Tsoli's page

I'd be surprised if it got two quarters. One, sure, because people will just buy what there is to take a look at it, but all in all, I wasn't terribly interested. They made a lot of mistakes in making 4th Edition, and they're still not really sure what it is they're trying to make; a storytelling system or a dynamic leveling up machine or a computer game.

Pathfinder succeeded because it allows people to use their homebrew, use their 3rd party and 3rd edition rules and adventures; it is entirely possible to create the story and gameworld that you want; that's why i keep picking up more splatbooks, not just to give me more options, but because I appreciate the company making them; I trust that they actually care about this game I'm spending my time (and money) on.

I am a cis-male, gay, white/Native American; I play with mainly straight cis-male white players. I've noticed that most of them play Straight, White Men (usually Human, sometimes elven).

I balk at this lack of diversity, and usually try do a randomized gender/skintone. Basically, half of my characters are male, half female. While a setting can vary racial considerations, in most settings, I will choose a Real-world ethnicity and look for interesting google images for a character concept photo. A few of my characters are biracial humans, and in science fiction (Star Trek) campaigns, I have been an Asian Trill, a Latino Vulcan, and an Arabic Bajoran.

These backgrounds never really come into play; they are simply a nod to the fact that there are people who look and are different than me.

+2 to Fortitude. But, i don't know that I recommend this, as it is entirely situational; how long does it last? Why wouldn't the character just always eat a full course meal all the time? A cleric can cast a spell to create a full course meal, so he just gets a pearl of power and boom, a constant-on trait bonus.

Maybe something more like

Benefit: Gain a +2 trait bonus to fortitude. This benefit is temporarily lost if you haven't eaten a warm meal in the last 8 hours.

This will make stopping and camping more strategic. Assuming you're looking for more roleplaying from dwarves than just lopping off shins and swilling grog.

My players didn't pick up on the hints about a well-worn cave after defeating Tsuto. They wanted to take explosives down to destroy 'whatever evil' might come out. So I had them roleplay the other mini-events, like the lone goblin commando, the amorous young lady, and some more RP with a certain future Bad guy. Then Sheriff Useless has Ameiko translate some of Tsuto's personal writings to lead them back to the catacombs. By the time they cleared that out, they had gone through 8 encounters, and several roleplay situations, plus they had to figure out a way to prevent the paladin from 'losing his head'. I think that's plenty enough to warrant leveling up, even if it's only due to a few day's worth of activities, and I don't worry about how many sessions I can pack it into.

As someone who has notoriously bad stat rolls (or maybe who plays with a whole lot of cheaters), I appreciate the Stat Array.

It allows for the DM to control the power level (you could set a Point Buy of 15, 20, or whatever) and every character gets to build as they like.

When I'm rolling 16, 14, 13, 11, 11, 9 (on 4d6 drop one) and the other guy is rolling 18, 18, 18, 16, 15, 10, I'm pretty instantly feeling like Gabrielle to the Xena of the group. A sidekick rather than a hero.

I tend to go with describing characters as though the modifiers were sort of like standard deviations.

Basically, just about every single adult human you meet is strength 10 or 11. They can raise a bag of potatoes above their head with minimum difficulty.

A person with str 12 or 13 is surprisingly stronger than you might have guessed. they could raise a small keg of ale above their head with minimal difficulty- something a 10 or 11 could do but should take care, lest they slip and hurt themselves.

A person with str 14 or 15 is likely noticeably stronger than average. You would actually expect above average feats of strength from them. This is my personal limit on what is natural versus what is trained.

Str of 16 or more is a person to whom strength is so important they spend time training it and getting better each day. People who begin each morning dragging logs or are employed removing rocks from fields. As 18 is generally accepted to be the nonmagical Human maximum, people with more than 18 in something register as supernatural.

If you use this basic model with the other abilities, it should be fairly easy to correlate.

