Timothy Hanson's page

Feel free to throw out the actual details whenever you guys are ready.

If an item costs too much, it won't get purchased. If it costs too little, everyone buys it. A "Right Priced" item sits in the sweet spot between the two.

There is no other metric that really matters.

By that measure, it's well priced. I can see some people buying it, but ultimately there aren't a lot of levels where it's "Great". When it's most useful, you can't afford it, when you can first afford it, it's pretty nice, but not long after that, 7 points of damage per round from magic missiles is trivial. The only levels where 2 magic missiles per round is really unbalancing this is just too expensive to gain. If you play PFS, it's not even an option.

I like Dennis Baker's rule the best.

Why would you do an echoing acid splash?

It is a full round action not a one round action, I stand corrected on that. That does make it a bit nicer, though makes Quickening seem like one of the worse metamagic feats to use with it.

It seems like a time sink, but does not seem any more powerful then a metamagic rod to be honest.

Timothy Hanson wrote:

Mavael wrote:

>Then again, if it didn't give you the metamagic feats, people would be shouting it's a pathetic feat... lol.

No, it would still be insane. You can quicken every 5 level and below spell every turn basically doubling your spell output for the cost of a few engineering skill ranks.

If this feat read

"attach quicken to a spell (if you have it), do some math with engineering, if you succeed you cast the spell for it's original spell rank" it would still be incredibly powerful.

Quickening only lets you use the spell as a standard action instead of a quick action with the feat. So it would be a waste of your time. You can not use quickening and another metafeat on any spells above 4th, so 5th level spells on are going to take a full round action to cast and have the possibility of not even doing what you intend them to do. You also need to sink ranks into Engineering.

Most of the time you are casting as a full round action, which is a HUGE drawback as if you take any damage you could easily fail to cast at all, and in addition to that you are not guaranteed to even get the metamagic you want.

Rules:

A spell whose casting time is more than 1 round or 1 full-round action cannot be quickened.

The spell would be a swift action provided you aren't a spontaneous caster. It's just.... math.

"applying the Quicken Spell metamagic effect negates the increased casting time but still contributes to the modified spell's effective spell level."

This implies to me, that all Quicken does is negate the casting time being upped from Sacred Geometry.

pauljathome wrote:

I expect Mike to be reasonable and to disallow this for PFS. Otherwise. I think that the number of people making "Not at my table" rulings will become legion. It is absurdly overpowered and is absolutely going to drag down the game.

Or maybe I'd just go Passive Aggressive. Give the person a reasonable amount of time (5 seconds sounds about right) then put the character on delay. And make sure that the person has the book, of course.

I'm more concerned about the power level, though. Free metamagic feats for wizards is just what they do NOT need.

being a huge a+@&%%~ because you don't like something is not how pfs works btw

Most of the time it will be a full round action, so they could have the time it takes to get back to their turn to figure out if it works or not, which if they do it by then great, if not then oh well.

I would also let other players help them figure it out, so hopefully the fighter is a mathwiz in real life. If it becomes an issue just have them roll early.

>Then again, if it didn't give you the metamagic feats, people would be shouting it's a pathetic feat... lol.

No, it would still be insane. You can quicken every 5 level and below spell every turn basically doubling your spell output for the cost of a few engineering skill ranks.

If this feat read

"attach quicken to a spell (if you have it), do some math with engineering, if you succeed you cast the spell for it's original spell rank" it would still be incredibly powerful.

Quickening only lets you use the spell as a standard action instead of a quick action with the feat. So it would be a waste of your time. You can not use quickening and another metafeat on any spells above 4th, so 5th level spells on are going to take a full round action to cast and have the possibility of not even doing what you intend them to do. You also need to sink ranks into Engineering.

Most of the time you are casting as a full round action, which is a HUGE drawback as if you take any damage you could easily fail to cast at all, and in addition to that you are not guaranteed to even get the metamagic you want.

I really don't know why anyone thinks this is broken. It seems quirky and thematic but other then maybe getting some free metamagic feats on some first level spells it doesn't do much to unbalance anything.

James Jacob is running the AP after Giantslayer and he is not a fan of Dwarves so I doubt it.

A Shadow Giant, a Stone Giant, and a Frost Giant walk into a tavern...

Shortest AP ever.

