Zhayne's page

I knew I was right. Thank you for the verification.

I'm 100% certain I know the answer to this, but I said I'd ask the experts.

There's a monster in WotR that makes you roll a d20 and compare it to your 'hand size'. My interpretation is that this refers to the maximum hand size as printed on the character card (plus any hand-increasing power feats). The other player interpreted it to mean 'however many cards he has in hand at the time'.

So, of course, with a max hand size of six, but three cards in hand, he rolls a six. Should he have suffered the effects of the monster, or not?

I was looking over the Skull and Shackles rulebook just now, looking for the answer to a different question, when I noticed this bit of phrasing in the 'Ending a Scenario, Adventure, or Adventure Path' section ...

"Add all of the cards from the next Adventure Deck to the box; if you own any Class Decks, you can add any cards from them that have the same Adventure Deck number as the Adventure Deck you just added."

The phrasing of the second part ('you can add any cards from them') has raised some question in my mind.

1. Does this mean you don't have to add all the cards from Class Decks you're using? F'rexample, in the 3-person group I'm doing now, we don't have a Melee character. Could we just opt to not add any of the melee weapons from the decks we're using? Obviously, the base set Melee weapons would remain.

2. Does this mean we could add cards from Class Decks we *aren't* using? It doesn't specify that the cards you add have to be from Decks you're using, just decks you own.

I'm pretty sure the answer to 2 is 'no' because that just seems ridiculous on some level, but the first question seems at least possible. Has this been brought up before?

Thanks. That was what I thought and was afraid of. I really don't care about that power, but it looks like I'll be stuck with it.

On Reiko's Ninjitsu Master role card, she has this line:
[] You may treat your powers and favored card type as if the word "Poison" were "Arcane." ([] You gain the skill Arcane: Charisma +2.)

I know when you have adjacent power-feat boxes you have to do them in left-to-right order, but in this instance, could I skip the 'sub Poison and Arcane' power and go straight to gaining the Arcane skill? They aren't adjacent, but something about the way they're arranged on the card makes it feel like the substitution power is a 'pre-requisite' for the skill-gaining one.

You want there to be, then there are. Your game, your canon.

Any free-willed sentient being (dragons generally qualify) can choose its own moral and ethical path in life.

Are you the DM? Do you want there to be ugly celestials?
If both answers are yes, then there are ugly celestials.

It would depend on the efreet in question, but typically, they're doing it because they're forced to do so by obligation or being bound rather than because they want to, most of them probably won't be happy since you're basically treating them like a slave.

Your game, your call on what stuff looks like. You can even take one race's mechanics and use it to represent something completely different, by virtue of reflavoring.

100% up to the DM and how he wants his game world to operate.

I only use alignment in the 'supernatural' sense ... creature subtypes and spell descriptors. An ordinary person doesn't have one in the terms of a 'behavioral alignment'. For rules purposes, they're treat as neutral to alignment-based effects; the most sadistic mass murderer on the planet won't ping to Detect Evil because he doesn't have an alignment subtype.

There's a 3pp feat called Deadly Finesse in the Path of War book that does this. Check it on pfsrd.com.

What do you want them to look like? Because they look like that.

I ban both paladins and anti-paladins.

I de-emphasize alignment significantly, which would be a huge nerf to the Paladin that I don't feel like going through the effort to counter, and I don't permit villainous PCs.

If you're the DM, they can look like whatever you want them to look like. Doesn't matter what the 'official' line is. It's your game and your game world, do what you want with it.

I ban the Summoner, so its spell list is inaccessible.

If I used alignment, I would treat it like a number line, changing the positive or negative before the digit. +3 becomes -3, -2 becomes +2; neutral or unaligned (as I prefer to think of the 'not intelligent enough to make moral choices') are zeroes, and there's no difference between positive zero and negative zero.

TL;DR - Nothing would happen.

I typically start at 2nd level at least, because 1st level characters are just too fragile. They don't feel like heroic adventurers.

Rhymes with 'Triton', basically. Long I, o is a schwa.

If it's sentient, don't eat it.

So rogues aren't screwed when fighting them, basically.

Just about anything will have weak spots. Golems will have joints, gaps in armor plates, its legs are likely supporting a stupid amount of weight due to both the square-cube law and the fact that their usually made of dense materials like stone and metal mean their legs, especially ankles, could suffer load-bearing fatigue, etc etc.

