Viktyr Korimir's page

The way I see it, sex and violence are both normal, natural, and necessary parts of the human condition-- and have their rightful place being celebrated in our fantasies. That said, I am simply not interested in enduring a game that goes into excessive detail with either-- I don't want to hear about the orc slowly bleeding to death any more than I want to hear about the elf and the barmaid arguing over who has to sleep in the wet spot.

And I also don't want to fixate on the most diseased expressions of sex and violence. It's fine that torture and slavery and prostitution and rape exist in the game world, and it's fine that characters have them in their backstories. I just don't want them to occur on-screen. I don't want to have to describe them, and I don't want to listen to someone else doing so.

That may be true for Gods, but if we talk about Outsider lords, it's often mentioned what their true form is like, and with the exception of Qlippoth, the occasional Demon lord (I think of Juiblex) and few others, 70% of them (I was prone to say 90%, but wanted to leave much more room open) either look very humanoid, have a humanoid general shape (arms, legs, head and all) or have at least some humanoid feature (like beasts with humanlike heads and that sort of things).

Humanoid but not necessarily human. You'll notice that the majority of alien species described in Distant Worlds are likewise humanoid. Elves and Gnomes are both from alternate dimensions, and they are both humanoid.

It's not "Inner Sea centric" if the most prevalent form of intelligent life on the majority of habitable planets and planes is humanoid. If anything, it merely implies that the humanoid form is somehow special, to explain how so many disparate creatures developed that way-- whether by some natural process or by the will of the myriad humanoid-shaped deities.

I just fix the entire multiclassing system, because I hate the way multiclassing works in 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder.

Isn't this blatant metagaming? Who in his right mind would do such a thing? Kill yourself just for the small chance you come back better than before?

If you came back as a ***ing troglodyte the first time, your chances of coming back better the second time are better than 98%-- your odds of rolling anything other than troglodyte, plus the set of all natural 100s in which the GM saw fit to reincarnate you as something that did not have a stench aura.

Honestly, I'd rather use limited wish to resume my human form-- being human is important to me, but not vital-- but male, humanoid, mammalian and Medium-sized are absolutely non-negotiable for me. I'd ride the Suicide Express out of Lizardtown in a heartbeat.

Of course, I also consider contingent last breath and contingent limited wish to be a superior alternative to lichdom. Costs more money in the long run, but you get to be alive.

I'd also think the gods wouldn't like the idea of someone playing with his life. There's a good chance they wouldn't even allow the druid to cast another reincarnate. There's also a good chance the party doesn't want to waste any additional resources on the idiot that just killed himself after being reincarnated.

It's a Druid/Witch spell. Who cares what the gods think about it?

Also, since he was a Native Outsider (and not a humanoid) he should come back as a Outsider. (and not a humanoid)

There you go, problem solved. Just retcon him as some kind of outsider.

This is definitely a thing, though being reincarnated as an Outsider would also be no-go for me.

I've played with people who get snippy about the polytheism inherent to most fantasy roleplaying settings-- they almost universally want to play Clerics/Paladins of the 'one true god'.

And get extra special benefits from worshiping a 'real' god instead of one of the pretenders in the book.

Edit: And it's not hate, it's frustration that a class with so much great potential is let down so badly by the mechanics. We don't hate the monk, we want the monk fixed!

Another casualty of the Rolemasterization of D&D between AD&D and 3rd Edition. Low-level Monks in AD&D were weak-- on par with low-level Mages-- but they turned into combat beasts at mid- and high-level, largely because it turns out that mobile skirmish classes are more effective when the rules actually allow you to move and attack at the same time.

That's not a dig against Rolemaster. Warrior Monks are awesome in Rolemaster, because all of their abilities were designed to work in Rolemaster.

Differences:

• Abovementioned, Monks in AD&D could move and attack in the same round. Fighters were actually good at fighting in AD&D, too.
  
• Monks' stunning attacks were not limited use. They occurred automatically when the Monk's attack roll succeeded by five or more.
  
• Monks had a chance of flat killing an enemy with every bare-handed attack. Every time they stunned an opponent, they rolled percentile dice-- and if the result was less than the opponent's AC + the Monk's level minus seven (low AC was better) the target dropped dead.
  
