The Blue Spirit's page

In the Monsters By Terrian section in the Bestiary, the hyperlink for "xorn" under Planar (Plane of Earth) takes you to the bestiary entry for "xill."

Does anyone know - are the PDFs searchable and do they contain bookmarks?

I've tried to reach Paizo via email and via Twitter, but no one has sent me a response. I'm beginning to wonder if it's GenCon hangover or bad customer service.

Searchable - Yes

This bothers me too. It is a glaring error that deserves to be fixed or at least have some official comment/explanation.

yes thank you indeed, you know it's a little sad really, When Gary died, there was this huge outpouring and WotCs website front paged a memorial, I saw neither an outpouring nor any memorial at WotC and even this thread has had much...

Wizards has a memorial posting up now.

I actually had a friend who played D&D a lot when he was stationed in Afghanistan. He had his letter to the editor published in either Dragon or Dungeon years ago (he even got his picture included as well).

Kind of amusing in way. I don't regard myself as a liberal or a conservative, and I believe both of the major parties are only concerned with self-interests and powermongering. I guess some of old stereotypes from the previous generation are still there...

Well put…I would categorize myself as feeling/thinking this way as well!

I found it pretty funny since most of my fellow gamers are in fact Democrats that complain about everything. However, the next time I shake McCain's hand, I'll be sure to introduce myself as a Dungeons and Dragons player.

In recent years, the groups I have played with have usually been a mixed group (Democrats, Republicans, people who kept their views to themselves, or were very moderate).

From what I've read, tons and tons of gamers are in the military. That was a very dumb comparison to make in general. I bet whoever wrote it thought he was being clever though.

Yeah, I have a friend who used to spend most of his free time playing D&D while he was stationed in Afghanistan. He actually was featured in a letter to the editor in either Dungeon or Dragon magazine (it even included a picture of him) years ago.

Maybe the writer thinks that D&D players are all devil-worshipers (like in the 80's) or liberal radicals...because that's why in college I would stay up most of Saturday night playing D&D and then teach Sunday School in the morning, help to lead worship, and then volunteer at youth group in a Republican-dominate county...anyway, he is trying to insult Obama supporters and D&D players by using both in a negative context.

I hate when writers catergorize people like this. Obama and McCain supporters come from all walks of life, and there are some us who haven't decided who to support because of certain issues (especially education, since I am a teacher by day).

Apprently, playing dungeons and dragons is a left thing to do.

{Link)

After looking over the article, that is a weird statement to someone like me, especially when most of the friends I grew up playing with were definitely not left-leaning...and I'm sure they still are not.

The link to the article about the apology is kind of funny...

Sigh. My gripes with Clerics...

- they are support characters, nothing else.
- they have too many spells on spell lists. And gain access immediately to them. With multitude of spells to memorize, often with vastly differing effects, it's hard to choose right and choose them quick.
- their buffs add to bookkeeping.

I do agree that clerics can be difficult to play, with all of the things you mentioned. However, difficult to me does not translate to boring or unrewarding.

When I have been a cleric I always had to wrestle with whether I should buff others or buff myself (especially when I got high enough in level to cast divine power), or just save my spells for healing. Also, it depends on the party dynamic. If I was in a party with a fighter, rogue, and a wizard, I wasn't just the support character but the secondary fighter...especially when the fighter got wiped out and I didn’t have enough healing left to keep him conscious long enough to matter--I had to save the day by taking some heavy damage, drawing some attacks with my high AC (courtesy of spells, full plate, and a heavy steel shield) and doing my best to hit with my weapon. That may be "support," but I definitely had a blast.

Oddly enough, sometimes my group would make characters of various levels and just have character vs. character battles, sometimes three of us at once (this was usually at 1 in the morning when the DM or half the players had retired for the night). When I played in these skirmishes I always made a cleric...and I always won.

Montalve wrote:

spells that lasted 10 minutes per level in 3.5 last 1 round per level

for starters

There were already tons of rounds/level spells. There are still TONS of 10 min/level spells. The only difference is that a handful of individual spells got nerfed.

A FEW INDIVIDUAL SPELLS' DURATIONS CAN NOT POSSIBLY AFFECT THE FEEL OF A GAME THAT MUCH. But, please, tell me all about how Shield of Law or whatever getting nerfed OMG RUINED SPELLCASTERS for you.

I agree...this whole thread seems to focus on an issue that is totally blown out of proportion. I went through the change of 3.0 to 3.5 (I even still have all my 3.0 books) and there was nothing at all that changed about the feel of the game (and I was a part of two games at the time...DM in one, player in the other). Many of the differences were so minor that I had to push my players to go out and buy their own copy of the 3.5 Player's Handbook; they didn't think it was such a drastic change to warrant paying for another book.

Furthermore, if the OP is accusing 3.5 of being be *so* video game like I do not want to even know their perspective on 4th edition.

To be fair I do think that the 3.5 domains are not well balanced. Travel, Luck, Magic, etc are all great (Travel overpowered IMO). The alignments , healing and some others (which generally get ignored because they suck) suck.

So for this reason tinkering was/is a good idea. I just dont like this tinker. It went beyond fix what was broken (some domains) and ended up lame. It's like they had a good idea for sorcerers and wizards so tacked on a simliar theme for clerics.

This is exactly how I feel...I guess I was just trying to be less direct in my post, but heck...many of the 3.X domains just suck and no player ever takes them! They needed to fix the ones that suck or are too powerful, not totally destroy the system. Still, I think they made a lot of these changes in the name of dead levels, not just the suckiness of some of the domains. But yes, what they ended up with is...well...um...sucky...