An optimized character is not automatically one-dimensional, a non-optimized character is not automatically deep.

One's optimization abilities and roleplaying abilities are completely unrelated.

I use the Automatic Bonus Progression from Unchained so the 'big six' aren't an issue.

Magic items are almost never for sale in any kind of 'shop'. There simply isn't enough demand; most people would take years to scrape up enough money to buy even a basic Potion of Cure Light Wounds, plus it's simply too tempting a target for thieves to have magic items out on display, even in cases.

If you want to buy a magic item, you need to find someone who has one and is actually willing to sell it (unlikely), or hire someone to custom craft it, which will take time. This also gives me some in-world justification for saying someone won't make it ... "Yeah, I want an anarchic unholy human-bane sword." "... no, no way am I making one of those."

Sorcerer, definitely. It's always been one of my favorite classes since it was first introduced. It feels more like I think magic should work; when you know a spell, you KNOW it, and can cast it repeatedly.

If permitted, Soulknife is a favorite. GM is stingy with magic? Not my problem.

Klingon. It sounds like Klingon.

I usually call the blessing deck 'the timer deck'.

Thanks for the replys i just couldn't remember read if there was some wizard school run by dwarfs or a sect of there smiths that are arcane crafters.

There might be. Ask your GM, he's the one who decides.

If being in the core rules doesn't mean most commonly encountered anymore, then what does it mean?

When did it ever mean that? I've been in games where humans didn't even exist. This is 100% campaign setting dependent, and was never stated, or even implied, to be any kind of rule.

In my game world, you're more likely to encounter a goblin than a half-elf, because half-elves don't exist.

Golarion is not the uber-setting in which all PF games must take place, so saying 'because Golarion' is a nonsense argument.

To me, part of the class balance is the alignment restriction.

Roleplaying in no way serves as any kind of balancing effect, because it's purely subjective. Note how many threads come up asking whether or not a paladin should get hosed, and that there's never any real consensus? That's why it doesn't work as a balancer, because you may or may not be able to get away with things depending on the GM's view on things. (See: Baby Goblin Slaughter threat #58392).

1.0 may have been more (anyone who says totally I will call a liar) setting neutral, but times are changing and the devs are pretty locked into PF2 being more tied to Golarion.

Hopefully, they'll realize what a colossal mistake this is very soon.

1. Not everybody plays on Golarion, so your cries of 'against the lore' are meaningless.

2. It just means PF needs to get with the times ... and amply demonstrates, yet again, why alignment is frelling stupid.

Well, Demons. If you think some creatures ARE pre-set with a behavure, then it's not hypocritical: it's a disagreement on which creatures fall under which categories.

The concept of all creatures coming with pre-set behaviors and personalities is so utterly abhorrent to me, I can't even comprehend the mindset. I do believe, canonically to Golarion, there are a handful of instances of demons ceasing to be evil (and, in individual home-made settings, which are far more important, I'm certain there are). The odds are incredibly slim, yes, but they exist.

Just destrict them racially, so there's just a pool of 'em and you can take whichever one you want, when you want.

Or hell, just make 'em a class customization feature, rather than 'favored class', so if you go a level of class A, you get one from A's list, then you get one from class B's list if you level up in class B, etc. etc.

1. Problem players will be problem players, no matter what options there are or aren't. "It's what my character would do" is shorthand for 'you made the wrong character for this game'. This is why you have a 'session zero' before any dice or character sheets are touched, to make sure you don't have a problem character, or player, on your hands.

2. If you don't like 'em in your game, don't allow 'em. Lots of people seem to be looking forward to the little buggers, no reason your likes should impede theirs. You don't like the idea, then ban 'em, or hell, go hog-wild rock the casbah and change the lore so goblins AREN'T illiterate pyromaniacs in your game world.

3. Goblins, like all sentient beings, are individuals, no some hive-mind genetic experiment. If you don't demand/expect all elves to be tree-hugging hippies, dwarves to be drunken craftsmen, or whatever, then expecting all goblins to be insane pyros is just hypocritical.

It is much easier for a GM to relax a restriction than to impose one (in general). I'd much rather keep paladins LG.

I have to disagree with this. In the paladin example, it means some fairly significant restructuring of the class. On the other hand, if all-alignment paladins exist, it's easy as pie to just say 'LG only'.

Here's the thing ... if you put lots of player choice and flavor options in the game, then individual groups can pick the flavor/lore options they want. How this doesn't make everybody happy, I simply cannot fathom.

