Zyric's page

It seems to me that the debate between what is and isn't LG and how a paladin response is based on how one defines justice. So what type of justice is Iomedae the goddess of?

Instead of me regurgitating the different types, here is a link that talks about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice

Some forms of justice include mercy where other forms do not. Some forms have champions like Judge Dredd who is both the judge and executioner because there is no jury. While other forms would show mercy and require trial by jury.

You know magic isn't the only thing that has issues with FF. Assuming they implement a weapon doing damage to everything in its path, weapons will have the same problem. Especially two-handed weapons. I mean a two-handed weapon isn't very melee group friendly. Although it does allow for some interesting tactics. You can have your two-hander swinging away hitting multiple targets while your rogue is jumping in and out of the two-hander's weapon range picking off the targets from behind.

One way of dealing with AOE with FF on would be to allow the ranged characters to mark a few targets as either friendly or hostile before using the AOE. This would allow certain AOE spells to only hit the enemy. This would not make sense for something like fireball but it could for something like chain lighting, call lighting or an AOE version of magic missile.

This is an open world PVP game, so it seems to me that there is no way for the game to tell if it is FF or a NE rogue who lied is way into a party to take out a specific member. Much less any other player that happens to get hit. Since the game can't determine intent of the player it would seem to me that FF would have to always be on.

Being wrote:

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

No, a Lawful Good character has a code that they follow. If the law is unjust they try and change the law, if the law conflicts with their code then they are within their purview to break it. Lawful Good is the hardest alignment to play and that's because people confuse the laws of the land as the Law in lawful.

It's just not so, it's about having a personal code....

No, I think we are at the disagreement GrumpyMel and I have. If it is just a personal code you are describing CG or at best NG. LG receives Law from a deity. It isn't just a personal code.

Even if in the darkest night of the soul, when he may be isolated by circumstance and evil, he may only have recourse to his best personal judgment. Even then the LG will still seek the counsel of his god.

LG reckognizes SOME source(s) of Legitimate Authority. Some MAY be internal others MAY be external.

It certainly doesn't have to be a diety (although that is a common one in Pathfinder). It might be the King of one's Nation. It might be the Captain of ones company. It may be a Noble of a House on has sworn to protect. It may be the Code of Chivalry or Bushido, etc. It may be multiple ones of those.

The thing about a Lawful Character is that he feels an inherint obligation to follow said Code regardless of his personal feelings about any given issue or situation. That is because he feels there is an inherent value in Order that superceeds those feelings.

Good tempers this with WHAT specific Code/Authority he selected and WHY he selected it and will try to bring that Code/Authority in harmony with Good results.

So basically Good allows a lawful character to temper the law with mercy.

This is such a tangled subject that its hard to make clear points without running into exceptions or inconsistencies.

Lawful characters should be following the laws of their religion (thou shalt not suffer the undead to exist), their personal codes (thou shalt always seat the lady first) and the law of the land (thou shalt not assault another) all at the same time. The confusion happens when those codes are at direct cross purposes, such as entering a city where sentient undead are citizens with rights.

My thoughts are that the Paladin should not disregard the laws of the city he is in if he entered it peacefully. If he wants to ignore the laws he should enter as an aggressor and not a visitor. However, this may be more the Good part of his alignment rather than the Lawful part. This ignores any issues of recognising the legitimacy of the government in question.

There remains the point regarding which laws take precedence and when? I dont have a one-size-fits-all answer to that. However, I would be very careful about saying that a Paladin would put the laws of his religion over the laws of the land at all times. That would effectively turn him into a fanatic, with some very dark implications. Again, this may be more a question of the Good rather than the Lawful as a LN or LE character would have fewer issues justifying such behaviour.

But aren't Paladins fanatics. Isn't that what sets them apart from the average warrior or even cleric that worship the same god. Being a fanatic in and of itself is not a bad thing.

Zyric wrote:

Will there be money changers or will 100sp automatically become 1gp. If not will there be a money bag of holding or will we have to continually be exchange our 10000sp into gold.

Wow, even Coinstar doesn't charge a 90% exchange fee.

100s = 10g

LOL. Well I couldn't remember the exchange rate, and after a very quick google search didn't turn any decent result, I just guessed.

KitNyx wrote:

Not sure the River Kingdoms are ready for a fiat monetary system. Wouldn't you like to be the guy printing the money though?

true

However if it were possible in-game to craft a small settlement specific item that could not be copied (unlikely of course), settlements could create their own local coin.

