Uthreth Baelcoressitas's page

Hey guys,

I'm building a character to use in a game coming up in a couple of weeks. It'll be a mix of published content and homebrew; my impression is that the GM will basically alternate. This is not for PFS or anything.

Anyway, the concept for the character is to be an Aasimar that, through Scion of Humanity and Racial Heritage can qualify for Kobold feats, including Scaled Disciple, which would allow an Oracle to qualify for Dragon Disciple.

On one side, he has an angel as a distant ancestor, making him an Angel-Blooded Aasimar. On the other side, through a kobold several generations back, he has a very distant Lunar Dragon ancestor. His alignment pulls from both, Good from the Angel and Chaotic from the Dragon, so he's CG. In combat, I was thinking of keeping a mundane longsword or greatsword until he qualifies for Dragon Disciple at level 6, at which point I might transition to using primarily natural weapons, or perhaps sticking with a one handed weapon like a longsword to be able to get a claw attack in. For armor I think I'd love to eventually get into some Celestial Armor, but maybe there's something better I'm not looking at. Also, is there a way to get a +1 version for much cheaper, for example taking off the difference between +1 and +3 so that it would end up being like 6400gp or something? Point buy is 20, and I was thinking of 15 8 14 10 10 16. Obviously the level 4 point would go into Strength, and likely all other points after that as well.

I'd appreciate any constructive comments on the build below, and any ideas. I was playing around with throwing some Paladin in there, but decided against it, though it was a tough choice so I'm definitely open to discussion on that. I'd like the character to focus more on flavor than min/maxing, but I'd like a small amount of optimization within that constraint.

We're starting at level 1, but I have the build mapped out for the first 12 levels:

Angel-Blooded Aasimar Dual Cursed Lunar Oracle 5 / Dragon Disciple 7

1: Dual Cursed Oracle 1 {Scion of Humanity} (Lunar Mystery) (Tongues [Draconic]) (Hunger)
(Prophetic Armor) [Racial Heritage (Kobold)]
2: Dual Cursed Oracle 2
3: Dual Cursed Oracle 3 (Gift of Claw and Horn) [Tail Terror]
4: Dual Cursed Oracle 4
5: Dual Cursed Oracle 5 (Misfortune) [Scaled Disciple]
6: Dragon Disciple 1 (Claws) (Blood of Dragons) (Natural Armor +1)
7: Dragon Disciple 2 (Strength +2) (Dragon Bite) (Bloodline Feat: Improved Initiative) [Multiattack?]
8: Dragon Disciple 3 (Dragon Resistances) (Breath Weapon: Cold, 60ft Line)
9: Dragon Disciple 4 (Strength +2) (Natural Armor +1) []
10: Dragon Disciple 5 (Blindsense 30ft) (Bloodline Feat: Toughness)
11: Dragon Disciple 6 (Constitution +2) []
12: Dragon Disciple 7 (Dragon Form 1/day) (Natural Armor +1)

{} = Alternate Feature, () = Class Ability, [] = Feat

The GM has allowed me to use Draconic for the Tongues curse to add flavor to the character. Other than that I think everything is RAW, so please let me know if I'm mistaken.

Do you enjoy surviving in the wilderness, relying on your skills and those of your brothers and sisters so that you aren't forced to be a city dweller?

We're looking to expand our family, and if the above applies to your character in a roleplaying sense then you may just fit right in.

Sponsoring Settlement: Phaeros
Member of: The Seventh Veil
Alignment: True Neutral (we accept NG, LN, TN, CN, and NE)

Roleplaying: We preserve and protect the forest, and harvest using sustainable methods. We're woodsmen, hunters, and survivalists and we're a band of brothers.

Membership: The Echo Woodsmen are a sub-community of The Seventh Veil and are sponsored by Phaeros, a settlement in the southeast. As such, in order to become a member of The Echo Woodsmen you must first apply and become a member of The Seventh Veil.

Leadership: The Echo Woodsmen are led by a core group of real life friends who meet up and socialize often. We play board games, roleplay in several different tabletop groups using a variety of systems, and many of us went to college together in our younger days. Collectively we have decades of gaming experience, both on- and off-line. We're a mature group who like to have fun and we're very interested in promoting positive game play.

*If we sound like a group that you could call family, head over to The Seventh Veil forums and apply. Be sure to mention in your application that you'd like to be a member of The Echo Woodsmen.