• Deflect Arrows was not 1/round. You rolled a saving throw every time someone shot at you, and if you made the save, they missed.
  
• Instead of Spell Resistance (which is a hindrance) AD&D Monks had resistance or flat immunity to specific spells. Spells you actually want to be resistant to.

If Monks could actually use the rules they were designed for-- moving their full movement rate each round while making their full allotment of melee attacks at their full attack bonus-- and they didn't have 'class abilities' that made them objectively weaker, they'd actually be an awesome class again.

Problem is, Pathfinder fans are by and large not fans of AD&D-- so they're overly attached to the 3e legacy rules that more or less ruined the Monk class.

I believe monks are on par with ninjas, rogues, inquisitors, bards, magus, clerics, oracles ect on hitting things and dealing damage so why the hate?

Because that's not even remotely true. All of those classes are superior to Monks at hitting and dealing damage, and all of them besides Rogue and Ninja are also capable of doing much much more both in and out of combat.

No, obviously not. For instance, a 10/10 or a 2/2/10 would both only have 10 hit dice-- and the best BAB and saves from each of their respective class levels.

And I'm assuming that encounters would give XP based on APL normally, because class level would be independent of character level-- the same amount of XP would always be the same character level, regardless of what class levels that character level represented.

Well, the basic assumptions I am working from:

• A multiclass character should always be at least one full level behind a single-class character.
  
• Characters should get more advantage from advancing more-or-less equally than from taking short dips.
  
• A 10/10 character should be about equivalent to a level 12 character, and a 10/10/10 should be about equivalent to a level 15 character.

I'm still trying to fix the wretched 3.X multiclassing system that Pathfinder uses. My last two attempts have been godawful hideous as far as balance and ease-of-use are concerned-- it's difficult to get right, and I mean no insult when I say that the original solution doesn't work.

So for my current strategy, I need to figure out the ideal XP chart progression for a single-class character so that I can adjust it for multiclass penalties. Problem is, I can't figure out whether or not the standard XP charts-- Fast, Medium, and Slow-- follow a pattern or not.

Can anyone help me figure it out? Or are these numbers just rough figures?

I just picked this up today. Lots of great stuff. But how come the pic of the female dwarf on page 10 she does not have a beard? ;)

She was shaved for being a harlot, the shame of which drove her into adventuring. Obviously.

Yeah. The fact that the Monk's most iconic class features are actually bad for the Monk is just incomprehensible. Only class in the game you dip out of not to get better class features somewhere else, but to actively avoid getting the class features in your main class.

I am fascinated by the fact that the Paladin is the only guy who ever seems to have to worry about his alignment, despite numerous classes having alignment requirements and restrictions. Is it maybe because the paladin must be Lawful Good, where as other classes have wiggle room? And why does it seem to bring out the worst in a DM--or maybe just poor DMs?

Because the Paladin is the only class that has thirty years of tradition telling DMs that they are supposed to go out of their way to screw you over-- that having your class powers stripped by some self-righteous petty tyrant who flunked out of his 100 level Ethics course was a necessary balancing factor for all of your 'awesome' Paladin powers.

People don't play interesting Paladins because the rules-as-written, and as interpreted by too many GMs, punish them for attempting to play interesting Paladins.

Having a healer should not be necessary. And I say this as someone who likes to play the healer. The game should function such that an adventuring party that survives a brutal fight should be able to face another brutal fight the same day without being 'healed' in between.

You think letting a high level monk pull a level 6 or lower spell out of his ass a few times a day is going to unbalance the class or something?

Yes, because then it's going to be too powerful a few times a day and still suck the rest of the time.

SLAs don't have components. Limited wish is an expensive spell, and that material component is a big balancing factor for it.

Martial Arts are a part of Mythology. Maybe not your European/Caucasian mythology but these stories are told across the Asian continent and written about in history books and contemporary fantasy literature. Monks are as much a part of mythology and fantasy as Knight or a wizard.

Hell, they're a part of our mythology, too-- the only difference between European and Asian martial arts is that we don't have the flowery names for each and every single maneuver. And since that seems to be limited to only a handful of specialized kung fu styles in the first place...

