Tivfus Ardwynor's page

There is a somewhat annoying logical progression with crafted items in both 3.0 and 3.5 that may want to addressed in 3.75.

1.It is not terribly costly to create an item that creates food and water once per round indefinately.
2. It is not terribly costly to create an item that will cure disease in the same manner.

This means that any society that wants healthy and well fed people will ensure that these items are available.

This means that there will be a population boom of epic proportions...the modern industrial revolution doesn't hold a candle to almost free food and perfect health care. Add in items that create walls of stone for roads, disintigration for tunnels/excavation, rock to mud etc...and there will no longer be an even remotely feudal system left, which is where D&D is set.

Any nation that does not invest in crafted items, especially food and disease ones, will quickly be crushed by the overwhelming numbers of neighboring nations; elves will be especially vulnerable since it takes so long for elves to mature into adults...

I realize this is a little silly, but if a D.M. is running a game that emphasizes politics and how nations interact, the D.M. would be remiss in not looking for ways in which those nations could use spells or items to create a more powerful nation; that is what we do with technology after all. Creating these items, however, irrevocably changes the game...pretty hard to have an adventure in the wilderness when there is no wilderness left(an adventure theme that is rather appropriate given the current state of our world, but still...)

Yours in nerdyness,
Jeff

Taking those two things and ONLY those two things lets look at what would happen.

1st: Free Food for all, ok so now you have all those farmers (animal, food plants, wheat etc.) are all now out of work, cant make money because theres no call for there products, now you have thousands if not millions of animals that now cant be feed the grains they need because the farmer cant sell them at market, in 3-4 years theres going to be BIG trouble, the crop farmers cant sell thier produce anymore because its being magicked into being, those fields now go defunct.

2nd: Those road builders are all now out of jobs, they cant make any more money because it only takes one person now to do the work of dozens in just minutes.

(Yes I know both those points can be worked out better, its almost midnight, so give me a break.)

3rd: All the out of work people now have to find work, they join the army, now the kingdom has a massive army to feed take care of, and find something for them to do, need more wands for food and health care.

4th: Those that cant get into the army turn to banditry, the army now has something to do, killing their kinsmen.

5th: The Kingdom goes broke from paying for all the soldiers and buying new wands for food and health care, cant afford new wands for roads, roads start breaking down, army cant get where it needs to defend the country, bandits start taking over at the borders.

6th: No more Mages or Priest able to make wands as they have used all their energy on making all the other batches of wands, rival Mages start charging massive ransoms for the creation of wands, Priest cant keep up with the demand, Temples fall into ruin.

7th: Gods get mad, their Temples are in shambles, Priest no longer get spells until they atone, people get sick and die from the new diseases and lack of food.

8th: New lost kingdom for Adventures to explore rinse and repeat as needed.

Archade wrote:

Windbit wrote:

For example, I'd think that a zombie would be vulnerable to a sneak attack (sever the head or destroy the brain), while a skeleton warrior wouldn't.

Let me say that again, sever the head or destroy the brain.

These are examples of coup de grace and not Sneak Attack, which is a knife in the kidney or a smack to the temple. Undead are immune to Sneak Attacks for a reason.

Even the examples you gave wouldn't necessarily stop a zombie. I can see one remaining functional without a head. The point of zombies is that none of their organs function, so puncturing the stomach, dicing the liver, piercing a kidney or pureeing the brain will make no difference.

Killing a Zombie requires literally hacking it apart into so many pieces that it becomes non-functional. That's why they have DR/slashing.

Rez

Now it represents being able to find a weak spot more so than striking at vital organs.

Thats from pg 26 PFRPG Designers Notes, you are not really attacking vital organs anymore, you are hitting a weak point, severing the spinal cord of skeletons, or hitting that one spot that is binding that negetive energy to the corpes in the first place, hitting that fualty bolt on the Iron Golems.
Somethings should remain immune to sneak attacks, that I agree with, if you need to, require that rogues have ranks in porper knowledge skills to get the sneak attack on the monsters that shouldnt be suseptable to SA.

To the OP, thats what elven rogues are for =D

Tivfus Ardwynor wrote:

unfortiantaly I currently do not own the that book,

Well go out and buy it already!! :P

LOL, That takes money, :P~

Yea, I came to that conclusion as well, and haev been stumped on what to do about it. I dont want the players to be to weak for there level by not haveing enough treause, but I also dont want to have them to pawerful to soon. With the new advancement rate, I really cant just say, ok Ill figure it as 13 encounters for a level, as even 1 good encounter with several higher CR's will throw that off completely, so I guess Im going to go by feel on this one for now, its how Ive DMed for years already, guess theres no reason to change that now.