I think this would be do able if the settlement had to use a precious metal to do it. Although I don't really see the advantage of it, because when you put a bunch of gold coins in a bag, regardless of who's face is pressed on it, you get a bag of gold coins. The only way this would be interesting is if you could look at the individual coins.

Although this does bring up an interesting question. Will there be money changers or will 100sp automatically become 1gp. If not will there be a money bag of holding or will we have to continually be exchange our 10000sp into gold.

Zyric wrote:

Also doesn't that mean that a Paladin might do what is classified as Chaotic acts by society and still be classified as lawful if his god is a chaotic god?

Yeah, it starts to get a little tricky there....but I think you also have to factor in WHO a character selects to follow or recognize as a source of authority. My impression is that a Chaotic God would have more tolerance for followers not always doing exactly as he pronounced. Individuals who are inclined to not always follow exactly some source of authority and value more latitude in personal behavior would tend to self-select Chaotic Gods....and Chaotic Gods would tend to be more comfortable/lenient with such followers.

Same thing for settlements...a constable in a Chaotic Good town would be fairly comfortable with "looking the other way" if an individual broke the letter of the law but no real harm came from it.

A constable in a lawful settlement would likely feel obligated to bring that person in because "You can't go making exceptions for people whenever you want".

Isn't a truly Chaotic character an anarchist, so you really couldn't have a truly Chaotic town because a town run by Anarchy is not a town at all?

Being wrote:

The problem for my way of looking at it comes from the question whether a code of conduct or set of recognized Laws issues from a Chaotic deity or town?

This leads to a situation I've observed being played out in the US since I began paying attention to such things (around the mid to late 1970's). I won't get into a big discussion of RW politics vs. faith, but I've been observing a government sponsored indoctrination program introduced when children start school and continuing throughout their lives in television, the media and music. Is main intent is to ensure that people obey the government over and above any religious considerations while still paying lip service to those religious principles as a way to bind the people to the laws and traditions they believe will allow them to maintain control. (This is my personal observation based on decades of consideration, I don't expect many to support such a theory, thus my statement about not starting a discussion about it). "Why did you write it? you might ask" because I'm an opinionated sob that's why :p

Such a thing can't translate into the games political system, nor would it be beneficial. I'm VERY interested in how settlement laws will be implemented though. Some will be easy, like "is slavery against the law?" Others won't be so easy, like "ore can only have a maximum markup of 100%". (I tried to come up with a question that the computer will have a difficult time recognizing and enforcing, but I'm drawing a blank ATM :p )

A law that would be difficult to implement would be something like "Women, or some other group, must be treated with respect". A law that requires a judgement call on the interaction between two people would be difficult to code.

I always assumed chaotic was opposed to law, where neutral could choose freely. I figured chaotic would walk on the grass because the sign said don't, but neutral would do what ever he felt the need to do at that moment.

Also doesn't that mean that a Paladin might do what is classified as Chaotic acts by society and still be classified as lawful if his god is a chaotic god?

But if Chaos is the ability to choose freely, what is neutral?

GrumpyMel wrote:

Yeah but I don't think Iomedae or Torag or frankly much of anyone outside of Orcusville is going to put much stock behind the laws of Orcusville.

Thats the part that I think has alot of debate on. My own opinion on the matter is that any Lawful person that walks into a city should follow their laws. Doesnt matter if the city is Good, Neutral or Evil. This is their own 'moral compass'. Its in how they apply the law that this differs.

Lawful Good: Follow the law including the positive spirit of it
Lawful Neutral: Follow the letter of the law without regard for the spirit
Lawful Evil: Follow the letter of the law and twist the spirit of it for gain

So if a Paladin of Iomedae walks into a city run by Asmodeus, he should actually follow the the laws of that city. The character may end up breaking those laws in order to follow the cause of 'Good' by smiting Asmodeans, but he has still broken the law. Whether or not this has an impact with respect to atonement and such is tricky.

All of this is moot if the character in question has declared war on the city and this is all my own opinion on the matter obviously. :)

As far as the slave discussion, I agree that any community that use slaves should reap the appropriate negatives and loss of rep. That includes businesses within the community uses slaves. The knowledge should be available to the community leaders to be able to make an informed decision.

Yeah but does a Paladin follow the laws of the land or the laws of his god? I would expect a LG fighter to follow the laws of the land, but a Paladin I would expect to follow the laws of his god.

My main will probably be a monk with a building crafter for my Twin.