Role Playing has gone on too long excluding people with the excuse that it’s based on medieval times. That is simply a lazy excuse. It can and should be so much more. Exclusivity does bring in new markets and it does not make for a better game IMO.

I'm still trying to figure out where this 'medieval times' thing comes from. Lord of the Rings seemed vaguely medievalish, but the Conan stories were clearly set in the early Iron Age-- and still included African and Asian cultural influences despite being written by a Texan in the Thirties-- while Burroughs' work was set on alien planets in the late 19th century. None of the authors listed as 'most immediate' in Appendix N wrote Eurocentric medieval fiction.

If we're going to ignore the history of the game and focus entirely on Pathfinder, Appendix 3 has this to offer us: Hellbound Heart is set on modern Earth (it's the basis for the Hellraiser movies), Imajica is set on modern Earth, and Weaveworld takes place partially on modern Earth. Beowulf-- which is a religious text-- is set in ancient Europe centuries before the Middle Ages. Algernon Blackwood's works were set largely in 'modern' times, being a contemporary of Lovecraft's, and one of the recommended works is set in Canada and based on indigenous American myth.

There's simply no basis in any of the books for this claim that D&D-- and by extension, Pathfinder-- is supposed to be set in some kind of analogue of medieval Western Europe. The game has always been more diverse than that, drawing upon the mythology of many cultures and drawing more upon pulp horror and strange fiction than any real-life culture.

All of these things, by definition and by default, belong in Pathfinder. If they don't belong in your game, that's because you are playing something else. And that's okay that you're playing something else and that you don't want these things that are part of the core Pathfinder experience, and the traditional D&D experience Pathfinder draws upon, in your game. Just quit trying to claim that these things don't belong in Pathfinder and trying to have them removed from Pathfinder.

Stop amputating Pathfinder because you really want to be playing MERP.

Me, I'm just converting all the sweet AD&D campaign setting races that didn't make the cut for 3.X or weren't included in the OGL, so that I can use them for my Spelljammer game. Also, to make them more playable without using the ridiculous ECL system.

However, I've always sort of rolled my eyes at the fact that Ninja and Samurai get their own classes instead of being archetypes. At least they are alternate versions of existing classes though.

I'm not even sure they should have been Archetypes. We should have gotten a couple of Samurai-based Cavalier orders and all of the Ninja tricks and alternate class features should have been made Rogue talents.

They're not even D&D cliches. That's the maddening thing. They're Rolemaster cliches that were mistakenly added to D&D in 2000.

Spider-Man plays down his powers a lot because he's terrified of losing his humanity-- or taking on any more responsibility. When he's pushed, he's one of the most dangerous people in the Marvel Universe.

Indeed, you can play and give as much attention to canon as you wish. Adventurers don't even have to rub against the typical canon elf.

Wish someone would tell my players that. They spend at least half their time every gaming session trying to rub elves. Usually in temples of Calistria.

The problem I find with monk is monk weapons. The weapons that are monk weapon are restrictive and don't allow you to flavor you monk differently.

Not to mention, there isn't a single one of those weapons that should qualify as 'exotic' under either realistic values of complexity or game balance concerns. They're farm implements, for the most part, or the equivalent of other similar Simple or Martial weapons.

I mean, it's handy for a 1-level dip when you need a bunch of worthless feats to feed to the Dark Chaos Shuffle... but even that 'feature' is more of a 'bug' in a reasonably balanced game that says you can't use DCS to swap out your class weapon proficiencies.

I had issue with this at first but with the changes to Flurry of Blows to work just like Two Weapon Fighting that meant I wouldn't see Two Handed Sword wielding monk Flurrying 2 attacks with the same sword. I no problems with monk hitting with the two handed sword and kicking in the same round though.

I don't have as much of a problem with it. The Monk isn't going to have the Strength bonus that makes the Greatsword particularly nasty in flurry attacks... and if he does, you can just rule that Flurry of Blows is incompatible with x1.5 Str bonus.

Well, let's look at his powers:

Super-Strength, around the 33-34 range at least.

Super-speed and agility. Most people say his Dexterity should be higher than his Strength. TSR's Marvel SAGA rules had his Strength and Dexterity at 14 (human maximum is 10) but in the Marvel Universe there are a lot more super-strong characters than super-agile characters. By comparison, Captain America was 10, Gambit was 11, Beast was 12, and Nightcrawler was 13. Nothing short of a cosmic-level entity (or Mayday Parker) had an Agility higher than Spider-Man's. I'm comfortable pegging this in the thirties.