**Also, our wild blueberries are delicious.

Our Updated Recruitment Thread @ The Seventh Veil

Do you consider yourself manly? Or perhaps you might just enjoy the company of manly men.

We're looking to expand our family, and if the above applies to your character in a roleplaying sense then you may just fit right in.

Sponsoring Settlement: Phaeros
Member of: The Seventh Veil
Alignment: True Neutral (we accept NG, LN, TN, CN, and CE)

Roleplaying: We preserve and protect the forest, and harvest using sustainable methods. We're woodsmen, hunters, and survivalists and we're a band of brothers.

Membership: The Echo Woodsmen are a sub-community of The Seventh Veil and are sponsored by Phaeros, a settlement in the southeast. As such, in order to become a member of The Echo Woodsmen you must first apply and become a member of The Seventh Veil, here.

Leadership: The Echo Woodsmen are led by a core group of real life friends who meet up and socialize often. We play board games, roleplay in several different tabletop groups using a variety of systems, and many of us went to college together in our younger days. Collectively we have decades of gaming experience, both on- and off-line. We're a mature group who like to have fun and we're very interested in promoting positive game play.

*If we sound like a group that you could call family, head over to The Seventh Veil forums and apply. Be sure to mention in your application that you'd like to be a member of The Echo Woodsmen.

Also, we have blueberries.

Our Thread @ The Seventh Veil

Sponsoring Settlement: Phaeros
Member of: The Seventh Veil
Alignment: True Neutral

Roleplaying: The Echo Woodsmen consist of characters from all roles, with the common cause of harvesting from the natural environment using sustainable methods. We're lumberjacks, hunters, trappers, gardeners, gatherers, crafters, and even land developers that focus on long term health of the natural biome. Gardening and harvesting timber sustainably actually increases the natural health of the area, and adopting a hunting methodology with focus on maintaining the biodiversity of the fauna in the region is a net benefit to the natural environs.

Membership: The Echo Woodsmen are a sub-community of The Seventh Veil and are sponsored by Phaeros, a settlement in the southeast of the Early Enrollment map. As such, in order to become a member of The Echo Woodsmen you must first apply and become a member of The Seventh Veil, here.

Leadership: The Echo Woodsmen are led by a core group of real life friends who meet up and socialize often. We play board games, roleplay in several different tabletop groups using a variety of systems, and many of us went to college together in our younger days. Collectively we have decades of gaming experience, both on- and off-line. We're a mature group who like to have fun and we're very interested in promoting positive game play.

Looking Ahead: The Echo Woodsmen plan to run a PoI and both outposts in a woodlands hex near Phaeros. As we discover more information about the game, we will adjust our plans accordingly, but currently the outposts will be a Lumber Mill and a Hunting Lodge.

*If we sound like a group that you could call family, head over to The Seventh Veil and apply. Be sure to mention in your application that you'd like to be a member of The Echo Woodsmen.

I apologize if I missed it, I wasn't able to find information on this.

What happens to the contents of a bank when the settlement it's in is destroyed? What if just the bank is destroyed?

To the victors go the spoils? A percentage of them? Do the contents remain in the bank in case you can somehow sneak in and withdraw them under cover of darkness and distraction?

What about if you're kicked out of a settlement? Is there a scenario where your goods are confiscated? Will they be deposited in a "lump sum" outside the city gates like an eviction?

When Ryan mentioned that dragons might possibly be something we could gain control and use of through weeks or months of work done by dozens or more players, it sounded to me a lot like the titans in EVE Online. I was thinking about the differences in the overall game systems though, and how they would impact the ability for dragons to give the same epic feeling as titans did when they first started appearing in the EVE universe.

One huge difference is that in EVE Online you can essentially fast travel or borderline teleport from any location, even in the middle of a hectic battle. It's actually a strategy used by many fleets, or at least it was when I played a couple of years ago. In PFO there's currently no discussion of a system or mechanic that would allow that. So when a dragon enters the field, you won't be able to warp out and come back at a more optimum distance. Instead, either everyone will have to zerg the dragon because there's no hope of escape, or everyone will have to scatter and hope that they arent the ones chased. Is there a problem with that? I don't know, it's something that I'd like to see discussion on.