In my mind there only needs to be two things implemented to allow dueling/sparring. First is a method to not get a criminal flag, except maybe if you kill your opponent, and two an obvious yield emote. When someone yields is completely up to the player. Although this does assume there is a way to stop any commands you have queued. Assuming you can queue commands. I personally almost never duel, but from a RP perspective I can see multiple reason to. From a sword master teaching his student to a couple of gentlemen having a friendly duel over some trivial matter. Or even just a friendly bar room brawl, which would probably use improvised weapons, so they would do less damage unless you trained in them. As far as weapons go, that is up to the participants. If they want to use their +50 sword of god slaying or the cheapest piece of junk sword they can find, is completely up to them.

ah, so one of the tasks would be to help improve the facilities.

So it may not be possible to train up a crafter and then go to a smaller settlement and apply your trade at your highest level?

hmmm .... thats a good idea

I am probably going to build a wandering crafter who specializes in building structures, if that is possible, and I was wondering if other crafters were interested in setting up an informal organization for crafters. Not a a true guild, because I definitely would prefer having guild crafters involved. I am thinking that it would be a way for crafters to pass on information about guilds or people that they have interacted with. Things like this guy will try to cheat you, or this guy will try to steal the item you crafted for him. Or this guild robs crafters. That way if a group of bandits jumps a crafter and demand payment the crafter could respond that if they do this that no crafter will ever build for them again, and it mean something. It would also allow less scrupulous crafters to be able to go these people or guilds and say, "Hey I will build that thing for you, but it will cost you." I'm not quite sure how the information would be passed on to other individuals. I am kind of thinking that their would be a point of contact/bulletin board, or some other form of communication in each of the 3 main NPC cities.

If we just have a time delay before the item disappears consider the scenario where I and my thousand mindless minions invade your town. Each of my people loads up on trash items before assaulting you. As our opening salvo strikes, hopefully weakening your force, all thousand players dump all their trash on the ground. Suddenly the server has to take note of where each item of twenty thousand pieces of trash is. Performnce groans and shudders while you try and target one of us: but we are ot targetting we are moving a specific number of paces left, forward and turning to roll up your flank: by the time the server and your clients catch up we are behind you.

You would have to be well coordinated, but that's a nasty little trick.

I like the idea of being able to drop stuff, but instead of jelly monsters "eating" the older stuff I kind of like having little gremlins running around picking it up and then running off into some hole in the ground, or disappearing into the bushes.

I'm kind of partial to the Wuxi Finger Hold.

I think DDO has done a good job implementing components. Some of the low level spells don't have any components but a lot of spells do. The components are relatively cheap, and you can get a component bag. The quality, ie. cost, of the bag determines how many unique components you can put in it, and each unique component can be stacked in groups of 100. You also automatically use the component if you have it so you don't have to go rooting though your inventory every time you try to cast a spell. This may not be completely PnP but its a good compromise for a MMO.

Zyric wrote:

Dakcenturi wrote:

While the tutorial sounds cool. Again it would have to be optional and provide no other benefit aside from helping you choose an alignment.

I think it could do a little more than that, but I'm envisioning nothing more complicated than your standard MMO tutorial. You know, this is how you fight, this is how you cast spells, this is how you move, these are your bags for inventory, this is how you emote, that kind of thing.

I wasn't referring to what it taught you more to, you don't get anything out of it other than instruction IE. If you just want to jump into the game and skip the tutorial you don't miss out on gear, loot, experience that counts toward a merit badge, etc

It's only purpose should be for teaching you how to play the game. You shouldn't be able to sit in the tutorial area and gain something from staying there rather than advancing into the rest of the game.

Ah. Then I would agree. I could see it giving you a little experience but not any more than if you had just been playing the game for a couple of hours, but even if it didn't give you any I'm ok with that too.

While the tutorial sounds cool. Again it would have to be optional and provide no other benefit aside from helping you choose an alignment.

I think it could do a little more than that, but I'm envisioning nothing more complicated than your standard MMO tutorial. You know, this is how you fight, this is how you cast spells, this is how you move, these are your bags for inventory, this is how you emote, that kind of thing.

I think what should be done is a one or two hour tutorial for the game where the character starts as either true neutral or the alignment of their deity in the case of cleric/paladin. Then depending on how they interact with mobs and events in the tutorial their alignment changes. This way everyone can get a feel for what is expect from their alignment. Although the amount of change to your alignment might need to be exaggerated so you can go from true neutral to chaotic evil or lawful good in a couple of hours time. I think it needs to be long enough to get a feel for the alignments but short enough that at the end if you don't like the outcome you won't feel to bad about deleting and recreating so you can get the alignment you want.