Dragon78 wrote:

I would like to see an AP(volumes1-6) that does not have any Demons, Devils, or Daemons. Not a single one at all.

This is very unlikely, given the fact that evil fiends are such a huge chunk of the game's monster menu at higher levels. We got pretty close with Kingmaker though.

I think Carrion Crown might have come pretty close as well. It has been awhile since i have looked at it but can not think of much off the top of my head.

Is this a new edition of Shadowrun?

Yes it is, though I know little beyond that.

I would not allow it for the simple reason that in game it would not make sense. A belt of +2 Cha will make everyone a little more likable. A +1 belt will only make some people more likable. I think the Ability scores are suppose to be more abstract then that, where as making an item that only increase the Cha of some people seems a little bit like metagaming.

Disagree. I would not call this all that powerful (or cheesy).

A martial character that for 1 of his precious 11 or so levels gets zero BaB, zero progression of all his fighter abilities, -2 hit points, a +2 to will saves, the ability to use wands, and a weak familiar that will never get any better? So he is giving up alot of the stuff that a person builds a fighter to have for a little bit (ok maybe moderate bit) of magic item use.

He is giving up a huge amount to get that action.

It is PFS so no leadership feat.

I don't see anything in the rules that says you have to have above average intelligence to be a wizard. But the rules present to show that you will be a really horrible wizard if you have a low intelligence.

Considering he could just buy the same wand, hand it to any arcane or UMD character in the party, still not use up his own action, and get the same or better benefit; I would say this is actually a fairly low power solution.

I am not sure if would go as far as to say, he is giving up A LOT of stuff. He is mostly losing out on a feat to gain a familiar and wands. BAB is probably not a large issue, I imagine he has a pretty high to hit mod anyhow, the hit points are a bit of a downer, but based on his stats I am going to assume he has a solid con too, so I am sure he will not miss them too much. The progression is a little annoying to be sure, but that is more delayed then anything else, and it is PFS so I doubt he will even really get that high in level to begin with.

It might be taking a hit, but it is definitely not gimping yourself, and depending on action economy it might be much better then the feat he would have gotten anyhow. Throw maybe a once a day power and I think the character is looking in the plus column to be honest.

Cheliax seems very Game of Thrones like with House Thune being the Lannisters in that reference. I have only played through the first two books, but CoT seems to have some political undertones as well, and sort of a secret group running things from behind the scenes. From that you would be playing more from the perspective of the Lightning Lord, but it is a loose fit. I will admit I have not read Kingmaker has I hope to play in it one day.

The Slumbering Tsar is suppose to be really hard, and kill a lot of people, so on that level it is very much like GoT. Way of the Wicked might be a good fit too, since most people in GoT are not very nice, but someone else who has read it would have to comment on that.

Out of curiosity is it the Books or the TV show from which they are most interested in?

Drakkiel, If the pinned condition precludes attacking and this condition inflicts the pinned condition, then there is "zero" way of attacking your way out.

It's not that the two conditions are different, it's that they simply don't interact according to the rules depending on which way you look at pinned. If engulf inflict pinned, it's impossible for a engulfed creature to attack it's way out.

Quote:

If an engulfed creature cuts its way free (the mouther's damage reduction still applies to those inside)

Quote:

shoggoth may attempt to engulf as many creatures as it grapples or tramples in a round. This ability otherwise functions as swallow whole, save that a creature that cut its way out of a shoggoth...

Quote:

Engulf (EX)... Engulfed opponents gain the pinned condition

Do the above bolded indicate how your opinion is contrary and now against the rules of at least two creature entry?

You cannot cut your way free of the above creatures, because when you're pinned you cannot attack. Your rational was indeed flawed in relation to this. Your rational meant that the vaguely worded pinned prevents these two creatures from having critters cut themselves out, and if you can't do that why mention it?

As we know now, pinned breaks the flavor and intent of these creatures (since they have no special rule that lets you attack while pinned and engulfed in them)

His point is they are two different rules with the same name. In one you are pinned, in the other you may cut yourself free. Since they have no connection other then sharing the same name, one has nothing to do with the other.

Lord Foul II wrote:

I just want to note, I fundamantally disagree with this, but there are differences in play styles

I fundamentally disagree with playing characters whose "feature" is to impose their views on others in a game where cooperation is the name of the game. If it was a game that pvp was a an acceptable and common occurrence it would not be so bad because I would just scythe that player in their sleep but it's not.