I got the impression from what Ryan said that certain characters will have to be bonded to each dragon. In EVE Online, anyone with skills to fly a titan can jump into one at any time if it doesn't currently have a pilot. This is another huge difference - if nobody is on that is currently bonded to that dragon, does the dragon potentially just sit there while the settlement around it is attacked? That seems like a pretty huge waste of resources. Again, I'm not sure if there's really a problem with this - maybe part of having a dragon is managing the playtimes to a certain extent of those who are bonded to it, or at least bonding enough people that you're almost sure to have one on when you need them.

I think the idea of having a dragon on the battlefield is awesome, and there's been some talk of other powerful resources like armies of undead raised by necromancers. Maybe a lich, or a devil/angel, etc. Very cool to think about, and I hope there's some way to eventually implement these kinds of things.

Formation Combat

Introduction
Formation Combat has the potential to make large scale battles viable and fun. If designed correctly from the bottom up, server load can be drastically reduced and hundreds of people can be on the battlefield at the same time. What follows is what I envision for fomation combat.

Scenario
You and five of your friends want to go adventuring together and are gathering in The Rusty Swagger. You receive word that an army is approaching the peaceful farming settlement of Farmville. The settlement is known for its wealth, being the only hex in the area capable of producing Willow Grain, the main component in a popular brew. Having no standing army of their own, they rely on mercenaries for defense and your group fits the bill. You jump up, head to the stables, and mount your horses for the short 2-hex journey. Along the way, you are put in charge and start setting up formations. Since three of your number are front line fighter types, you set up a simple formation with those three in the front and the more magical oriented in the back and set it as the default. You also set up a formation with two of the front liners in the front, one in the back next to the cleric who is wearing heavy armor, and the physically weakest side by side in the middle. When you get to Farmville you immediately leave the settlement and join the other groups who will meet the invading force on the road. Standing in formation along the road, you await the clash of forces with eager anticipation. Suddenly, around the bend come a squad of charging barbarians, intent on slaughter. Your fighters stand their ground and form a wall upon which the wave crashes. The three in the back sling spells and incantations, causing energy to tear into the flesh of the barbarians while bolstering your group with beneficial effects and healing. Having no healer, the barbarians are quickly dispatched, but looking around you noticed dozens of other battles and not all of them are going well for the defenders of Farmville. Suddenly, a battle cry from behind you fills the air as more attackers appear, and archers appear in front. Surrounded, you quickly switch to the second formation you set up while on the road, and one of the fighters jumps back with your cleric while the other two unsling tower shields from their backs. Forming a stalwart defense against arrows, the fighters with the tower shields are invaluable in allowing the fighter and cleric, along with the two wizards, to focus their attentions on the flanking enemy. Quick work is made of them and though the cleric was unable to reliably heal his allies because he was the one being targeted, not much damage was taken because of the defense given to the group by the tower shields. The battle is won shortly thereafter, and your group collects its generous reward from the people of Farmville.

Mechanics
I envision an information pane with dots representing each member of the formation. These dots would be silver if not in combat, or green/yellow/red/black depending on the health of the character, something like 90%-100%/50%-89%/1%-49%/0%. The leader of the formation should be able to select, create, modify, or remove formations through some sort of flyout or dropdown menu. Creating or modifying a formation would open a new focus pane where the player could either choose a predefined formation and drag party members to it or create a new formation by dragging party members' dots onto a blank slate. Formations containing the exact number of people in the party or more would be allowed, to allow for players losing connection or dropping from the group suddenly. If a new player is added to the group no change to formations will occur unless there are now more characters in the group than dots in the formation, in which case the formation will become blank and the leader will have to select or design a new formation. Facing is part of a formation, so that must be taken into account when designing the formation.

When a formation is selected, the group becomes one creature with many heads. Graphically, each person's character will run to its position and stand in formation, similar to Baldur's Gate and other such games. The leader of the group is the one that will control movement. The leader turning left or right without moving forward will not move the formation but moving forward or backward will move the entire formation and also cause the formation to reorient itself graphically.

