andrew dockery's page

I love that another quarter of school ends today for me.

I love that I entroduced my son to pathfinder and he liked it.

I Love that while my wife is not a gamer herself she undersands and allows me the time to play.

I love that I was able to get out of the Army, move home, find a job, buy a house, and be otherwise successfull in short order.

I love that my son and daughter are both healthy children.

this is kinda therapudic, more to com later

So my son is 9 and he had been having quite a bit of trouble with reading at school. So as any other concerned parent would do I tried everything imaginable to help him get better to no avail.

While I had tried games to help teach I had never thought to try Pathfinder. Until I stumbled on this thread and discovered that people were teaching children to play as early as age 4. The more I thought about it the more a I realized that Pathfinder was the perfect tool to teach him without him feeling like hes being taught, unlike if you were to sit a child in front of somthing like "math blaster" where they realize they are being taught in a few seconds and lose interest if that makes sence.

So I decided to try a shot in the dark and buy the BB from my FLGS and take it home. I figured if he didn't like it at least I got some more pawns lol.

I was astounded at how quickly he picked up the basics and how much he enjoyed himself. It was like pulling teeth before to get him to sit down and read a book but now I had him a player companion or the innersea world guild and off he goes (with a bit of assistance as needed).

It has been a little over a month now and we now play weekly every friday night.

We are currently looking for 1-3 more players and are open to both new players and experianced alike (3 players in the group currently).

We are currently using the PFRPG rules set in the forgotten realms setting (home brew story).

For more info post your email here.

Awesome I never got to run the origional version but I have ran through/own the Hackmaster version of it and loved every second of it.

I would like to run this for my new Pathfinder group so if you could email me a copy i would be gratefull. Thanks

I will be starting a new pathfinder game at Pet Shop Comics in Hillview (near louisville) KY. We need 3-5 players game will be weekly on sunday from 1:30pm-7pm post here if your interested.

thanks, managed to find one game in Radcliff kinda far but gotta do what I gotta do

I will be moving back to the Louisville KY area soon. Looking to join up with an active gaming group in the area (pathfinder RPG or 3.5 preferred)

By RAW I'm pretty sure it's legal. But in my games I don't allow any of the elemental damage additions (frost, flaming, shock, ect.) to stack using the excuse that you have to activate them with a command word and when you give a weapon a second command word you over write the first. IE you turn on your flaming ability and when you turn on your frost ability it cancels out the flaming.

Anyway that's for your GM to decide.

The game works well as written. I think a lot of people who think casters are overpowered must be playing in games with "soft" GMs who allow you to rest after every encounter or argue your spells into more powerful versions.

Of course a caster seems more powerful if hes going into each encounter with all of his spells memorized and unloading them with reckless abandon because he knows he will get to rest at the end.

But see that same caster four fights later after unloading all his spells during the first two fights...

Of course there are still a few holes in the system there are always going to be we are all human and capable of mistakes. But compared to 3.X or any other D20 game the PFRPG has far fewer holes and that's the best we can really hope for right? No system is going to be perfect but as long as it keeps getting better rather than worse I for one am happy.

Playing Hackmaster (modified 2ed). After a successful adventure the party (NE elven fighter/thief, CN human wild mage, LE gnomeling thief, LE human monk) returned to the nearest large city and I ask them what magic items they would like to look for.

The fighter thief role playing that his character probably did not have any real knowledge of magic items gives a list of items that he would like to the CN wild mage. With things on it like "A ring that makes me invisible," and "a sword that burns," ect. and way down at the bottom of the list is "A lucky rock."

So as the mages player reads the list I see his eyes brighten and a cruel smile appear. After a bit he gets me alone and tells me he would like to cast magical aura (or what ever the spell is that gives a false magical aura to an item) on a rock. And I say "umm...ok."

After we return to the game table he tells the fighter that he couldn't find any of the other items he was looking for but he had found the lucky rock he needed but it will cost him 20,000gp (the PHB price for a luckstone in that system)

It took about 7 months for the fighters player to figure out that he had been screwed by the mage (and in-game the character still doesn't know)

even though those characters have long since been retired to this day every time the groups goes shopping the wildmage's player makes sure to announce that there are plenty of "lucky rocks" for sale.

Been reading lots of threads of things players do to make you crazy. Thought I would add one of my own just to vent a bit. Please comment and add your own.