His Constitution is likewise outrageous. Look at the beatings he survives, and remember he has a healing factor. Just because he's fast doesn't mean he's not a brick.

His mental scores weren't boosted by the spider bite, but he's an easy candidate for INT in the 18-20 range. Compare him to Reed Richards and Tony Stark, who are described as having outright superhuman intelligence-- he's very nearly on their level and the only thing that's held him back has been spending almost all of his time as Spider-Man. Wisdom and Charisma are between average and low-average; his superhuman willpower is a result of his class levels.

Spider-Sense. This is Improved Evasion and Improved Uncanny Dodge at the very least and quite possibly immunity to surprise as well. I'm tempted to say some sort of INT-based Monk AC bonus is at work here.

The spider-climb is trivial. He's got a racial Climb speed (from the template) and a substantial racial bonus to Acrobatics checks over and above his Dexterity score.

His fighting style screams Flurry of Blows, but he doesn't really have a lot of martial arts training and his unarmed attacks aren't devastating compared to his Strength.

So... some kind of racial template plus a Rogue archetype that switches out Sneak Attack for Flurry of Blows and Monk's AC bonus on INT. Given the things he fights on a regular basis, he's ridiculously high level.

Hell, it's not like they were Stone Age in real life, either. They got hit by a catastrophic smallpox pandemic in the 16th century-- modern American civilization was effectively built on the post-apocalyptic ruins of their civilization.

And I agree, I don't want to see a conquistador plot, either. Maybe not the biggest disappointment in Maztica, but it's in the top three.

Viktyr Korimir wrote:

Well, if there's room on the planet, I'd definitely like to see some areas with strong aboriginal American influences.

Between the Shoanti, certain Kellids, and the clear Inuit flavor all over the Crown of the World, I'd say we've already had a fair dash of this...

To say nothing of Arcadia.

I'm not terribly well acquainted with the setting-- I'm getting better-- but I'm referring to more southern flavors than Inuit. Cherokee and Apache, and especially Aztec. There's a lot of good source material for weird fantasy in those cultures' respective mythologies.

Is all vengeance just and balancing though? Does responding to perceived slights and heightened emotions with punishment and violence balance the good and the bad? Or does it just make things worse and make minor problems into major sources of strife? The pettiness alluded to above is why she is CN with dark undertones and not a LG or CG deity.

No, but Calistria isn't a Good deity. She's a Neutral deity with the potential for Good followers and priests. I'm just explaining why she has CG Clerics.

Except that characters who are trained in wearing the armor in question still have full ACP. 'Armor Training' is a class feature for one specific class that does not happen until... what, is it third or fourth level?

You know, close to the peak of normal human abilities. For a single point of reduction to a penalty that is too high in the first place.

I know it's a fantasy setting, and things work differently. What grates me is that in the fantasy setting with the highly powerful female goddess, that goddess is written to be actually denigrating females more than the other gods (including Erastil! ;D )

I share your outlook on prostitution and the sex industry. (It does not endear me to the Internet.) But there are people who disagree with you. When arguments over prostitution and pornography rear their ugly heads, my most vehement opponents-- aside from the men-- are feminists who believe that my portrayal of sex workers as victims of oppression is patronizing.

It's worth remembering that no matter what you stand for and how good your intentions are, there are well-meaning and genuinely Good people who are opposed to you.

---

As for it being hard to picture a Chaotic Neutral goddess of vengeance having Chaotic Good worshippers... remember St. Cuthbert in the Greyhawk pantheon: a Lawful Neutral god of retribution who doesn't allow Evil worshipers.

Calistria is a goddess of retribution. Evil, by definition, deserves more retribution than Good. Evil insults, degrades, and hurts by nature... and when Evil has left you lying, broken and bleeding in the mud, Calistria is there for you. Calistria is there to pick you up and tell you that it wasn't your fault-- that what happened to you was wrong, and that the scales must be balanced. She is there to whisper in your ear, 'never again', and put the knife in your hand.