When attacking a formation, it would be similar to attacking hit locations on a creature. Each zone of the formation is occupied by a separate character and that character takes damage if that zone is hit. The result is that it will look like you're hitting that character and that character will take damage, but in reality behind the scenes you're hitting the formation which is treated as one creature but the hit location causes the damage to be routed to that character. If a character dies its body is left behind if the formation moves and that zone is considered dead so cannot be targeted. If a character is immobilized or otherwise cannot move with the formation it is left behind if the formation moves and becomes its own entity and leaves the formation if the formation moves out of range. Characters can rejoin the formation any time they wish, as long as they are still in the group.

Characters in a formation can still take actions that do not include movement. For example, casting spells or targeting and firing a bow at an enemy or attacking an adjacent enemy in melee are all actions that can be taken. With few exceptions, there would be no mechanical difference when taking these actions in a formation, except that you don't move and you might get a bonus depending on the formation.

Efficiency
Because the formation acts as a single entity in terms of movement, the server and client both would be able to process the information more efficiently. Each character represents a zone within the formation, so location data only needs to be kept for the leader's position. It would be much more efficient to only have preset formations and not allow people to design their own, but there can be dozens or more of them to allow for versatility. Having predefined formations would allow both the server and client to reconstruct the formation with minimal data. For example, an array passed from server to client might look like this: {formation_id, x, y, z, player1_id, null, player2_id}. This would be for a formation of 3 with only 2 members present, in positions 1 and 3.

Formations would be treated in many ways like a character would. Damage done or spells cast by the formation would act as if a single character had done the damage or cast the spell. Location only matters for determining if someone is adjacent or otherwise in melee range using reach or something, and that can be calculated using the defined zones in the formation. For area effect spells the easiest and most efficient thing to do would be to affect the entire formation equally, but it could be done by zone instead if you wanted to differentiate between actual locations of each character.

Conclusion
I see formation combat being one of the big draws to the game from people who like very tactical combat. This can be used in both PvP and PvE, above ground and in dungeons depending on the space the party can move in. Entire armies could be assembled across a field from each other and clash in an epic battle using formation combat.

I've seen drastically different numbers thrown around over the last couple days for hex size in many different discussions. How big, exactly, is a hex?

On Hex Layout
We know that settlements will be placed in the geographic center of each hex, and we know that there will be a few sites scattered around that players will be able to interact with. It was even stated that players will have to clear some of these sites before they will be able to begin the series of tasks that end with a settlement being created in the hex.

On Map Size
Pathfinder Online will be one single server, and they want to start with tens of thousands and move up slowly to hundreds of thousands of players, similar to how EVE Online progressed.

EVE Online's "map" is such a vast area that it takes hours or days (using the 4 hour average daily playtime metric) to travel from one end to the other, depending on the speed of your ship and whether you do it manually or hands-free. It's also a dangerous journey; different groups control different areas of space and they typically guard the choke points into and out of their territory.

I expect that the map size in Pathfinder Online will be similar in scope. If tens of thousands of players are on a single server, with the map size that some people are projecting in other threads of an hour or less to traverse across, the population density will be much too high. The devs have stated repeatedly that there will be plenty of wilderness to explore and that each settlement will be limited in size compared to the total size of a hex.

Conclusion
Can we get a definite answer, or at least a current projection, of how big each hex will be and how many hexes will be included in early enrollment, release, and the future based on player growth? Even something as vague as verification of the facts above (like wanting to maintain wilderness in every hex) would be good. I've seen people throw out numbers in other threads that make absolutely no sense to me, and that are drastically different from other numbers I've seen elsewhere and even what the devs have said. Of course, during development everything changes, which is why I thought I should start this thread and why I think everyone would be ok with an answer that's currently true but might change in the future.

In Pathfinder, as you level up your stats naturally increase. Base Attack Bonus (how well you hit things), Saving Throws (chance to avoid magical effects), Hit Points, etc, are all things that increase. With the skill system described for PFO, I wonder how those increases will be determined. If each class track has stat increases then people will just get the first level in every class because skills take longer and longer to get the higher up you go. Taking level 1 in every class track might take as long as getting level 3-4 in just one class track, judging from my experience with EVE and DUST which both use a similar skill system.