If there are non-LG Paladins, then people who prefer only LG paladins can say 'Only LG paladins in this world'. It may not be a compromise, per se, but it gives everybody what they want.

This means you can CREATE YOUR OWN world, lore, and flavor more easily.

Some of us don't give two squirts of (urine) about Golarion.

IMHO, the ideal setup would be to create a completely mechanical book,then a 'Golarion Campaign Setting' that narrows the options for 'canonical' Golarion, while leaving things wide open for those of us who make our own worlds.

graystone wrote:

if I want my fireballs to be powered by tiny fire elemental dolls that explode, why force me to stuff it with guano and sulfur?

Because part of identifying a spell as it's being cast is observing the material components.

If you can use anything you want, then that particular mechanic stops working.

And yet, you can ID a silent, stilled, material-eschewed spell ...

Keeping expensive components (a theoretical balance method) and foci is okay. I'd rather they be balanced some other way, but at least that's something.

Lame, stupid stuff like throwing bat poop or swallowing a live spider? No. Get rid of that idiocy.

DRD1812 wrote:

I tend to use point buy in my games, but random methods have been growing on me lately. What about the rest of you guys? How do you balance the thrill of rolling for stats with the need for balanced gameplay?

Relevant bonus comic.

Point buy only, either as player or DM. This gives everyone a fair chance and makes it easier to balance the game as a DM.

And it means you can build the character you WANT to play, that you envision. I once rolled a character with such stupid high stats (in front of the GM, who said after we were done, he wanted me to buy him a lottery ticket), that I said I was just going to lower some of them, because 'prissy non-adventuring noblewoman who never did anything herself suddenly out of the manorhouse for the first time' wasn't going to have a 14 STR and CON (yes, everything I rolled was 14 or higher).

As far as min-maxing/dump stats/whatever goes, I find characters with distinct strengths and weaknesses more memorable than jack-of-all-trades-no-particular-strengths-or-weaknesses.

I tend to use point buy in my games, but random methods have been growing on me lately. What about the rest of you guys? How do you balance the thrill of rolling for stats with the need for balanced gameplay?

Relevant bonus comic.

Point buy. I will never do anything else for my games.

Oy. I just rolled my eyes so hard, I checked out my own ass.

This is accounted for in the age determination, with wizard being a 'trained' class and thus adding the most years to your pre-adventuring career.

Memo: Me

--Stop playing at 12th level. 'Legendary' proficiency just looks absurd.

Being Small, as written now, already makes you weaker without a STR penalty; you have to use smaller weapons and lighter armor. The STR penalty on top of it is just insult to injury.

Zhayne wrote:

Neo2151 wrote:

The only difference is the casters have the magic baked in, while the non-casters gather the magic from without.

Which is another way of saying they aren't magical, their stuff is. Remove all gear, armor, weapons from the characters, and it becomes obvious who is 'magical' and who is not.

Superman without gear = Superman
Iron Man without gear = Rich alcoholic

Something of a difference there.

rich alcoholic with the ability to call all his gear and surplus gear to him at a moments notice.

... because he has gear that does it. My argument stands.

Zhayne wrote:

If the 'attack bonus equals level' rule is correct, it seems to me a logical extrapolation from that is that Touch Attacks are going away.

What if I told you Touch AC is still a thing, but Flat-Footed is just a condition that gives you -2 AC.

Well, darn.

I was hoping Touch Attacks would go the way of the dodo.

4E Warlord, with non-magical healing included. With rare exception, Warlords were all I played during 4e. I LOVED them.

I want the game to be equally playable with four fighters as a cleric-fighter-rogue-wizard combo, or any other combo.

I want every player to be able to play what he wants, when he wants, without having to worry about 'plugging holes' or 'filling roles'.

I don't want anybody 'getting stuck' playing something they don't want to because 'the game' makes it necessary.

Does anybody else agree with this?

Im taking a complete guess here, but I think there is going to be some type of healing surge or short rest shenanigans happening in the near future. Hope im wrong tho.

I hope you're right.

Ideally, IMNSHO, one should be able to play a no-magic game right out of the box.

If the 'attack bonus equals level' rule is correct, it seems to me a logical extrapolation from that is that Touch Attacks are going away.

I agree with Matthew Downie. Just throw the concealment-check-dice at the same time you throw the attack die.