Dex: 10/11 Can toss a ball into a barrel from ten feet away.
12/13 can toss a ball into a hat from ten feet away. Surprisingly agile.
14/15 Noticeably quick and nimble.
16/17 Trains daily their acrobatics, aim, or something else dexterity related.
18 or more suggests supernatural dexterity. I'm thinking matrix-style dodging, kung fu movie leaping.

Con: 10/11 Healthy. Can probably stomach a baby's dirty diaper.
12/13 Can stomach the smell of a skunk that had sprayed earlier without heaving.
14/15 Noticeably hearty. Could withstand a skunk spraying with minimal problems
16/17 Trains daily their constitution. Might constantly be looking for new hot things or smelly foods to eat. Likes to test their limits.
18 or more can withstand things on a regular basis that can kill normal people.

Int: 10/11 Remembers most things they learned or did yesterday.
12/13 Remembers most things they learned or did months ago.
14/15 Noticeably good at recalling things. Remembers that you had your blue earrings in last year at the fall festival when you sneezed three times and said "X".
16/17 Probably reads daily. On constant lookout for new knowledge, and remembers it all.
18 or more has the capacity to recall minutiae on many many topics.

Wis: 10/11 Makes decent predictions.
12/13 Has a good gut instinct, usually right about things
14/15 Noticeably bright and wise. With just a single clue, you can draw accurate conclusions
16/17 Spends time meditating each day, honing the mind.
18 or more seems to see beyond what we see, noticing unexpected things. Sherlock Holmes probably has a 19 wisdom.

Cha: 10/11 A decent, average person.
12/13 A warm, person- has a certain something about them.
14/15 Clearly one who is a great person to be around.
16/17 Every day they are spending time socializing and practicing telling stories
18 or more is strangely alluring, so much so that we don't even understand why we're so drawn to them.

I'm playing a first level synthesist, and yes, I dumped my strength. I'm roleplaying the character (sort of a naive savage from a tribe outside of civilization) to see herself in a dual manner. There are things that her animal self is able to do, other things that she is better at. She's terrible at climbing, but likes to do it as a human anyway. I have been having a lot of fun with the other players, them pointing out that I could probably climb better if I were *ahem* a monster, but what would be the fun of that?

One little houserule we've created between the GM and myself is that you cannot live in the eidolon armor. I sleep as a human every night. In town I am always out of my suit. I think of it as though I'm a horrible, ugly superman. I never transform in front of people if I can help it.

Like a Pufferfish. That would be pretty funny if they had to hold their breath or something in order to maintain their size.

Hi everybody.
Me and my friends just started playing Pathfinder about two months ago, and I've been really enjoying the changes Paizo has made to 3.5.

My friend is the GM and he got a recommendation from some random dude to use an alternative Hit Point rolling scheme that goes like this: Roll a d4 and subtract the result from the total possible of your class die, 4 counts as a zero (if it's a d8, you could get anywhere between 5 and 8 hp at a new level, instead of 1 to 8.)

In general, this seemed kind of cool until I thought about three things-

First, all creatures use this rule exactly now, so every single fight lasts a little longer. We only got to use the rule when we leveled to 5th, not retroactively, so our party of 4 is each missing out on a small handful, perhaps 5 hp, not that much, but still, at level 5, it's still noticable.

Second, he used a haunt (which I'm not too fond of, personally) that took one of our fighters immediately down to -8 hp... at the beginnning of a dungeon. From 40-odd HP down to -8 in a second... That takes a lot of healing to make up for it.

Third, I'm playing the healer in the group, an Oracle. By the time we reached the big bad, I had used up ALL my spell slots on healing. I didn't cast any other kinds of spells... just healing spells, and I had nothing if anyone actually got hurt in the biggest fight of the night.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on how messing with hitpoints might affect the game. I'm thinking that the extra round or two each creature we face sticks around in battle is going to add up eventually, and I'd personally like to be able to use my spells for something other than healing.

I addressed this with my GM, and he said that since we're getting the same benefit, it'll all even up, but I don't think he's taking into account healing. Am I totally wrong? (This was the house in Rise of the Runelords module 2, in case you're wondering...)

Thanks!