burning part of the thicket, they stumbled into the goblin druid, Gogmurt, and wounded him, driving him off -- but again, fire bolts caused more fire. The prisoners in the thicket had a rough time of it, some dying and the rest somehow running off.
Facing the druid's little pet, they got nicked up a bit, and by the time they got to the bridge, they were too tired to look for traps. The rigged bridge plunged one of the PCs into the water below.
A second PC dove after him without bothering to do anything vis-a-vis ROPE, and the two PCs, thanks to armor and equipment, BARELY made it to shore, whereupon I sicced a giant crab on them as a wandering monster (the bunyip wouldn't have been a good match, so I threw a 9HD advanced crab at them instead, and they demolished it posthaste).
The party managed to climb out of the Howling Hole, and headed back to Sandpoint for a little R&R, which meant the goblins, et al, were fully alerted when they decided to return.
Which they did, with more muscle. Figuring Ripnugget wouldn't just sit on his butt in the throne room, I brought the whole crew out to face them -- Orik (I figured it made sense -- Nualia, with her above-average Wisdom and average Intelligence, would be painfully aware, especially after hearing of the Shadowmist debacle, that goblins are stupid, so she told him to go out and make sure the goblins didn't fall apart), Ripnugget, Bruthazmus, Gogmurt and a dozen goblins.
One friggin entangle spell made a hash of my plans to let the PCs make it to Thistletop, cross the bridge, and then jump and thump them.
Everyone on the goblins' side except Orik was killed; wounded, he begged for mercy, and was captured and recruited as an extra sword thanks to some downright absurd Diplomacy, etc., rolls. Friggin 20s...
After this, the rest of level C, the area of Thistletop the goblins used the most, was pretty easy. They found Shadowmist and again the druid did his thing, offering the animal food and winning an instant friend. They cleared the rest of the topside level with virtually no problems, goblins and goblin dogs in C16 being only a minor hazard.
On level D, it went rather smoothly, though I decided to have Tsuto and eight goblin Ftr1s ambush the party (the party was by now 3rd-4th level and the regular gobbos wouldn't do) in the temple of Lamashtu. I waited a couple minutes after they dispatched the two yeth hounds there.
The goblins got wasted, and Tsuto, injured, fled to get help from Lyrie, who was in the research room.
Lyrie and Tsuto ambushed the party as they came down the steps leading to E1. I bumped Lyrie UP to 6th level as a wizard, gave her fireball AND lightning bolt, and the party -- a 4th level druid, 4th level cleric, 2nd level barbarian and Orik -- not only survived, but thanks to yet another da%$ed 20 (double damage -- 34 total -- from a splinter bolt spell from the 3.5 D&D Spell Compendium is rough on a mid-level NPC), Tsuto (to whom I had also added levels and gave a disgustingly high Acrobatics number) and Lyrie lasted about four rounds, though I did knock two of the PCs (well, the barbarian and Orik, anyway) into negative hit points for a couple of rounds (lesser vigor, by far, is the best low-level healing spell around -- again, the 3.5 SpellComp saving the PCs' day).
At the end of the last session, the party had clean out C11-C24, almost all of level D, and was about to enter E2, the Hellcat's Lair.
Now, as I said, the party had reached 3rd or 4th level by the time we had this last session, but there's been some rough going so far.
The goblins, as others here have said, are fairly well organized, but hey, they're goblins. They live in fear of their leaders, and when the leaders aren't around, or (especially if) they fall while the little 'basic' goblins watch, the morale of the tribe folds like a cheap tent.
I brought out what I thought was a pretty heavy load -- a bunch of the tougher monsters in a well-planned battle, followed by a total of three ambushes between C11 and E1! -- and the party survived. Granted, their PCs are a little beefier than many, but I thought by giving the critters class levels (or more class levels) it'd counteract it.
The PCs will figure out a way to make it through unless they have to face Nualia, Lyrie, Orik, Gogmurt, Ripnugget, Bruthazmus, the rest of the Thistletop tribe and a partridge in a pear tree all at once.
A party which is light on muscle might struggle, but Thistletop is very survivable for most groups; we only had 3 PCs, one of whom is EIGHT YEARS OLD (my third-grader played the barbarian) in the session and they kicked butt.
As long as the PCs fight as a team they should do fine, especially if you stick to the apparent plan for the goblins and major NPCs in Thistletop and they're encountered in dribs and drabs. Heck, I sent the house against them right outside the door to C11, ambushed them three times, and added something like 30 total class levels and 150 hit points to the monsters and NPCs combined, and the party beat my guys' brains in.
Relax. It's survivable. As long as they're somewhat organized and THINK about what they're doing.
An entangle spell or a meat shield with an AC of 20 won't hurt much either.

And people scoffed when I said I'd never spend a penny on WotC stuff once 4E came out. I'd only buy 3.5 and that's what I've done.

4E is lousy anyway, so WotC will reap what it's sowing. Even the munchkins who got all stoked about it and who haven't learned yet will... eventually. Public education ain't what it once was.

Why don't they just go ahead and halt all third-party sales of everything if they're so hell-bent on making money? Why not allow purchase of their crap, er, new game and elctronic crap, er, stuff, from only their site at whatever price they want to dictate?

Oh, sorry. Did I give them another stupid idea?

E.G.G., you are so missed...

many places -- BUT DON'T!

I was wondering... do we use Crisco or vegetable oil when cooking on Iron DM?

Willie Walsh, folks... I so miss "Mr Katan and the Mushroom Band," and "Song of the Fens." Walsh had such a great sense of humor...

Of course, I will say that I enjoy the more recent adventures. But having every issue kinda spoils you, ya know?

Howdy.

Got a group which meets in Talbot and Wicomico counties, over here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, if anyone out there's interested, the Green Hand Gaming Company.
Yours truly, an RPGA Master-Level GM leads the group, with 25 years experience and several other gamers with varying levels of experience but a good deal of enthusiasm. Right now, we're about to kick off a new homebrew campaign in Wicomico County (specifically Salisbury) at our FLGS.

Email:
templeton_algrith-at-yahoo.com.

But be warned: if you spam me, I will have to polymorph you into a tree, and then use you to make envelopes.

One at a time.

With a spoon.

Slowly.

The Styes was a GREAT adventure. I'm not a DUNGEON cheerleader, but the mag has been good to great for a while, regardless of who's in charge and what's in it.

A sequel to THAT adventure would be wonderful.

Folks, doesn't anyone else use Method Eight from the 3.5 DMG? 5d6, drop the lowest two. If the "rookie DM" theory is the case here, he might use just that and be considering that possibility, which greatly increases the chance of 18 in each set of five rolls by, what, a factor of six?
Just a thought.
But, as an answer to the original question, I'd let the dice stand. After years of using the first-edition Unearthed Arcana rules for character generation (best-3-of-9d6 for a fighter's strength, for instance!) and STILL having only slightly above-average numbers, I'd love to see it, though, in playing since 1982, it hasn't yet, except when my friend Barry brought in "cheater's dice" which always rolled 6 due to weights on the "1" side.

My party currently includes:

Human samurai 8
Elven priest 10
Elven wizard 5/ warmage 4
Elven barbarian 3/ sorceror 4
Human rogue 3/ scout 5

At one point, we had a human necromancer, but the player faded away.

I've just started a log of the campaign on my website. Here's the link:

http://www.geocities.com/templeton_algrith/2005_Campaign

Half-elven priest/mage/fighter.
Like I really am. I just refuse to heal the stupid and am broke from all the fines for casting plaid fireballs.

http://www.geocities.com/templeton_algrith/index.html