TheDMFromPlanetX's page

Greatness or mega fail? I cant and wont pass judgement before i see stuff in print and try it out. Saying categorically that one will/will not play because of x/y rumors and/or based on interweb "wisom" has never gotten me anywhere good.

While I wait for stuff in print, ill keep reading various blog post and behind the scenes studf that wotc put out.

I did not like, nor did my players, 4th ed at all so I am hoping it looks alot different from that. I also hope they have learned from the failures of the various digital endeavours and avoid that like the plague in 5th....or the very least make sure it works before anouncing it as the best thing since slices bread.

As for the modular aspects....well that can be either a big hit or a big miss, part of me is dreading it...but at the same time part of me is intrigued about it, since my group rarely uses the more esoteric rules in Pathfinder anyways despite many many attempts to teach them. So if a system can be constructed like Legos, that sounds interesting.

The whole docus on 1 hour modules seem a tad worrying to me....i am not the type of dm that has the time to write adventures for my players....and the modules they published for 4th where just horrid.

Buuuuut we love our pathfinder so 5th would have to really be awesome to catch out attention....

they are all cool...but jessica as the Grey Maiden has my vote

My group currently only plays 4E, having taken a look at Pathfinder RPg and found that it didn't fix the things we were unhappy about in 3.5E.

We are having a blast at it, yes the rules are completely different, yes many of the holy cows are dead. But we find that the rules are much more fun, and the players that wouldn't give certain classes a time of day are having great fun playing them i 4E (Wizards and leaders mostly).

We are playing the Savage tide, that i have converted to 4E, a process that was extremely easy. The advendture was easy to pace to 30 lvs, the cosmolgy issues were surpringsigly easy to find a solution for(I am for one not missing the great wheel).

I can't see that we will be switching back to 3,5E, except to play Star Wars. I am for one looking forward to next years releases.

On the saled note, i have read that the 4E doesn't sell nearly as well as 3,0 did when it came out. But then again, that also sold like hot cakes and it was diffenrent times back then.

I just have to jump in on this thought. IF we were to stay with 3.5, what makes you think that there wouldn't be an influx of new gamers? To wit, take a look at Games Workshop. Their business model is to bring in young kids, around age 14 to 16, and basically they expect to lose them in 4 to 6 years. Companies like Privateer Press make their bucks taking the ex-GW players and making them into Warmachine or Hordes players. Rackham does this also.

So why couldn't Paizo, IF we were to stay with 3.5, get a regular influx of younger gamers who got weaned into the industry by 4th edition, but got bored and started looking for a more complicated game, or perhaps heard about this amazing campaign setting called Pathfinder Chronicles? I don't really understand why everyone thinks that IF a company stuck with 3.5, that it was like they were stuck in a hermetically sealed room or something.

Of all the pros and cons everyone mentions about 4e vs. 3.5e, this one drives me the most nuts. :) So, again, I ask, why would sticking with 3.5 mean entering a game of diminishing returns?

-Lisa

DISCLAIMER: This post is entirely a thought exercise and shouldn't be construed as proof either for or against Paizo going to 4e or not. We haven't seen the GSL or the rules yet, so we have no decision to report. I just couldn't resist making this point though. :)

Well said and i partially agree. First off I am a huge Paizo fan and am going to support your pathfinder RPG as well as 4E.

But look at the products both Privateer Press and Rackham are putting out now. Prepainted minis and collectible minature games are games aimed at a much younger audience, and Rackham has spent a lot of time making their games more accesible to newer and younger players. But both companies still retain much for more experienced ones, in the Warmachine´/hordes games, and by the fact that Rackhams miniatures are of a very high standard and still paintable.

So you have to be able to attract both ends of the age and experience spectrum, or you will end up as Games Workshop with slowing sales and a frustated fan group tired of constant changes and rules revisions.

Fantastic, really...

This took me by surprise. Although my group and i have decided for 4th, there is no way in hell im am going to miss this.

I think the warlord sounds interesting. Of course I am also quite keen to get my hands on 4th, as are my players.

As for battlemats, I find them to be a great tool for the really complex battles, and my players like the instant overview it gives them and the feel it helps them emerse themselves easier into the combat aspect of the game (even the pascifist member of the group).

And i can't see how visual aids can impeed on the roleplaying aspects of the game, but we have always managed to keep a fair balance between combat and roleplay. Not to mention that some classes primary focus, even rolepaying wise, is combat.