I absolutely hate it when players argue the laws of physics with me. Not rules-lawyering, which I can at least respect but it sends me into a murderous rage when I get into an argument with a player who is clearly trying to go outside of the rules to gain an advantage.

For instance...called shots (even though they do not exist in pathfinder). We have all had that player who says "I take steady aim and shoot him in the eye," and argues with you when you don't award him a critical for telling you where he aims. And does not understand that the rules compensate for called-shots by assuming that you are always aiming for the area that is most vulnerable.

Player: "But what about snipers in Iraq? They shoot people in the head all the time."

DM: "Apart from the fact that they are using high powered sniper rifles, the average level one warrior has about 10 hit points so, logically speaking they would usually die in the first hit."

Player: "But what about a dragon. It's so big. It's eye is like huge. You should be able to just shoot it's eye, the rules suck."

DM: "Well, by that rationale then the dragon could just land on you since it is faster than you and it is too big for you to run out from under it."

Player: "I could shoot it in the eye as it's coming down."

DM: "Ok here is a perfect example. See this golf ball? I am aiming at your head (throws) but I don't always hit it since you are shielding your face with your arms and moving your head around. Some hit (throws another) your sternum, or (throws another) your neck....

I get into similar arguments all the time at my table. Usually they just end with me saying "Well theres two ways things happened. One is what you wanted to happen and the other is what did happen. Too bad." or something similar. Although I will be bringing my golf balls to next session though lol.

I also get into alot of alignment arguments like this

Player: "What do you mean the paladin/good cleric is attacking me. I'm wearing the item of super evil and summoning an undead baby army for good."

GM: "Well the book says that the item has a evil aura. And the spell your using has the Evil descriptor when used that way. And hes detecting evil on you. And hes a palladin....so roll roll inish."

Player: "but....(random gripe here)"

DM: "What do ya know he hits....."

Player: "What....(insert obscenities here)

DM: "And as you stand complaining to the gods he hits again"

. The players just cant seem to understand that in D&D (or pathfinder) alignments are cold facts (I.E. if the book says a spell or item is evil....Its evil regardless of why you using it.)

I use the D&D 3.5 version Hero Lab extensively defiantly worth the $20. The only gripe I have with it is that it only includes the classes, items, spells, feats, ect. from the DMG and PHB.

Though I have heard that you can add in your own classes I haven't really messed with it.

I hope they will add the classes, spells, feats, and items from at least the "complete" series. but seeing as 3.5 is out of print they seem to have stopped supporting 3.5. Guess I need to convince my group to see the light and upgrade.

EDIT: one bug I have noticed is that the program will randomly not total skill bonuses correctly (by not adding stat bonuses or not including armor check) but a few seconds and a pencil fixes this so so big deal.

/begin rant
I mean come on whats overpowering about a class that can do up to 10d6 (12 if you have the item) damage on a touch attack to the first target and half that to the second (eldritch chain), or at a range of 250ft (eldritch spear)

Oh and make it all acid damage that is not subject to spell resistance.

Oh yeah and do all of that while under the effects of permanent fly, see invis, and detect magic at will (a big thing in 3.5 not so much pathfinder). And do a short distance dimension door leaving a copy of himself behind.

And wear light armor, d6 hit dice...
/end rant

Now I suppose just saying "I eldritch blast." every round would get boring.

Seriously though I had a warlock once in a 3.5 game I ran (and it has hence forth been banned...). While some of his power was due to my inexperience as a DM at the time and some due to his min/maxing. During combat after about level 5 no one could touch the warlock for raw damage. And with the perm fly, see invis, and dimension door defensive abilities he gets extremely hard to hurt after about level 10.

After combat though other than having a nice bluff skill he was pretty useless.

1. Pugwumpi-not only are they just as funny as goblins but they can also be very annoying in combat (and the name is just fun to say)

2. Fey-only if inspired by "real" ones like kaiyan said.

3. Mimics

4. Carnivorous sheep-thank you Hackmaster

5.Rot grubs-nothing like killing that annoying level 20 adventurer in 3 rounds with something worth 2XP per kill. (Hackmaster also might have been in 2ed also not sure)

86. Food....BBQ perhaps...

87. Skin it and make poodle dice bags.

As I'm sure it is with a lot of players, I would have to say my process differs depending on the campaign and GM. Meaning that if I'm going to play with a group/GM that I have never played with before I tend to optimize.