The main issue I see with the second option is that it takes to long for me to go from standing still to sprinting. If I am sprinting between covers I don't want to have to mash the W key four or 5 times to get to sprinting. Also how would I slow down or stop? Do I have to mash the D key to do that? This method works great on vehicles with a large mass that takes a bit to speed up and slow down. But on a human it only takes 2 or 3 steps to go from standing still to full out sprinting and not many more than that to slow down.

I prefer using something like the shift key to sprint. Only problem with that is there isn't various levels to it. You either are sprinting or your not. A lot of games have a run walk toggle, but with out the stamina hit to running, everyone just runs everywhere so the walk ability is useless unless you are a hardcore RPer, or if sneak is affected by whether you are running or not.

Who would to wear a chain mail thong that someone else has worn before you?

Well you cleanse it by fire first. Toss it in the local campfire for an hour or so and you should be good. Although you might have to replace the leather straps after that.

Well what you could do is that if the scouting parties completed their task, which would be to find 3 or 4 settlements, whether that was goblin camps, player mining camps, or player towns. Since they are scouts I would expect them to use some level of stealth and not actually engage the camps. they might engage the wandering goblin but not a goblin camp. Anyways, once they have found 3 or 4 settlements they start making their way back to their starting location, whether that was a cave, or the edge of the hex, whatever was randomly rolled as their starting location. If even one of them makes it back then an invasionary force is sent. Depending on the what they had encountered determines the size and strength of the force. If it was 3 goblin camps, then maybe a small force. If they happen to have found the goblin main camp, then a medium size force. And if they had found a large mining camp and a player town, then a larger force. I would expect this force to head to the closest settlement and continue marching on. At each camp they took over they could roll to see if they decide to make it a permanent camp. I would expect a larger camps to have a higher chance of this. So if they just found 3 goblin camps, then it would be a 50/50 for each camp. If they found the goblin main camp, then it would have a 75% chance and the goblin camps would have 25%. IF they found multiple large camps then they would have a 50/50 chance while the smaller camps would have a 25% If they decided to make a camp, then half of their force stays in the camp while the other half proceeds onto the next objective. Once they had completed their objectives they would head back to the camp they made. If they were unlucky and didn't make a camp then they would just wander around killing and burning anything they came across.

You could also have multiple scouting parties from different races going on at the same time. I would just make sure they didn't start at the same location.

Also if the scouting party happen to be non-sentient, like a pack of wolves, then I would expect them to wander around until they found a fairly unpopulated area that had a good place for a den, such as a cave, burrow, or even an old abandoned farm. They would make their den there and then patrol a section of the hex around that den.

LOL probably not Winnebagos, but maybe mammoths. Although I think I would prefer they have a T-Rex, that randomly munches on one of them when they forget to feed it.

Oh that is a good idea. I like it.

I actually hope any one piece of armor/clothing looks exactly the same on males or females. Don't bother with male/female art for same piece, just do art for males pieces and for separate female pieces...and let us mix and match as we wish.

Another way of doing this, which I am not in favor of, is having the armor be gender specific when it drops. Which means Bubba the barbarian beefcake could wear a chain bikini if he would like to. But that also means that you would have a 50% chance of getting something you wouldn't wear simply because you don't want to play a transgender character.

I actually hope any one piece of armor/clothing looks exactly the same on males or females. Don't bother with male/female art for same piece, just do art for males pieces and for separate female pieces...and let us mix and match as we wish.

While I'm not a woman, and this does sound like a good idea, I think that any metal armor designed for a guy is not going to be comfortable on a woman with any amount of curves. The armor is going to be either to tight in certain areas or so loose it is sloppy. I thinking their should be a male and female version of the armor. Like most people here i think the versions should be comparable. If the male version is full plate with not an inch of skin showing, then the female should be the same, just with a little more curve here or there. If the female version is a chain bikini then the male version should be something like a pair of arm bands and a loin cloth.

I think both of these are good ideas, but what would make it even more interesting is if a scouting party of say orcs could wander through and if it stumbled on an empty campsite have a 50/50 chance of deciding to stay there for a while. If our wandering goblin happens to come across them he heads back to one of the other goblin camps and collects a small group to push them out. But if after a couple of days no one runs across them then they pull up camp and continue on their mission of scouting the area.

Thats good, because it would pretty cool if you cleared out the bear cave and came back to it a few days later to discovered it is now infested with orcs, because you left it unattended.

oh and another question, will NPC fight each other. ie, will the goblins attack the band of bandits if they wander to close to their camp?