Thanks for the replies everyone, and sorry we couldnt help each other on this one :S

What I understand of the XP advancement rates, the chart that you use doesn't matter as the XP given from each encounter is already set, the way I read them was that if I was to use the fast advancement (which for now I will as that is closer to the 3.5 standard) any encounter with opponents of CR 1 gives ( using table 12-3 pg 62) 100xp for a group of 4 players, whether the party is 1st level, or 20th level, I get that and understand that part fine, and I agree with it.

What I'm needing to know, is how much treasure I give the party, that same CR 1 creature may give 100xp, but how much gold does it warrant giving the party?

Before it would have been about 300gp worth of treasure, but now with the EL effectively gone, the encounter that I have planned (6 CR 1/3rd creatures for a EL of 2) would have given about 600gp, now though as it is an EL equal to the party, which means that they get only 300gp, I'm fine with giving less treasure per encounter, but I don't want to be cheating the party out of their hard earned treasure.

And now that I'm looking at it and thinking about it, the advancement rate will play hard on how much treasure to give out for the expected treasure per level rate, and that also needs to be looked at. Since it takes longer to level up now, the old rates can no longer apply, so whats the new character wealth by level going to be as well.

Edit: Sorry Disenchanter, I read your post wrong there and didnt come back to what you was saying until the end of my post. *feels a bit sheepish now*

unfortiantaly I currently do not own the that book, so Im limited to the DMG for my treasures, unless those charts also have an OGL, in which case I might go take a look at them.

The charts isnt whats stumping me at the moment, its weather or nor I should be following those charts as normal, or if I need to figure out a new balance for treasure per encounter, Im planning an encounter at the moment with 4 goblins and 2 coyote "war dogs".
I need to know how much treasure this encounter should be giving to the group, standard 3.5 rules this is a EL 2, under the new rules, its an Average encounter for a party of level 1 characters, (but I have under 4 members at the moment, and so the group is closer to 1/2 instead of the 1 that it should be, but thats for another thread i think.
So am I planning treasure for a EL 2, or am I planning treasure for a EL 1?

With the way encounters are done now (pg 61) it changes the way that the treasure tables where done and now im not to sure on how to figure out the proper amount of treasure per encounter, any suggestions?

At the moment Im going to figure it as the partys level is the encounter level and base the treasure off that, but this seems to not add up right to me.

You should also consider that Dragons by nature are very magical beings, and the older they get the more magic they have that adds to their flying abilities.
Granting that still doesn't count for some other creatures not being able to out fly them like a will-o-wisp, but the suggestion of adding size modifier to the Fly skill as well as maneuver modifier will off set that a bit more.

Also remember the creatures that you are considering to be better or worse flyers, the will-o-wisp is nothing much more then a gas shpere, it might have perfect maneuverability, but also has to acount for gusts of wind, up and down drafts, high and low pockets etc, smaller creatures, like the wasp, is smaller and has to use much more energy to fly then bigger things like dragons, or celestials or fiends, whos nature makes flight easier, the only thing i would really be conserned about is Invisible Stalkers, Air Elements, and monsters that are even more conected to flight.

My $0.02

Design Focus: Skills

4. Hybrid System: In this system, characters would get a number of skill ranks equal to the number of skill choices granted by the Skills chapter of the Pathfinder RPG. Skill ranks granted by the first level of your class must be spent on class skills. Skill ranks granted after first level and those granted by a high Intelligence score at first level could be spent on any skill. Instead of the class skill/cross-class skill distinction, your bonus in a skill would be determined in the following method.

0 ranks – Untrained: Bonus = ability modifier + racial modifiers (or modifiers)
1 ranks – Trained: Bonus = 1/2 your character level + modifiers
2 ranks – Skilled: Bonus = your character level + modifiers
3 ranks – Expert: Bonus = your character level + 3 + modifiers
4 ranks – Master: Bonus = your character level +6 + modifiers

There are a few additional rules to go with this. At first level, you can have no skill higher than 2 ranks (or the skilled level). Many of the prestige...

This has to be my favorite option at the moment, I stopped reading at page 3 and will likely go bad and continue reading later, but I wanted to post now before I lost my train of thought.

I could honestly do with or without Skill Points, and this system allows for customization while keeping things simple enough that a DM can quickly stat out NPC's (I'm my groups DM and have issues with this all the time as math is NOT my strong suit).