I reign in my slaughter of the innocents, destruction of property and wholesale wanton villainy because the whole party is not okay with it and I get that. But to restrict my choice from my favourite style of class to play (reanimator) and prevent me from doing possibly the most awesome evil thing in pathfinder (becoming a lich)? Those people can bite me.

I would be all on yourside with this, if you did not start a thread saying, "How do I keep my group from noticing I am spending all my gold and feats on becoming a lich and not to help the party?"

Not sure what the make up of your party is, so I am not sure to what extent you are actually doing this, but it does seem like you are just as guilty of "features" that impose on others instead of cooperation.

I think where in the world also has a lot to do with which god will be setting them up.

Abadar seems like a good choice since he is all city like. Desna seems to be pretty nice and generous, so I could see her followers setting them up as well. In Cheliax Asmodeus followers would definitely have state run orphanages. Sarenrae would have them if you went farther south.

Well... Erik and Jason are the ones who came up with the Worldwound initially... mostly Erik I believe. And both of them have played plenty of Warhammer, so I suppose that it likely DID inspire them. You'd have to ask them for sure.

But it hasn't really inspired me on my work on the region is all I'm saying.

1st edition D&D's the primary source of my demonic RPG inspirations.

Most of the parallels between Warhammer and the World Wound are either rather generic or rather trivial to be honest. Demonic infestation seeping into the real world is sort of the heart of both so really can not make one not look like the other in that regard. The actual geography of both although also similar is not really important to either in my opinion.

Ishpumalibu wrote:

There's also the human variant azlanti pureblood who gets +2 to all stats...

Can't find it on the RPD or the d20pfsrd.com. Can you help med with the source?

It is in the Inner Sea World Guide, and probably falls under one of the few things that is actually copied by Paizo as it is very setting specific.

They could be racist and pro-slavery. It could be as benign as hate speech or as corrupt as kiddnapping and selling people into slavery. Maybe they see humans as the rightful inheritors of the earth and all other races for men to conquer and use as tools.

This draws a lot of parallels from Christians through out the ages and I would argue a lot of would be LG Christians have believed or believe these things. Provided the slaves were taken care of slavery could be seen as "for their own good".

Alignment is based off the actions to the PCs not the actions of the NPCs. So the action was stopping a dragon, so as long as there was not anything nazi like that went along with that, I assume the dragon was not trying to burn down a concentration camp or anything and the dragons actions needed to be stopped, then nothing happens to the PCs alignment in my opinion. Nor would the nazis become good because they helped the PCs.

Blood is like water, too much of it is a terrible thing but the right amount keeps you alive. A non-evil god of blood could be about personal sacrifice, family, the life force inside you, to some extent honor. When someone fights to the blood it is instead of to the death, so in that regard blood is merciful. In some games blood magic is used to heal others at the expense of the caster, so non-evil does not seem unreasonable. And 1 of 14 seems like it is way out of proportion.

Why aren't the other PCs doing anything to stop him? Does the whole party want to bring about the destruction of the world?

Unfortunately I think you are looking for realism and will stumble across two problems.

1) I am pretty sure real frogs are not like this at all.

2) If they were that hungry the larger frogs would just eat the smaller frogs.

I would say for a workable encounter all the frogs would go as soon as they thought they saw something to eat. Frogs are not really pack animals, they would attack the weakest looking (ie smallest) part members as rabidly as possible. Once something was down they would eat it until they had to defend themselves and not worry about the rest of the battle, or if they could drag it off away from everything else. I am making the assumption that they all must be very hungry to attack out numbered and out gunned like that and are probably irrational at this point, even by frog standards.

When I play with inexperienced DM's the answer is all the time, though not on purpose. One example I can think of off the top of my head, I had just met a group at a local book store with a new DM who I had never met. I cast major creation to do damage and it blew this DM's mind. When I told him how much raw damage I was doing to the bridge we had just crossed he turned white and accused me of cheating. Thankfully my fellow players helped to show him that I was in the right. But after that I learned that this DM wasn't capable of running high level characters. His tactics were atrocious and he had no idea what to do when the players went off the rails. But he was still learning so I reigned myself in and just accepted that what we were doing were low level adventures with pallet swaps and higher numbers. It was actually a pretty good campaign after that.