But given some info on the campaign I'll be playing, IE area where it will be taking place and back story, I visualize (choose a race/class a lot more.

the first book by george r. r. martin

Finish the series it only gets better....until "a feast for crows" (book 4) which I thought was subpar for the series.

If you like the Warhammer fantasy setting all of the Gotrek and Felix novels are awesome.

And if you in the mood for a little modern fantasy the Dresden Files series is awesome as well.

as a player I enjoy levels 8-15 since thats the level IMO where you characters finally bridge the gap from good to great, ending at 15 because most campaigns I've played in have ended at that level.

As a GM I prefer 6-12 because that is where you get in the "meat and potatoes" of a story. Also its the level that I as a GM take off the kids gloves.

This sounds like a GM call to me. Regardless of what RAW states a reflex save means you are moving or dodging the effect so if you are immobilized (IE paralyzed, held, stunned ect.) you should not get a reflex save. But as far as prone and blinded go when prone you could still roll to avoid the effect though I would have you roll with some sort of penalty.

As I said none of this is RAW but just how I would rule on it at my table.

I run a weekly 3.5 (set in the pathfinder campaign world) game with 4 regular players and myself. We used to be a very large group (10 players and myself) but that was getting a little crazy so we split into 2 different 5 man groups. Ive been pressuring my players into upgrading to PFRPG but they are mostly unwilling to go buy the books...

simple fix, look at his character sheet then tell him to start over using the correct rules. Maybe I'm just a jerk but when I run 3.5 (or any system for that matter) I give a list of approved books at the start of campaign and to any players that join mid campaign (usually just core and complete series with exception to warlocks which are always banned.) and along with that list I include my "subject to GM approval" disclaimer.

I prefer a 60/40 combat/RP ratio myself. But most of the players I GM for are more like 90/10.

I think my group has always referred to the different editions of D&D (or products like it) as their version name and D&D was just implied IE "we are playing 3.5 tomorrow." or "We are playing Pathfinder tomorrow." or "I'm feeling old school lets play 2nd ed. tomorrow."

Rot grubs

+1, or at least the Hackmaster version (which I assume is the same as AD&D) nothing like a creature that is worth no xp that can kill a character in 2 rounds....that what you get for wading into refuse lol.

gotta keep in mind I was a *gasp*...console gamer until the late 90's so alot of the PC classics released before that I had to play way after they were release

#1: Castlevania symphony of the night: what can I say Alucard rules, and castlevania should have been a side scrolling RPG from the get go.

#2: the BG series (1,2, throne of bhaal, and I include icewind dale I as well) fun and unforgiving just as AD&D should be.

#3: Super Metroid: nuff said...

#4: unreal (and unreal tournament) first FPS I got really hooked on.

#5: Left 4 dead series: best zombie game ever.....

#6: FFIV (FFII on SNES in the states): first RPG I ever played.

#7: Halo 1: nothing like lugging around 4 Xboxes to play 16 man.

#8: Counter strike: a mod gone gold...

#9: Soul caliber series: Tekken style fighting with swords.....

#10: Super Mario Bros 1 on NES: crazy plumber who eats mushrooms to get bigger...Americans will buy anything...lol

I'm totally a sexist pig. Depending on what sort of character I play determines whether or not it's a boy or a girl. Clerics can be either. Wizards are usually female. Fighter types are usually male. It's completely arbitary, but I've noticed my gaming buddies are the same way, often playing female clerics, druids, rogues and wizards, but male fighters, barbarians, monks, paladins and rangers.

Pretty much the same here.

This is not sure fire but it could work well on a competing party. Basically you munchkin bait the other party.

Think like a DM.

step 1: find a cave, lair, keep ect. Full of big mean nasties. preferably with only 1 exit/entrance

step 2 leave said nasties alone.

step 3: have someone in the party make a map from the area where the other person/group is to the lair of the nasties and make it look like an old treasure map.

step 4: use disguise self, disguise skill ect to pose as a merchant and sell the other group the treasure map.

step 5: follow the group at a safe distance until they get to the lair.

now either the nasties kill them for you or....you could kill them when they exit.

if I run into a party with out a healer I typically:

As a DM: I make potions a little more available than I would otherwise and I might lower the cost of NPC healing in town (depending on party makeup, no way the cleric of most good alignments is going to discount heal the party of rapists and murderers ect.)