When good people turn to Calistria, it is not enough that those who have wronged pay for what they have done to them; villains must pay for what they have done to everyone. Sure, you've balanced your scales... you've had your revenge and you've made them pay. But you weren't the first person or the last person to be wronged; there is a world full of people who have been wronged, and in Calistria's name, you will find them and you will lift them up and you will put the knives in their hands, because their scales need to balance, too.

And out of all of the gods, Calistria is the one who understands best that when one of her own goes too far-- takes more than is owed or hurts the innocent in pursuit of revenge-- the people they've wronged have the right to take up their daggers and balance the scales, because in the end that is what matters. The scales must balance.

It's one of those things I think the alignment system doesn't recognize. There's good and bad in most deities, and their portfolios leave a lot of room for both Good and Evil.

Why is this even a question? The answer to this is so self-evident that if the rules contradict it, the rules are wrong.

Well, if there's room on the planet, I'd definitely like to see some areas with strong aboriginal American influences.

It's a snarky annoying deity; if it was "Miss Free Love" there would be no problem, but as written she's just a horrible person on every level.

Imagine that, a Chaotic Neutral deity of retribution being a heinous b@+!~.

You should hear some of the things Norgorber does. It's downright... discourteous.

'Bounded Accuracy' is not the idea that DCs will stay static relative to bonuses, or even that improving a bonus requires the investment of resources-- 'bounded accuracy' is the idea that bonuses simply do not increase beyond a certain point, period.

Characters in the Next playtest don't improve their attack bonus, skills, or saving throws over the course of three levels. In PF, the Fighter, Clerics, and Rogue would have gained +2 BAB and the Wizard would have gained +1, while all of the characters would have gained +2 to their skills. In 4e, all of the characters' d20 rolls would have gotten a +1 bonus at 2nd level.

What this means is that higher-level characters in Next have more options, deal more damage, and have more staying power-- but attacks and defenses stay the same. What this means effectively is that characters can fight monsters way above or below their level, and while these fights would still be squash matches, there's still a point in rolling attacks; the low-level side will still be able to hit their enemies, and the high-level side will still be able to miss theirs.

Honestly, custom races should not be a player tool at all except in a very strange campaign. It's a rule-of-thumb GM tool for designing new races for homebrew settings.

pg. 50. Illustration is obviously way too hot to be a half-orc. :P

Seriously, she needs to be an iconic.

Just got done reading my copy and I'm going through it again.

I love this book.

I think the reason for this is most likely that as you become better smaller things become exponentially more pronounced.

Except that this is not, in any conceivable fashion, reflected in how skill DCs work. Or how anything in the d20 system works. The expensive keyboard matters to the professional gamer because he notices tiny differences in performance-- and those tiny differences matter because reality is much, much more fine-grained than a d20 die roll.

The pro-gamer needs the expensive keyboard because a 10ms lag in registering a keystroke makes the difference between victory and defeat. The ACP for heavy armor isn't a barely-noticeable delay in performance... it negates the entire bonus for a 1st level character with a trained class skill and an ability score of 16.

That's not the difference between a good keyboard and a cheap keyboard. That's the difference between a good keyboard and playing with a broken hand.

The same would be true for armor. I have to discount almost everyones opinion on the effects of armor in combat because no one on this forum is competent enough in combat in armor to discern the difference. This is not to malign anyone who has practiced, but given it is not your profession and your life does not depend on it you cannot know.

It's not my profession or my life. I am not even a talented amateur-- I can only call myself average if I am being exceedingly charitable.

But I am telling you, speaking from experience, that my out-of-shape ass can do things in armor that the rules you are defending say a highly-trained elite professional soldier can not do. I know this from experience because I have done these things, and thus if the rules say that someone who is in every relevant fashion superior to me cannot do these things, the rules are wrong.

I'm not saying that I'm even half as good as a 1st level Fighter trained in Acrobatics. I am saying that for these asinine and unrealistic rules to make a goddamned lick of sense, I-- in all of my sedentary, overweight glory-- would have to be at least an 8th level Fighter.

Since we can assume for the sake of conversation that nobody on this forum is an 8th level Fighter-- which is what you're asserting-- then logically, the rules must be wrong.