I have seen this alluded to in a few posts but I haven't found where it is spelled out. Are all mob encounters going to be random encounters, like the randomly spawned bear cave, or goblin camp, because this would be very cool. Or will there be the traditional "wolf pack spawns under that oak tree ever minute and a half" type of encounters. In my opinion this is the biggest immersion breaker of any game. Having the mob you just killed respawn on top of you because the respawn timer is all messed up or getting half way through wiping out a goblin camp and turning around to discover that 3/4 of what you just killed has respawned kind of breaks the whole experience.

Along similar lines I was wondering if there will be mob exploit code. What I mean by that is if I decide to climb a cliff and take out the pack of wolves down below with my long bow, will that be allowed. Or will the wolves reset because they can't find any way to get me. IMO this is a legitimate tactic. I understand that it is done to keep people from staying up there and autoattacking everything that spawns below, but if there aren't any normal spawn locations, this is no longer an issue.

I love so many things in this thread.

I would love to see impractical armor impose Impracticality Penalties.

I would also love to see glamers that have actual bonuses in Diplomacy, Bluff, etc vs. the opposite sex. Sex glamers ftw(see: Night Angel Trilogy) - though nothing explicit please. No need to invite the creepy side of the internet to play.

While I wouldn't mind seeing some kinda of armor customization, it would get excessive fast...cause dudes be creepy.

Aeioun Plainsweed wrote:

Here's some pathfinder covers.

Hmm...lots of cleavage, impractical armor, and unnecessary ass shots...huh.

Well I see lots of skimpy armor, just none of it that looks like it is suppose to be Heavy armor. There is definitely light and cloth, but no platemail bikinis. You might even be able to argue one or two of them are medium.

Nihimon wrote:

If someone wants to run around in a chainmail bikini and still be protected, I think they should be allowed to. If it's possible to enchant a simple bracer to provide extra Armor Class, then surely it's possible to do the same with a chainmail bikini.

absolutely, as long as they treat it like an enchanted bracers/ring/amulet. The problem is being told that the unenchanted bikini is the female version of plate mail.

I absolutely want to see elves in "nothing but smiles and strategically placed diamonds", but they should dress that way to deliberately provoke, not to protect themselves from stabs.

Do they get a +1 AC distraction bonus vs humaniod?

This is what female armor should look like (you'd want a helmet and gloves though)

if you want to look feminine, that's what light armour is for

Unfortunately I agree, sigh. So much for eye candy.

I like the way GW2 handles this issue. You take 2 pieces of the same equipment merge them together and choose one of each of the armor pattern, stats, and enchantments to be created on the new item. Although I suspect it is more realistic to have to take the two piece of armor to an armorsmith, tailor, or what have you so they can combine them, than allowing anyone to do it with the appropriate magic token. The concept of glamoring an armor piece is also interesting but does that mean if i have the appropriate skill I can see through your illusion and see what you actually are wearing. And if so, how does that work? do I see a translucent outline of your illusion over top of the real armor, do i not see the illusion at all, or do i have to take make a conscious choice as to what I see.

OK I am separating the flight discussion from the half-dragon.

I like the concept of flight, whether it is magic spell or race based because there are ways to counter act both forms. A well placed web or paralyze spell should take out a flying creature while a dispel magic should take care of magic based flyer. The one thing I can see that might be an issue has to do with PvE, and that depends on the pathing logic. In some games if a NPC can't find a path to you then it resets, which returns it to its original location fully healed. This could be a real problem with flyers besides it cripples the tactic of climbing up on a rock and using a long bow to take out melee mobs. While this is the intended outcome of this type of pathing, I disagree with the logic. putting your place in an advantageous location, like on top of castle walls, is just part of the game. In my not so humble opinion.

I don't expect it to be implemented on at launch, I am more curious as to whether its even being considered for the game. Although I suspect you would have to design the game with flight in mind from the beginning to get it right.

Nah full dragon's are impractical in most situation unless they have polymorph self. I'm fine with a half-dragon.

I am hoping they are planning on implementing custom races, or at least template races because I would like to play a half-dragon elf. i could kind of make one using dragon discipline but that tends to limit class development because you have to spend atleast 10 levels on your race. Although thinking about half-dragon and dragon discipline, has it been mentioned whether they are implementing flight or not? Both of these options along with a bunch of others allow this.

Another thing that affects solo ability is the respawn rate. It doesn't do you much good to be able to solo a guy if he respawns before you can loot his corpse and get out of his aggro range.