As a Player: I become alot more cautious....not alot more you can do.

actually as both a DM and a player I find that parties without healer a in some ways a little more fun it makes everyone really think about their actions and instills a greater sense of excitement to the game.

In my 3.5 game I have been ruling that detect evil does not detect just any creature of evil alignment, it only detects creatures with a evil aura or the evil subtype. And recently have had this questioned by the paladin in my group and for now we are doing things my way, I am the DM after all.

But I am wondering if I am wrong or right by RAW. So far my only real proof is that if detect evil detects any creature that is evil, then why do they need to worry about auras of evil clerics.

Does anyone know if there is an errata on detect evil or any other official source that better explains the spell.

So a year or so back my gaming group switch our system from 3.5 to hackmaster. We have since switched back to 3.5 but one of the only things I liked about the hackmaster system was the quirks and flaws character creation system, where you roll your stats 3d6 in order then you can choose to take a number (1-9) of randomly generated (though multiple tables) quirks and flaws (every thing from bad personal hygene to loosing an arm to food allergies) and each quirk and flaw was worth "building points" you could use to raise your characters stats but each quirk and flaw had a negative gameplay effect.

I really liked this system because it made characters more interesting kind of forced role playing (something you have to do in my group) IE if you rolled and got Mute you needed to bring a chalk board to game to write what your character wanted to say..

anyway question is has anyone heard of anything in the 3.x (or PFRPG) that does this or something similar?

There is a actual ninja base class in the complete adventurer 3.5 book. Its like a rogue who cant sneak attack when flanking but has slightly different class skills and some decent class abilities.

Unless they changed it from 3.5 to pathfinder (I dont think they did). you can take a 5ft step during any round that you didnt actually move. Even if you used a move action such as drawing a weapon so long as you didn't actually move. So for example if you draw your sword (move action) and attack (standard action) you can still take a 5ft step before or after.

just a thought, but I'm guessing during combat your well behind the party generally so next combat you let them rush in to kill the bad guys and you cast a spell (and they wont likely see it coming unless the cleric has decent spell craft) but instead you hit them with whatever spell youve got up your sleeve then on the next round you use teleport or dimension door (on a scroll if you have to) to get as far away as possible leaving the enemy to clean up after you. this is assuming that the spell your using has decent range (sorry didnt read the rest of the posts to see if you said what spell you were going to use)

if it has touch range or area affect sorrounding you ect. Next time you teleport the party or buff ect. you unleash the spell and hope for the best.

either way you should defiantly ask your DM about rerolling and starting anew right after.

spell resistance works like this (in 3.5)

Its like rolling an attack only you use your caster level instead of BAB.

so 1d20+caster level, if you meet or beat the SR your spell affects the creature.

(and of course vice versa is true if you are the one with SR the creature will have to roll 1d20 and add its caster level if it roll high enough its spell will affect you)

So if your a level 4 Wizard and you cast charm person on some one with spell resistance 15. you roll 1d20+4 (your caster level) if the total is 15 or higher then the person is charmed (if they dont make the will save). Note that there are a few feats that will give you additional bonuses against SR such as spell penetration.

One thing to remember is not all spells are subject to SR if you look in the description of the spell in question there will be an entry that says Spell Resistance: yes (or no) if yes that spell is subject to SR if no then its is not subject.

well as for spiritual weapon I would have it make STR checks at the casters bonus to avoid being entangled.

for manyjaws I would use the same as spiritual weapon, as for vortex of teeth I would rule that the flying piranhas would destroy the web that is in the area of effect as they bite and tear at it.

My advise would be to pick up one of the PF adventure path series (all 6 books) they give a pretty simple and easy to follow campaign then as you get more comfortable start adding in little "side-adventures" between books and plot hooks and eventually you will work your way up to writing your own material.

Also if you are playing 3.5 make SURE to limit the # of allowed books for your first campaign. I suggest going bare bones (PHB and DMG only) for the first campaign. Remember the less books available the less memorization and headache for you. As you get time you can thoroughly read the other books and decide which ones work for you. In PFRPG this really isn't as much an issue as 3.5 since there are less books available.

Also delegate authority IE put a player in charge of inish. rolls another for looking up combat rules this will speed up your game.

Gming is a lot of trial and error don't expect your first campaign to be spotless you will get better over time.

yeah did that was just seeing if id get any hits here as well

not really sure not many though mostly still soldiers

1st attempt at a PbP character so here goes.