I'd rather that Pathfinder 2E DID make major system changes. You can't fix the problems inherent in the d20 system by doing nothing more than wrapping some more tape around it.

To which problems are you referring? The level of complexity is a foregone conclusion and is for the most part considered a feature by the fans. The amount of prep time required is generally offset by the fact that Paizo's main product line does the prep work for you. And the balance problems can, indeed, be solved with a handful of rules patches-- controversial patches, to be certain, but no more controversial than making sweeping changes.

Just heard that this book is *really* close to selling out! Thanks so much, everybody!

Congratulations!

Does this sufficiently answer the question as to whether or not there's enough interest to do an interplanetary AP or perhaps more specific planetary Gazetteers?

Certainly, it is cumbersome. But can you really, honestly, claim to believe that it is the equivalent of reducing your Dexterity by fourteen points, when the difference between the most agile specimens of 'normal' humanity and the clumsiest humans possible without some degree of actual physical impairment is only thirteen points?

Half-plate has an ACP of -7. That means that for any Dexterity-based skill check, a character with Dexterity 20 in half-plate armor is the equivalent of a character with Dexterity 7.

At that point, however, they'll have a bigger back catalog of PfRPG products than they ever did of 3.5 material, so backward compatibility with PfRPG will be a definite financial concern, both for not getting stuck with a warehouse full of obsoleted material and due to their business model which is predicated on monthly subscriptions to product that isn't on the verge of being outdated. I can't imagine that PF 2.0 can afford to be the radical re-imagining of the ruleset that some people seem to be expecting.

I haven't seen anyone talking about a 'radical re-imagining' of the ruleset at all. The quantum shifts between editions such as the transition from AD&D to 3e or 3.5 to 4e are unusual. Very few game companies implement such radical changes between editions of the same game-- especially not every edition as Wizards seems so keen on doing.

I'm talking about something far more gentle, akin to the switch from AD&D to AD&D 2e or from 3e to 3.5e-- or like 3.5e to Pathfinder in the first place-- which people properly consider to be almost 100% compatible. I played AD&D with 2e books for years before I realized that they weren't fully compatible. People on this forum regularly talk about using 3.X material in their Pathfinder games, or vice versa, with minimal adaptation.

Yeah, wielding a two-handed weapon should be fine. I would rule that the free action to take your hand off of it and the free action to put your hand back on it didn't happen in the same round-- no AoO for you until your next turn.

I would love to see a book on Rakshasa and Oni. Not sure whether or not you could support a book on each... but I would totally buy a book on both. (Or the book on Oni alone.)

I think if you put Carl Lewis in full plate, he probably runs and jumps as well as I do unarmored.

If you consider yourself merely average in this regard, I think you are badly underestimating Mr. Lewis. I've never worn plate armor, and I am far from a great athlete, but wearing six-in-one chain over a padded jacket and I can still take a five-foot standing long jump without breaking a sweat.

That's DC 10. We'll be charitable and say my Dexterity is 8.

That leaves me with a total Acrobatics check of -6. I can not take 10 on an Acrobatics check and make a DC 10 five foot standing long jump, and in fact I can not even make a five foot running long jump consistently.

This is a thing I can do, trivially, in real life as an out-of-shape and relatively mundane person; your argument is that a person in better shape, with better training, who is supposedly a hero in a fantasy universe... is even less capable than I am?

I can say that it is very clear that Wizards/Hasbro is pulling out all the stops to attempt to reclaim the lion's share of the D&D legacy market. That means they are absolutely planning to compete directly with Pathfinder for customers.

This is a good thing for the customers of both companies, and I would argue that it is just as much a good thing for the employees of both companies. Wizards' change in strategy with 4e forced Paizo to bring out their A-game to survive, and we got Pathfinder-- Paizo got Pathfinder. I don't have any insider information or special insight into how Paizo works, beyond being a businessman myself, but I would bet that Paizo is doing better now than they ever were publishing Dungeon and Dragon.

(Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'd love to know what's actually going on inside those offices.)

Paizo's success with Pathfinder is forcing Wizards to bring out their A-game to stay on top of the field. They're boiling down everything good about every edition of D&D to try to make the best possible D&D to appeal to the biggest number of D&D players from the past, present and future. This is a big deal for them, because in order to keep D&D in the spotlight Wizards needs the full backing of their parent, Hasbro. Their standards for 'success' are much, much higher.