Heh, we finished last time with my party standing on the edge about to go out over the bridge. The party's wizard only has offensive spells and the only tactic the party has come up with is the good old rushing offense.

The only problem is they have a knack for failing saving throws at semi crucial moments...

The entire party dropping to their deaths is a very real posibility..

We run our games with resurection spells, but i have a long talk with the player who has decided to get his character raised. We add some psychological effects of the ordeal. for example one character came back with a pathological fear of spiders, since he was killed by one. It adds some extra effects to the experience to make the players think twice about it, and it is really funny to see a 300 puond dwarf panic at the sigth of some giant spiders.

I and my group will be making the change to 4th edition as soon as the books are out. We will be wrapping up Rise of the Runelords around june and will make a trip to Star Wars while i will be changing the next pathfinder to 4th

we just made the desicion after reading the races and classes preview, all very excited about what is going on at WOTC

Ok im going to take a big risk now, a few says from now a severed orc head will be hanging on my front door, curtesy of the TLF (third edition liberation front).

I actually like that they have the guts to change things, and to update the game for a new generation. Not that i dont like the old cosmology and mythos, but i have to admit the new stuff seems more dynamic and modern (boo, hiss !!) to me.

And shoot me if you want, i like modern and new.

The idea to meld the Eladrin race and elves, good idea.

The elimination off subraces, finally

The teifling as a standard race, near perfection as i have been playing a sexy, sultry and deadly female fighter/warlock for some time now and i am overjoyed that i will no longer be penalised for it. Their updated looks, in the words of a fellow genius (wohooo!!)

That gnomes have been shelved until they can reworke them as they should be, good choice. In 11 years of DM'ing the same group we have had 1!!!! gnome character. The general consensus when i tried to promote was that they just wern't interestin enough

Halflings slightly taller, and a river folk. Almost as nice as the nomadic dino riding halflings.

Ok take your best shot, ill take cover behind my more or less useless DMG.

First off, im a huge fan of what you guys pull out of your magic hats your stuff is some of the best 3.5 material i have come across.

About a switch to 4th edition, i am not sure. Some of the things that have been put forward by WOTC seems pretty good, but most of it, if not all of it is still in "beta" mode and so remains to be seen how it will turn out in the end.

Personally i would welcome a new edition, 3.5 has gotten unwieldy in much the same way as 2nd edition was, and could use a cleanup. And if they retain some of the mechanics from the Saga edition rules for Star Wars i am sure it will be great fun to play.

But im am so in love with your new Varisia setting that if you decide not to go down the 4th road, i will chose to remain in 3.5.

All in all i hope that the SRD will give you enough creative and finacial freedoms so a switch to th will be viable.

I guess it all boils down to this:

You are the best at what you do and i will continue to support you no matter what you decide.

I've asked a few questions before regarding methods of painting miniatures and the folks on these boards have been very helpful. I come to you with yet another question, however:

I think I am finally ready to set myself to the task of finally buying the materials and painting the pewter minis that I own. However, I currently own about 40 miniatures. What I want to know is: How much paint should I buy? Obviously I will only need minimal amounts of a few colors (such as yellow, orange, and blue) but I will likely be using black, silver, and skin tones on every one of them. How long does a single tube of paint last? Would these paint sets probably be adequate for a beginner? Should I buy an extra tube of the colors I intend to use heavily? Thanks for the input!

I paint regularly and i can almost paint an entire army of minis, warhammer usually, on a single pot of paint. If you buy Vallejo, p3 or the new citadel foundation paints, the last particularly, the paints only require one layer over an undercoat to give a neat coverage.

I have had pots of paint last years, so one of each should do fine

No 148 in Denmark as well.

If Varasia is similar in size to California, how about it's govenorship?It's tax rate? I mean if the PC's have to pay Californian tax liabilities... are they accounted for in the treasure allotment per encounter? And is adventuring gear covered by Cal-OSHA? And if a PC gets injured on the job, how does one go about collecting workers comp?

Just some questions I have for the AP.

And is it's governor an immortal 7 foot 600 pound guy with an accent and the urge to grope all femalekin????

uh tough one...

All in all the game works, bur to me the most broken rule is the Magical Levitating shield. It's fine on its own untill the fighter with a two hander and 581 feats that boost his damage, whos only weaknes is semi poor AC, suddenly has 30 something...

Whos to blaim ones players for having between one and four of these in a party.

Ok so we had another PC death last nigth.

Oh sorry we had 3.