In games I play under more experienced DM's the answer is almost never. A good DM knows the rules and has a general idea for what your character can do. He's going to be more prepared. However, there was this one time that the party defeated the BBEG and we were expected to destroy the evil artifact of near infinite power and I, being a cleric of a goddess of the night and darkness and cold, decided to instead use it to destroy the sun. The DM didn't really know what to do after that so he called the session early and we waited a few weeks before he was finally ready with a solution.

In a thread so physics heavy how is this being ignored? If someone destroyed the sun in my game I would probably kill everyone without life bubble up. Not sure how long people would have, but I would not imagine more then an hour before 99% of the population was dead. Depending on the prep work the party did before hand the campaign could well be over.

I would have soft carpet, comfortable air conditioning, sturdy chairs, and THIS.

You guys are all too old school, my Wish Table would look something more like this:

http://videos.cnet.co.uk/crave-live/epson-x-desk-interactive-table-39042279 /

Thought if I had my way I would have an old school table too, because in my dream world I would be less lazy and have all sorts of crazy dungeon setups and 3-D models.

Did the Rogue have Darkvision while in the tunnels? Dim light provides a 20% miss chance without Darkvision and you can not sneak attack something with concealment.

Snowball does not seem all that great to me. You do 5d6 every other round if you chain cast it, and you still need to hit with the attack. Should not be too hard against a golem but I am not seeing how 9 points of damage a round is going to break any encounters.

Emergency Force Sphere seems like it can be easily dealt with by an NPC stinking cloud. Also if they PC is also casting Time Stop their power level is pretty high.

I agree with 2-5 wholeheartedly. Limited Wish is pretty high up there on the levels side, and as you said the cost is a bit high. Legend Lore seems easy enough to deal with. I would exclude pretty much all 9th level spells from the broken list. I think once you reach the pinnacle of human magic being broken is part of the point.

I have a few points I suppose.

1) Paizo was 3rd Party for a long time until it moved itself into the spot light.

2) Paizo in their own products uses other 3rd Party Stuff.

As for the whole homebrew restrictive debate, I think I like my stuff a little restrictive. I want a setting that blends well together and not something that sounds like the start of a bad joke. I think there are times when crazy and original can be fun, but if anything goes all the time I am not sure I would be able to distinguish one campaign from another. Especially in the case where the campaign has a theme I think people do it and themselves a great disservice by not bending in that themes direction. That is my personal taste though, part of the fun in my opinion is making a character that fits the setting.

Velcro Zipper wrote:

Hostile Levitation sounds perfect for dealing with waterborne creatures until you actually read the spell effect and see it only levitates creatures a few inches off the ground. I guess that means it either doesn't work on creatures swimming in deep water or it doesn't make enough of a difference to help. Guess you could always try Telekinesis if you've got the levels for it.

Except that you can't target anyone who has total cover from you. According to these rules, any aquatic enemy with a reach weapon can murder you, and you can watch them do it, but you can't target them.

That's why I'm going with this for my current Skull & Shackles campaign:

• Partially submerged = partial cover (+2 AC, +1 reflex)
  
• Submerged = cover (+4 AC, +2 reflex, no attacks of opportunity)
  
• Submerged with 5' of water intervening = improved cover (+8 AC, +4 reflex, no attacks of opportunity)
  
• Murky or choppy water = concealment (20% miss chance)

You can still targer the square that you think they are in, which should not be too difficult. It is pretty much how spear fishing works anyhow I would assume. I also would imagine spear fishing is not that easy. I doubt even the best spear fishers hit all of the time.

Also I thought Spear Fisherman were typically standing in the river, which you could argue is not an attack from land and therefore not subject to this rule.

Teleport, Windwalk, and Mindblank come to mind. They all muck things up pretty good. I am not sure I would say those spells are broken, but as a GM you really need to account for them.

James explained that upthread.

You could also ask why they (?; at least Karzoug did) boosted their Str score?
Because they can/could. Heck, they had all the resources imaginable available to them; what should've stopped them from doing so?

Ruyan.

Yeah I say the "I Do" post after I posted. I guess it would just naturally happen after awhile any how, since they typically live awhile.