And if Wizards is successful with Next, Paizo is going to have to fight harder to hold on to their market share-- I would say that they haven't really been competing directly with Wizards so far because they've been producing two very different games and Wizards really hasn't been trying very hard to appeal to Pathfinder fans and fans of older versions of D&D. That's changing now. Next is being designed specifically to directly compete with Pathfinder and OSRIC.

Difference is, anyone who's been following Paizo for the last couple of years can tell you their A-game is a Hell of a lot bigger than it was three years ago.

The next five years are going to be glorious for all of us.

It might be nice to see a "Core Rules II" book that contains new rules and fixes for current issues. That way it would be compatible but also optional for folks.

I can't imagine how anyone would consider a "Core Rules II" book like that to be optional. Sounds a LOT like the 3.5 edition of D&D, which, while it DID clean things up... caused a fair amount of friction and mayhem. A product like this would be one a game company would be well advised to think LONG AND HARD about the timing of its release.

I don't know. If it were only one book, instead of three, and all it contained were the fixes-- for all of the previous books-- and conversion guides, rather than reprinting all of the original rules... you might be able to get away with it. People who bought the original books would simply buy the 'update' book and continue using the material they already had, while new core rulebooks would simply contain the updated information.

More like the 3.5 Rules Compendium than the 3.5 revision itself.

You know, since Pathfinder is such a community driven game, wouldn't it be fun to kind of have an open source ideas doc that compiled the biggest requests, ideas, and problems and then as a community we could decide (through voting, forum discussions, etc.) which pieces were necessary to include in a "Rules Compendium/Core 2" what-have-you?

Something like a cross between the original Unearthed Arcana and the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana. Fewer fundamental alterations to the game, but more optional rules that can be used together and that are more or less compatible with previous material. It would be a good dry run for finding out what rules changes need to be incorporated-- eventually-- into the inevitable second edition.

As far as pathfinderizing it. Id probably give it full bab to go with its d10 and maybe martial weapons proficiency and call it good.

I go the other way. Cut the BAB down to poor, give it the Dragonfire Adept's breath effects and invocations.

Ultimately, it is about being dependable. A paladin should be depended on, but more than anything he should be depended on to put good above all else, including his own honour.

Indeed. I am open and honest about the fact that I will lie under certain circumstances-- because it is important to me that people know they can count on me to lie when it's necessary. There's a huge, qualitative, difference between lying about the facts and lying about your intentions.

If it lasted five minutes, you are almost completely exhausted. Mind you, some were trained better and could last longer, but only measured in minutes, not long at all.

Fifty whole rounds? I would imagine so.

Nobody is arguing that ACP as a concept is unrealistic, just that the extremes of the figures are.

A character with Dexterity 16 and 1 rank in Acrobatics as a class skill has a total Acrobatics bonus of +7. Wearing plate mail armor means that he makes Acrobatics checks at the same bonus as a person with a Dexterity of 10 and no training. That is clearly excessive.

It is inevitable.

Pathfinder is growing and changing. Every supplement Paizo releases for the core rules includes expansions and developments of ideas from the core rules-- the game is improving. Eventually it will reach a point that for those expansions and developments to remain relevant, they will have to be built into the Core.

There are only so many things you can 'fix' with feats and archetypes before you run out of design space because characters have a limited number of feats and cannot take overlapping archetypes.

The difference is, because Paizo's business model depends on the APs rather than the supplements... their edition cycle can afford to be based on when the game needs refitted, not when they need the money.

No, for the most part Dragon Shaman is a weak class. A very weak class.

But when Wizards released (most) of the core in the SRD, none of that applied to supplements. They added Epic Level Handbook, Expanded Psionics Handbook, and Deities & Demigods to the SRD after they released them (and Unearthed Arcana was an OGL product) but they didn't add any of the rules from the majority of their supplements to the SRD.

Paizo could legally create a class that worships dragons, and a class called Dragon Shaman, but they couldn't create a Dragon Shaman class that grants draconic auras, a breath weapon, and lay on hands like a Paladin.

Same reason there's no official Warlock, despite everyone wanting one.