I would also like to see the classes having a few more skill points as I've never understood why the Fighter and the Wizard got the short end of the stick when it comes to skill points, OK so the fighter really doesn't need that many as there's not that many skills that are Fighter oriented, but the Wizard?? they are supposed to be some of the most Intelligent people in the world and yet they have to stretch their skill points cut down the ranks and give up other skills they may have learned just to get 3-4 Knowledge skills out of the 10 that's there, and (at least in my groups) the Wizard is the one that always has the knowledge skills, everyone turns to the Wizard to tell them what this or that is, just like they turn to the Rogue to get rid of that trap, the Cleric to heal their wounds, and the Fighter to go be a meat shield for everyone else.
Ill stop my rant now.

[Edited for bad grammer]

Thats what I was thinking as well, it would be nice, but luikely not feasable for this gaming system, and Rogues will almost always be better then Fighters IMO, so no worries there ;)

Maybe this is just hopeful dreaming on my part but it was something I liked about 2nd ED and was thinking it would be nice to bring over if possable.

I was thinking of something along the lines of the way it was done in 2E, with a modifier to Inititave based on the weapon used, but that would modify almost every round if someone kept switching between weapons. Anyway, Ill keep thinking about this and I might come up with something to submit and see what people think about it.

I would like to see a return of weapon speeds, in second ED there was a good reason to get a short sword or a dagger, in 3rd ED there's really no reason to take any weapon smaller then a long sword or rapier, nor is there a great reason to select a great axe over the great sword other then crit mod and 1 dice vs 2 die the damage range is still the same.

So if its possible I would like to see something along those lines returned or a similar mechanic that made weapon choices more then "OK whats going to give me the greatest damage range and best crit modifier".

Any thoughts?

I think I would like to see the Warlock and the Sorcerer combined, or something to that effect. Faeruns Silver Fire maybe, something that would give the Sorcerer a magical edge over the Wizard, for sheer power, will keeping the Wizard more flexible.

Monks do need a bit of improvement on their ability to hit, maybe something along the lines of a Fighters weapon focus and greater weapon focus, there are feats already to improve their damage if you know where to look (Monster Manual pg304- Improved Natural Attack, monks unarmed strike is considered a natural and a manufactured weapon by the rules), so that's fine.
A bonus on grapples would be nice as that's heavily in their flavor, maybe Improved Grapple as a bonus feat?

As a strong defender of Elven Wizards everywhere first off I have to say ITS ABOUT TIME.

Since I started playing back in 94-95 elven wizards have had to contend with Ogres toting great clubs, Dragons with Scimitars for claws, hordes of Orcs and Goblins with sharp, pointed, rusted objects that they have always loved putting into my poor weak elven mages. Since the days I was first drawn to this game mages have been weak and elven mages the weakest of all. Finally they can get the chance to scream before the next blade, club, or arrow pierces there body instead of looking up in surprise and gurgling on their own blood as they slide to the ground forever stilled.

On a serious note however, Elves have always been said to be the best magic users around, having an innate ability that no other race has, as well as long years to practice. This seems to be to be the best way of giving the fluff some true game mechanics.
Giving them this is no more powerful then giving every character around the table Action Points, once those hit my group no spell ever failed to penetrate SR, let alone AC.

As to Fighters, Ill agree that they need more skill options, I like playing human fighters that enters melee, not Panzer Tanks thank can only go where the road is.

As for the skills, I have to say I'm not fond of the loose of skill points, Id rather have those then anything else I think, the way it is now seems TO MUCH like 2nd ED's skill slots. I would like to see a return however of warrior skills, rogue skills, general skills etc. I never understood why that was removed in the first place, so if possible I would like to see them put back into the game.

I am new to these boards, indeed, to paizo's online websight.
I've desided this was the easiest way to vent some anger.
I subscribe to Dragon, and a couple issuses ago, they take out what I started subscribing for, the info that all DM's find useful. The magazine is still good, but it was better.
Now, its more of a Players magazine instead of a good source of info for both.
Why? so Wizards can make money? I dont think thats the reason, but it sure seems that way. Now instead of getting the information I need and want in 1 magazine, I have to spend more of my all to rare money for another subscription, instead of useing it to buy more books that I would really like to have for my games.
I have always looked forward to the magazine every month, but now it comes later then what it did. It doesnt have all the info I looked forward to, and now they are starting to fill it with crappy short storys. If I wanted to read 3 pages of a book that might be interesting, I'll go to the library and skim all the books there, I dont want to pay for the privalage of reading something that might never be published.
The one thing that has offset atleast 1 of these, is the monthly riddle, that was a spot of brillance, and I praze the person that had that idea, but please tell me, why take out everything that made the magazine good in the first place?
To make more room for stuff that I'll never use?
I play in FR, I might be interested in Ebboron, but not right now, so I like the non-specific setting articals.
Ok, Im going to end this rant now and move on to something more creative, like surfing the web to find what once came to me...