Perhaps the best way to handle this is to treat domains more like the schools of magic, but allow players to choose their bonus spells from other spell lists or to choose spells with certain descriptors (regardless of spell list), depending on the domain chosen.

I like this idea, but only if the designers feel it is absolutely necessary to change cleric domains from 3.X. At first I liked the changes in the Alpha to cleric domains, but I've realized that there was nothing that I thought was broken about cleric domains in the first place. Some domains need some work because of being underpowered or just not that helpful (usually because of domain powers--like getting Survival as skill and nothing else with the weather domain or turning elementals with the four elemental domains), but there was nothing that seemed to need such a drastic overhaul.

I guess the only reason the designers felt that this change from 3.X was needed was to prevent dead levels; still, how it currently stands, having to drop spells from 3.X clerics and add these powers is not a part of conversion that I am going to enjoy, and many of my players already don't like it. For instance, I have already had one player during character creation look over the Glory domain power and spells from the SRD and then the Pathfinder Glory domain...his conclusion was that the domain used to be great, but it is not a domain he would take any more(he actually ended up picking a different deity because of this).

Is true.

"Fiend" is a catch-all word that covers all evil outsiders, from devils to daemons to demons to demodands to rakshasas to everything else that's an outsider with the evil subtype.

I'm pretty sure that my own fiendish T-Rex is indeed from the Abyss, in any event. He smells that way, at least.

I like to be specific and I say "abyssal" or "infernal" or whatever when I use the fiendish template. It doesn't make any game mechanic difference--I'm just being uptight!

So, does an Abyssal T-Rex smell better or worse than a Infernal T-Rex? (or just different but equally horrible!)

Can other cultures than the Varsians use the magic tattoos? more precisely: Could an Elf-Wizard have a varsian tattoo?

In the Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting hardcover, it is a regional feat. As long as a character has the Varisian regional affinity, he or she can take the feat...in other words, race doesn't matter, but region does.

Shelyn, Goddess of Beauty, Art , Love and Music has a favored weapon of Glaive. Abadar, God of Cities,wealth, Merchants and law has a crossbow.

Im thinking these need to be swapped. Shelyn gets the crossbow, Abadar gets a glaive (or polearms).

It would be really nice to give Shelyn a weapon that could double as a musical instrument, like say a Harpbow, so Bard worshippers would not have to change items in a fight.

your thoughts?

thanks

Unfortunately, you would need to substantially alter Shelyn's backstory since the glaive "Whisper of Souls" she uses as her favored weapon was taken from her half-brother Zon-Kuthon in an effort to redeem him. I think Zon-Kuthon having a maliciously sentient crossbow wouldn't really fit.

After the AP actually makes more since to me. Since the folio has all of the maps, it would be odd seeing maps for the the last chapter of the AP after the 1st or 2nd chapter.

Also, as a general rule for myself, I do not start running adventure paths until they are complete. I need to get a good idea of where it is going and how it ends. A GM should not be in the dark when running a campaign. I think it is important for the GM to see the big picture in order to make a a believable world for the players, especially since the GM could be forced to make a call on something that he/she does not quite understand in the AP yet and it turns out to be in contradiction to what is written later; having read (or at least skimmed) all of the chapters of an AP can prevent this.

Well, I tried personalizing it and downloading it again a few hours later (for the third time)...this time the map is included, so all is well! Thanks for the map!

I also personalized and downloaded and still no map.

But it's really not a big enough deal for me to get worked up over, and it will be easy enough to house rule back the way I want it, regardless of what PF does with it.

I agree. My group is just using a house rule that makes Search and Perception seperate skills for many of the reasons mentioned by previous posters.

I am usually DM for my group, but I'm currently letting one of my players DM for the first time. It was really hard to house rule Search as the one to use when I was searching the hut in Hollow's Last Hope...I was a 1st level druid with a +7 perception! (which shows how odd it would be for the druid to be the best at searching in the party).

Whether as a player or a DM, I don't remember having a worthy villian who would be easily scryed on; if they could be scryed on, there was a good reason why it would be suicide to buff and teleport in (being surrounded by powerful henchman or guardians, for example). When we have done the "buff/teleport" (no scry) combination is when we knew the general location of the villian we were after; sometimes we were dead on and could finish the encounter right away, or we had move to a nearby location to find him or her (or it), sometimes with some of the "buffs" wearing off.

My general viewpoint comes down to a DM knowing his party. If the DM knows the PCs have the power to successfully "scry/buff/teleport" then the DM should have the expectation that the final battle (or other battles) may be too easy. Of course, I have played in many campaigns were the "buffing" the party before the battle was merely a strategy used to improve our chances of winning (or sometimes our only chance!). This kind of party planning should not be viewed as something that is broken or abused, but a part of a good ambush. DMs should always consider turning the tables on the players if the DM has a particular cunning or powerful villian...doesn't it make for a better game if the players are surprised or ambushed sometimes? If the villian is truly a worthy opponent for the PCs then something as simple as "scry/buff/teleport" should not be enough to make that final battle "easy".

I do remember being a part of a "scry/buff/teleport" encounter against a powerful demon. We had fought this demon several times; each time we hurt him just bad that he would teleport away before he went down or we had to teleport away because we were losing horribly. We could not defeat him by simply going into some dungeon and walking into his lair. He was too smart for that. The fact is that he had what we wanted so we had to defeat him directly in order to get it. The only way we could defeat the demon was to scry on him, buff, and teleport in. After we were in, the wizard (who was me) had to cast dimensional anchor so our demon friend wouldn't just teleport out when he was almost dead. This was the only way we could beat him. Our frustration with this villain led him to one of the most memorable and satisfying to defeat. Our "scry/buff/teleport" approach did not take away from the encounter but made it possible for us to be victorious.