Why do they even need to take a feat. You don't need a feat to use it, just not take the -4 penalty. If you are an epic level spell caster then who cares if you take a -4 to hit with it. It is mostly a status thing.

The usefulness of skills is very group dependent. If the GM is flexible and the players are creative, then skills can become a lot more useful. Personally I like to punish players for their lack of skills at times and reward them for their skills at other times. I think it also has to do with trust as well. With my main group of players, if they rolled an appraise check, I would probably tell them how much they think it was worth and how much it really was worth and expect them to roleplay. In my last gaming session the PCs were invited to dinner by someone, each and every play assumed it was a trap. I had them roll sense motives and they all did terribly. I did not even have to say anything, they just smiled and graciously accepted this woman's invitation.

What does finding a weak spot in a wall do? No clue, but if I was GMing I would probably drop the hardness of that area. Maybe only soaks 15 points of damage instead of 20. Skills are tools, you can use them how you see fit.

A lot of skill uses will depend on how much your GM implements them into the game. Also, how strictly they run module rules. I remember the first time I played in a PFS game, I was trying to become friends with some of the npcs that were shipwrecked with us. I talked with them, invited them to explore, gave them supplies, asked about their worries, but nothing I did made any difference. Then one of the other players just said, i want to befriend so and so, my diplomacy roll is 18. GM said, okay, he's friendly to you now.

The GM explained that no matter how well you explain or plan something, it means nothing without the roll, because then naturally charismatic or smart people could just avoid putting any points into social skills and still do those roles.

I think it should probably fall somewhere in the middle. If you wanted to just walk up to someone and try to be friendly with them and make a straight roll go for it. However if you put all that work into it, I would still make you roll, depending on what you were trying to do, but I would take all that into consideration. Even in a lot of written adventures they have things that if you do them, it automatically makes someone friendly towards you. If someone is complaining they are hungry and you feed them, then you should expect a bonus or a much easier DC for befriending them certainly. So at the end of all you did, the GM in my opinion should have told you to make a Diplomacy check, but compensated.

I don't know much about Word Casters but do they not have many utility spells? What kind of spell list does his character have? Do you foresee him being useless most of the time?

SR comes up a good amount in general, so if he has played wizards before I am sure he is aware of that. I agree with the oozes rogue analogy. That being said, if the campaign went to Oozopolis or something then it might be worth mentioning. If Oozopolis was also filled with traps, then I might let it slide.

Over all you want your players to have fun. If he can adjust the character as he levels to where it is not an issue, then I would not mention it, or not make a big deal of it.

Are you going to allow for healing and buffs in between rounds? Also I doubt he would get killed unless it was a fight to the death. It sounds like it is suppose to be on the sporty side, so I assume the worse that will happen is he will get knocked out.

Don't listen to these chicken littles, it will be fine. Let your players have fun and play what they want.

I assume you are talking about the story at the beginning? In Pathfinder there is a Book of the Damned written by an Angel to further understand the Evil Forces in the Universe. That is an excerpt from it. Pretty sure there are a few more in that book, and in the other books of the series. It is more or less for flavor though. It might be true, it might be propaganda, it might be the writings of a insane Angel, or a false prophet or a million of things. The Validity and Importance are up to the GM. Similar to a plot hook.

I think any flavor text like that in Prince of Darkness is suppose to have come from The Book of the Damned, as are the parts of the flavor text from the other two books of the series, Lords of Chaos??? and the one on Daemons, though those two books are more about the crazy angels dealings with those two groups. There is also something in Legends and Artifacts about the book itself. I am assuming there are more bits and pieces elsewhere as well.

Here's a bit of the experience I've had in my current RotRL group:

GM: Experienced

5 Players
Wizard - Less than a year of Pathfinder Experience (me)
Cavalier - Less than a year of Pathfinder Experience
Paladin - First Pathfinder Experience
Cleric - 2nd Pathfinder Experience
Rogue - Longtime Pathfinder player/roleplayer

20 point buy, GM gave us twice our hit die at level 1 plus an extra feat.

All that being said, we absolutely carved through the first section with delightfully enjoyable ease. Our GM up'd the CRs, but even still, there were very few moments of any actual threat to the well being of our characters, and most of those were at levels 1 and 2.

After the 1st section completed, we are all at level 4.

My advice? Yeah, it's made for 4 players. Up the CR, keep them at the rest of the items you've imposed.