Abbas Abbud, priest of sarenrae

Description: the dark skinned man before you wears thin flowing blue robes from head to toe, partially hiding the glint of steel armor underneath. Your eyes are drawn a small golden symbol of the dawnflower that adorns his neck. In one hand he holds a battle worn scimitar, in the other a wooden shield with a symbol of Sarenrae carved into the front.

was thinking standard healer cleric with a touch of melee potential. I know its a little status quo but seeing as this is my first PbP wanted to keep it simple.

ok thanks for the info

bump

so ive never played in a PbP game but im looking to join one up for anything pathfinder or 3.5 anyway just putting feelers out. thanks.

hello, my gaming group is looking to recruit 1-2 more new players in Area 1 South Korea.

The group currently consists of several soldiers and civilians assigned to Cp. Casey korea (so we are all english speaking) we play sunday mornings 8am-2pm

we are currently running the legacy of fire AP using D&D 3.5 rules (set in the pathfinder campaign setting) for more information please respond here for more info.

hello i am a player looking to join a virtual table top game (using maptools or some other VP program)ive never ued a virtual tabletop before but i would like to try it out. I would prefer a Friday night game (EST) playing either 3.5 or pathfinder. Anyway, respond here if you have a group i could join (or know of a better place to look)

well, if you look at it like this the average commoner in 3.5 has 4 HPs so in real world terms anything that does 4 damage or more would kill a normal person so i would have to say that a lawn mower should do 1d3 damage seeing as its more likely to injure you than to kill

my group has used a bunch of different home made game boards.

the first was a large (4'x6') dry erase white board with a grid (made by using electrical tape, a ruler, and lot and lots of time.

the second and much much more effective is simply taking a large piece of plywood (ours is about 6'x10 or so but you could use any size to fit your gaming space) we then spray painted the entire thing white on one side, let it dry and used strips of duct tape to outline a grid and the spray painted black on the board, letting dry and removing the tape and rinse and repeat for horizontal lines creating a nice even grid across the entire thing.

so at that point we had a large white piece of plywood that fit nicely on top of our 2nd table, problem was we couldn't write or draw maps on it so we took a roll of lamination paper and covered the entire table, this is very time consuming seeing as you have to be very careful to avoid air bubbles under the lamination paper.

this whole process took about 3-4hrs not counting the time the paint took to dry and had nice results

well that is something to think about perhaps i will have to keep the 60% failure rate on divine magic as well just with out the mishap chance. anyway thanks for bringing that up ill have to refine this a little more.

pt1-question
in the campaign setting it describes the mana wastes a bunch of different ways in including "warped reality", "magic dead", and "warped magic".

I assume that the writers were purposefully vague to give DM's some space to interpret this area in their own ways.

anyway, I was wondering if there had ever been anything published about how exactly the manawastes affects magic, meaning is it 100% magic dead both arcane and divine, or is it only 100% dead to arcane, or does magic function there but is warped in some way.

pt-2 idea

so here is my idea for how to run the mana wastes in a campaign.

First off divine magic would have to function there (it makes sense that too much arcane magic would affect arcane magic in the area but i find it hard to see that there is a place the is almost completely cut off from the gods).

2nd magic items IE arms and armor with permanent passive bonuses IE +1 weapons or gauntlets of ogre power do not function there.

Arcane magic and supernatural abilities (and scrolls wands and ect.) function there but suffer a 60% failure rate and have a chance to be warped by the chaotic nature of magic in the mana wastes giving a 30% chance for a mishap. so every time a player, NPC, or monster uses a arcane spell, spell completion item, or supernatural ability you (the GM) roll 1d100 and on a result of 01-39 the spell goes off as planned, 40-69 the spell has no effect, and 70-100 a the caster suffers a spell mishap.

for the mishaps you can use any random table that gives a random effect that takes the place of the spell. the easiest example of this is the rod of wonder table in the DMG. in my game i will be using the "spell mishap table" from the "hackmaster" system which has everything from casters hair grows to caster spontaneously combusts.

in my opinion this gives at least explanation on why there are undead and abberations in the mana wastes while still making arcane magic not nessecarly useless but dangerous to use while in there.

anyway, obviously my group will be running through the mana wastes soon and I was researching how exactly to run it and had this idea figured i would share it with the community. thanks for reading.