One possible solution is to have certain certificates lock out others. For example, if you gain the first level achievement for Fighter, which gives you 8 hp, +1 BAB, and some saves, you're blocked from then getting those benefits from other level 1 achievements. The benefit of this option is that while you can still gain the achievements of other classes and the associated skills and abilities, you only get the stat increases once. The power curve will be maintained and staying with one class will be encouraged but multiclassing will not inhibit you overly much because of the difference in speed of training different levels (a level 2 certificate might take the same amount of time as training for 3 level 1 certificates). A potential downside is that each class develops stats at different rates so if you take 20 levels of Wizard then your hit points will be significantly lower than someone who takes 20 levels of Fighter. So when you switch and you have 20 Wizard, 20 Fighter and your friend has 20 Fighter, 20 Wizard then you'll have much lower health than him and he will have much lower Will save, for example. Besides that, some classes like Monk and Paladin get ridiculous stat increases as part of balancing out the rest of their class, so it makes the most sense to go with them over any other class for your first 20 levels due to being locked out of other stat increases.

Another possible solution is to standardize the stat increases, and have them happen the first time each level is achieved. This would maintain the benefit of the first option while mitigating the potential problems stated above. The downside, of course, is that class identity is sacrificed a little bit. Wizards will have the same health as Fighters of the same level, and Fighters will be able to save against mind affecting abilities as a Wizard of the same level without taking spells and abilities into account.

The final option I can see is to have each level achievement of each class track add stat increases as normal in Pathfinder. Have those stat increases scale, though, to how long each achievement takes if directly taken. For example, a level 3 Wizard achievement might take 2 months after achieving level 2. In the same amount of time, you could get level 1 and 2 of Fighter and 1 of both Sorcerer and Druid. So, make the level 3 Wizard achievement balanced in terms of total stat increase with the total sum of the other achievements. I think this option is the best option in that it is balanced in terms of time and does not favor either multiclassing or taking the same class straight. Class identity is preserved, because that level 3 Wizard achievement might add 8 health, 4 Will, +0 BAB whereas the others together might add 10 health, 1 Will, +2 BAB. Clearly, if you want to multiclass your stats will be more evened out whereas going with the same class will maximize the stats that help that class the most. In the scenario where you've taken 20 Wizard and then 20 Fighter and your friend has taken 20 Fighter and then 20 Wizard, both of you will have nearly identical stats because it won't matter when you take what. The downside to this option is that it requires more balancing in the design, and time taken to train each achievement must be taken into account during that design process.

So I was thinking about ways to minimize server lag, and I thought it might be a good idea for the more technical of us to have a thread where we can brainstorm ways in which to make different aspects of the game better from a technical standpoint.

Random number generator - I've been wondering off and on how the random number generation will work with PFO. There are whole dissertations written on how to generate random numbers, and some methods are better than others depending on what you're doing. I doubt Goblinworks will want to have a chunk of something decaying radioactively laying around, and I don't think they'll want to go to the expense of sourcing quantum particle phasing in a vacuum, so obviously there's going to be a purely programming solution to random number generation. I wonder if it's faster to pre-generate the random numbers when the system has free processing ability, or maybe at least the d20 rolls since that's probably a large chunk of the numbers that will be needed. If it's done when the processing cycles would otherwise basically be unused, then the processing is essentially free. At that point, you would just have to compare the storage and retrieval of those numbers with the generation of numbers on the fly and see which action is cheaper in terms of processing (I doubt that hard drive space is an issue, and these can be stored in their own database so db size shouldn't be an issue either). Of course, there would have to be a system to generate numbers on the fly still if there are none stored. Anyway, it's just a thought - I imagine there are definitely ways to generate random numbers that are faster than pulling from a db, like a simple operation using the system clock for example, but it seems like the more processing you spend on random number generation the better the randomness of the outcome will be, in general. It just boils down to how random Goblinworks wants the numbers to be.

If you guys have any other technical ideas, or can improve upon previous ones in the thread, please post!

So there's a lot of focus on combat and, admittedly, combat is going to be a large part of any MMO. However, most people who play PnP Pathfinder like a mix of both combat and roleplaying, usually averaging around 50/50 (some prefer tons of roleplaying, and some prefer more tactical combat like myself). What kind of attention has been given to non combat roleplaying abilities? Skills like diplomacy, intimidate, sense motive, perform, handle animal, and many of the knowledge skills can be used outside of combat when interacting with NPCs (or animals). Some of these I can see immediate uses for, but I really hope that diplomacy doesn't boil down to just getting better prices. Someone could have these skills as the focus of their character and in PnP that's perfectly viable and you can avoid combat encounters by talking your way out of them. Will this kind of thing be possible?