This seems all sort of strange to me. I think I am missing something other then the obvious.

1) Make sure the players know the rules. I am playing in an AP and the first session I noticed the Bard was adding terrible mods to his check so I asked him if he was adding the +3 for the trained skill, and he was not. Stuff like that and Favored Class tend to me over looked. So try to have a general idea of what should be happening and if it is not then figure out why.

2) It is pretty easy to just add some encounters on the fly, throw in an extra goblin if need be, or max out mob hit points. I would run it as is to start and if it seems like it is a bit easy just throw another wave of goblins at them or something. For Boss Fights just give max HP maybe the advanced template. I would not worry about things too much. It does not need to be edge of your seat intense all the time to still be a lot of fun.

I wonder if the language barrier issue is going to be addressed. I assume Taldorian and Russian are not exactly the same language.

I give up, what am I missing? Why is Paragon Surge so awesome?

El Baron de los Banditos wrote:

I really want to play one of these races and call all humans "apefolk" now.

That's actually a very good idea. It highlights the humancentric bias that developed these race names in the first place. Though then you have the pressure on the GM when the human in question says "Well, what do you call yourselves?"

I agree the people at Paizo should hire more non-humans so they can get away from these human biases.

Most likely not. It might make it difficult to run one if they make an Andoran AP, but so far most of the APs would be pretty easy to run as is. I can not think of one off the top of my head that would need changing.

Also all the APs start at level 1 so there is no need to keep the world consistent with anything you have done in the past. I do not think any of the games I have run have taken place on the same game world, though I do borrow things from previous games for convenience of familiarity.

Okay, so I was looking through the Advanced Race Guide, when I realized just how dumb-sounding catfolk and ratfolk sound. I mean, sure, they look like cats and rats, but they're really the only races who seem singled out by that designation in their name.

After all, gnolls aren't called hyenafolk. There aren't ravenfolk, there are tengus. It's vanaris, not monkeyfolk. And gods help you if you call a minotaur a bullfolk.

So, why don't we have cooler names for catfolk and ratfolk, if every other animal-themed race gets a better name?

Most of the things you listed are Earthly inventions and where named a long time ago. Advanced Races guide is designed to be generic so giving things names with context does not seem like a good idea to me. People seem to be suggesting a lot of Asian themed names, but nothing about catfolk especially on Golaria is overly Asian. Calling them catfolk and ratfolk also makes it easy for people who are not familiar with them to get a fast understanding of what they are. Sometimes simplicity is a valuable tool.

Arnwyn wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Man, I don't get why Andoran is so unpopular that apparently I am the only person on the boards who'd want an AP set there.

For those of us uninterested in Golarion and who adapt the APs to fit our chosen campaign setting, "Andoran" is just some funny name - uninteresting with no hook.

Adaptable APs are the best APs. Overly niche APs entirely dependent on Golarion... are not.

Thank you. +100 on this.

Sometimes reading through the forums I wonder if I am in the complete minority or if this is just a result of a "filter bubble". I must say my players would have little to no interest in running Golarion. Nevertheless I as DM love some guidance to flesh out our world, and adaptable APs are what I would definitely pay for.

From what does their lack of interest stem?

KingmanHighborn wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

One thing to add though... ** spoiler omitted **

In response to your spoiler good sir. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil's_Cathedral

It's only like THE most famous building east of the Eifel Tower.

It is pretty recognizable, but nowhere near most famous. Consider:

The Sphinx? The pyramids? The Great Wall of China? The Qaba, and associated structures? The Hagia Sophia? The Suez Canal? The Wailing Wall? Angkor Wat? The Taj Mahal? Back then, the Simplon tunnel? St. Peter's in Rome? The Colosseum? The Acropolis? Maybe most famous in Russia, although the Hermitage and the Bolshoi theater are pretty close, plus the palaces and the Kremlin.

I am pretty sure most Americans could not tell you what or where most of the second half of that list is. The probably could not name Saint Basil's Cathedral, but I am going to be optimistic and say most of them would know it was in Russia.

The bestiary is hopefully made up out of Slavic mythology, worst case scenario it is filled with tanks, titanic and human soldiers. ;)

But then it shouldn't be called BEASTairy.

Apparently they are called BESTiaries. I have stared at those books for almost 3 years and never even noticed that.