Adventure: Sea wyverns wake

Location: Sea Wyvern

Catalyst:Blue Slaad

So my players didn't react to Father Feress getting sick, the partys cleric discovered the symptoms and dicided not to do anything but wait a few days.

One gory evening later, and there was a large blue frog running amok on the ship. It managed over a one hour dash around the ship to kill 3 party members and 11 crew and passengers before dying to a balliasta shot.

The PC's were
Miram, Female human fighter1/cleric 4
Leila, Female human Scout 1/figher 4
Annoah, Female human Warblade 5

My party, as usual, rolled some pretty dysmal dice rolls, managing an average hit percanteage of close to 20% With so poor rolls there wasn't much i could do to help them out, even neglegting to use the slaads summoning abilities did not help

So we had our first PC death last night, in There Is No Honour.

The party where finishing clearing out the Lotus Dragon Hideout and where getting a bit cocky. The partys scout entered the room with all the sparring dummies, paid them no heed and proceeded to check out the other door.

The rest of the party files in the room, again completely ignoring the dolls, the cleric positions himself between 3 of the disguised rogues, and behold 3 sneak attacks and one of the a crit later, we had on very pierced, and quite dead, cleric.

ok so my group isn't as odd as some of the other cool parties, but should prove quite interesting indeed:

1. a male human warblade
2. a female elven fighter/scout
3. a female human rogue/fighter (knifefighter)
4. a male human cleric of selune

If the party has a weakness it is the lack of a spell slinger of sorts, and my PC's have historically had a rough time without one, they never learn....

I am substituting sasserinne with Baldurs Gate in my campaign. BG is sufficiently vaguely described so that i can modify it to be exotic in flavor, at least the harbor side of it. Plus it has numerus cool factions in town that can help the players spice up their characters.

I'm currently reading two books:

The Triumph of the Sun by Wilbur Smith (Fall of Khartoum, 1885 in the Sudan, fictional heroic adventure novel set with the Mahdist-British war as a background)

Day of Infamy by Harry Turtledove, what if alternate history book about what would have happened had the Japanese followed up the Pearl Harbor attack with a seaborne invasion of Hawaii.

Im currently reading A feast for crows, by George r.r Martin and Warrior: En garde, by Michael A stackpole for the 156th time, or something like that. The cover is repaired with tape so you get the picture

Great thread.

ok so here goes:

I hate players that don't take characters seriously. Heck the last party we started, I asked the players to present their characters to one another. I almost lost it when one of my players replied:"my characters name is Ellen, and im a woman................. thats it" AAAARRGGHHH!!!!

I hate monks, because they can't hit a barn door if they stood in it.

I hate players who devour all the snacks for a game in the first 5 minutes, and then sulk the rest of the evening.

I hate players who are spend the evening sleeping, if you don't want to be here, stay away.

I hate keeping track of a gazzilion feats and spells. Worse i hate players that won't take NO for an answer."No im sorry you can't take a Ebberon feat in our FR campaign, and no you can't multiclass into an artificer."

I hate players that cry when the highest stat they have is s 16. you know the type that goes: " I am stuck my 16,16,16,16,15,14 stats aren't good enough for what i wan't to do." SMACK!!

I hate players who can't find their attack modifier if they had a map and a compass, "lets see i roll a 6 and my damage bonus is ... uhm,.. uhm... 8, no wait thats my ranged weapon...."

I hate rules lawyers." On page 78 it reads that you clearly can't use fireball if its a thursday after 6..."

ok thats it for now

... I am just wondering if there is a way to avoid the railroaded climax of the module as otherwise, killing Bozhal, destroying the scrolls etc will not really have an impact on the flow of the adventure.

My players maganed to find and kill the ulgurstasta on the 2nd day of the games, a real let down in terms of climax.

Building a satisfying end of the adventure and getting the players the xp needed for lvl 11 had me on the ropes for a few weeks, were on vacation at the moment, so i was really happy to see the new Challenge of Champions in dungeon...

Well that was that, the party I DM was just wiped out by the Invisible Stalkers in the sodden hold. To their credit they did fight on to the bitter end and managed to take down one of the without see invisibility.

So I now have to shoehorn a new party in to the middle of the AOW campaign and I am planning to do it in the arena fights in the next adventure, and having the approached by Eligos after the event to fill in for the previous party.

Too bad really as they had a really interesting party going:

Male Dwarven Psychic warrior
Female human Monk (going sacred Fist)
Male human Fighter/Cleric of tempus (going warpriest)
Female human Ranger/Rogue/Scout

Well, the adventures in the AOW campign really needs a flexible party, the forcus initially on combat and later on more interaction.

my advive is to make sure at least one PC has a decent CHA and some social skills, and a anti undead cleric of sorts will also be helpfull.

I would also advise you to leave clues leading directly to filge instead of the Kullen group. My 10 year veteran party had problems figuring out how to get the info they wanted from him without turning criminals.

The encounter under water is also dificcult to run, so perhaps make the room semi submerged, at waist level

other than that, good luck and nice gaming

The publications for Age of Worms are starting to reach their conclusion, but from what I'm gathering on the message boards most of the campaigns people are running are just barely getting out of Diamond Lake. Is there anyone out there who is anywhere near the point Dugeon is at?

my group has just completed the first issue and are preparing for 3foe. It was good, they only used 4 sessions on the adventure and especially the last encounter was hard. 2 pc's on 0 hp, one on -4.

my group is about halfway through a whispering cairn.

currently they are stuck figuring out how to get the info about filge out of the kullen group

typical for my players:

combat, check
mayhem, check
slaying, check
looting, check

human interaction, ohhhh bad

This post is really directed to all those that put their time and effort into creating Shackled City.

I have run two sessions of SCAP and my players are going Shackled City crazy!

I wanted to share what one of my players said this morning after last nights session;

"That may have been the best session I have ever been a part of...And definitely the best session I have had where I didn't make a single successful attack roll." This coming from a player that has been playing and running D&D since first edition.

From my perspective as a DM I just want to say thanks for all the work everyone did on this book. It has really left me a lot of extra time to fill in the details, which just makes the suspension of disbelief that much easier to maintain.

I also really like the Development and Tactics portions of encounter descriptions. They are very helpful in getting me to think differently about what the PC's opponents do or dont do.

From reading through the whole book twice now, I think my players are going to be having a great time for the next year as we roll through this adventure, and I am already looking forward to starting Age of Worms.

In my most humble opinion SCAP is the best adventiure in D&D since the Temple of Elemental Evil, and at this point its likely to be the best Campaign I will have ever run. <Until I run the Age of Worms ;)>

Thanks again to all.

I ran the SCAP as it came out in Dungeon, and it was a big hit by the players. The only real problem was a rather large number of player deaths, if I remember correctly one player went through 5 characters in the duration of the campaign.

But still loads of fun. SCAP is by far the best store bought campaign in years. And AOW seems to just as good if not better.

At least I hope so, as we are starting it this week

I've noticed many people posting, talking about character death like it has to be a permanent thing. MY question is how common is Resurection/ Raise Dead in your gaming world. In my current gaming group Resurection is very common/ nessassary part of the world (A good game usually only means a couple of fatalities). When I started playing the Dm didn't allow any type of raise dead and it lead to some angry players when a favorite character finally died. what is your experiences?

One thing that is not to be overlooked is the fact how a terrible ordeal it must be for a person to be brought back to life. Firstly, having died in the musn't be very interesting, secondly one should not forget that (in most campaings) people actually go to heaven or close to it when they die. I don't know about heroic PC's but if you ask me that can't be bad...

Does anyone in their game system actually use psionics on a regular basis (including psionic combat)? We play 2nd ED and psionic combat by the book is horrible at best, and I've read through 3ED (not 3.5) and it didn't look any better. In the end I ended up completely rewriting psionic combat pretty much from scratch with a whole lot of house rules, but it's still as slow as watching golf on T.V. I'm curious how other DMs have delt with this problem.

yes i use psionics, in our current AOW campaign I play one half of a Elan Psion Twin pair. Both Kineticists with the Astral Construct power and boosted construcy/Extend power feats.

These ladies put 2 mean fighter types in action and then pummel the Baddies with multiple damage powers

Sorry, forgot to write something.

Have you ever had to compromise with your parents because they thought D&D was evil? What about your church? Has anyone ever judged you as an evil person for playing D&D?

I come from a very open minded family, and have had no problem with my parents over D&D.

But things aside, as long as parents take a healthy interest in what their children do, and take time to learn what things actually are about, instead of listening to media, clergy or whatever, things should be fine.

What campaign setting are you using (or planning to use) for Age of Worms?

I think I'm going to use Eberron.

I'm using Eberron. I'm DM'ing a party of 5(no pun intenden), of 2 chageling rouges, 1 kalasthar psion, a shifter ranger and a human cleric of Dol Dorn. We are taking the first steps on Sunday