Enomiel's page

Thanks for all the answers, that helped me seeing this under a new light.

I mean, the big difference is that the heavy crossbow is a simple weapon. As someone who has used one, it's not something I'd use on a martial character. It's a "fire once and drop" weapon at low-levels for simple weapon-locked classes. What they did with the arbalest is given martial crossbow users an option for the "heavy duty" crossbow while keeping the heavy crossbow for the simple weapon users.

I actually never thought of just dropping the damn thing after the first shot, this indeed open a niche for it to be used. I'm still dubitative as if backstabber is enough as a bonus for a "main weapon" compared to the bow's deadly.

Yeah, I also wanted to react to "no one is going to use a heavy crossbow" as I used one, too, on my low level Sorcerer. It's actually a very nice weapon as the damage is high. With a potency crystal it really packs a punch at low level on classes that are not used to be strong before a few levels.

I guess I'm just biased against single die roll. It is more damage in the long run, but each individual shot is a gamble so the reload 2 still feel like a bit too much of a drawback. Maybe some kind of limitation on the same level as volley for the longbow would have been good.

So now we have a new martial crossbow, but why didn't Paizo just update the heavy crossbow rather than creating a new entry? As it stand the heavy crossbow is just taking space in the weapons list for nothing because no one is going to use a reload 2 weapon. Even reload 1 crossbows are a hard sale when bows are reaload 0, deadly and potentially propulsive. The arbalest backstabber pales in comparison giving less damage bonus on top of being conditional

It would have made more sense to me to give deadly to the crossbow, this way you really have a choice to make between two distinctive style : slow firing counting on crit for big damage or rapid firing with stable damage bonus from propulsive.

Is it intended to be live or PbP?

There is a few reasons why the events should push the PC on this path, but to put it simply a direct clash of force either on the offensive or the defensive is not a winning move for the hero simply because of the gap in numbers : Sandpoint just don't have enough combat able people and Magnimar is too far to send help in time.

To go and attack Thistletop directly means to give up the benefit of stealth, Nualia's gang will realize soon enough what is happening and order to take defensive position and Sandpoint forces are not enough to either break through or lay an effective siege of the place. On the other hand Nualia's forces are enough to actually besiege Sandpoint in the event the town resist to the initial assault and it won't take long for a war of attrition to wear out the defenders.

Thus the most viable option left should be to infiltrate Thistletop and take down the source of cohesion of the goblin army : Nualia herself. With that said help from the town could be in the form of a diversion to help the PC to get in unnoticed.

All your comments are very useful to me, they make me realize how much of an impact it could have to make those changes. The main problem is indeed that even if the average performance is stabilized by the bell curb, the highest result being less probable it naturally makes hard task even harder.

I will have to try it on a longer test but it might still work well with me: it counteract the natural action inferiority of a lone BBG and makes optimization and creative thinking to get a bonus all the more rewarding.

@JohnHawkins: I might have exaggerated a bit the tendency of my crew, but still their fearfulness of the occasional unfair low roll is what made me think about a bell curb system as they complained about it on some occasion.

@Lady-J: I guess you mean "why not 2:2 and 9:9 since they add up to the same result as 1+3 and 10+8 respectively?" This would be to keep the same odds to get a fumble or critical as with 1D20 which is 5%. To get this exact % I had to choose five different results since there is 100 possible result with 2D10, to keep the spirit of the D20 system in which the lowest result, that is 1, is fumble and the highest, that is 20, is crits I thought about making it the three lowest results are fumble and the three highest results are crits with 2D10. But that makes 6 results for each meaning 6% chance to roll it, so I had to exclude one result in each series to keep the same odds as with 1D20 and so to make it easy to remember I excluded 2:2 and 9:9 as there was a common point between all the other in their respective series: that is the roll including a 1 for lowest and a 10 for highest.

@JohnHawkins: Indeed the flat bonus ends up being of varying impact with the bell curve, I guess it didn't show much since it was one session with low level character and correspondingly low CR monsters. My group ended up having an opposite reaction because they always makes plan considering they will roll no better than 5 with a D20, just to be on the safe side, but that's the board-gamer in them showing, so with a bell curve system they tend to assume better average roll in their plans.

As for difference's effect and iterative attacks you pointed a very valid problem. How about ruling that a one attack action is carefully aimed and should get to roll 2D10 but using multiple attacks in one round is favoring quantity over quality and should consequently roll 1D20 for each attack, this way the big monsters are not unfairly advantaged and the low end of iterative attack still get a decent chance for a lucky punch. Would this amend the problem? Tell me what you think.

@Wolin: Glad you liked the feedback, I found everyone's comments very helpful too. I did a test run simply using 2D10 for every check just to get a proof of concept and see if a major problem would arise immediately and it didn't. A longer test with some of the twist I exposed above will indeed be necessary if we are to see all the consequences of such change and I intend to get my group through the good old Rise of the Runelord campaign.

I like your way of describing each option between taking10/2D10/D20. Even if it doesn't works for every check in the system in the end, I might still keep it for skills in the way you put it. For combat and considering JohnHawkins's thoughts on the consequence on iterative attacks I think it might be better to allow it as long as one is proficient with the weapon used and making only one attack, but to not allow it with multiple attack and maybe also ban any movement in the same round, so that the option exist but must be chosen over other equally appealing possibilities.

I hadn't thought about all things related to magic beyond saving throws, caster checks seems to go well with school focus indeed and spell penetration for attempt to overcome SR, I'll have to check all situation when a caster check is called for to sort this out. For ability checks your example made me realize that I was maybe looking at it the wrong way: indeed as it is a check on raw power it should perform with some form of stability since one should be used to one's body/mind performance and so maybe it should be 2D10 most of the time, except for situation when you must go over your limit like stabilization roll as you pointed.

@Rovewin: seems like this critical miss/hit misunderstanding will be a recurring topics. The way I suggested was a bit obscure and had problems of it's own that I didn't realize at the time (though not the one you pointed to me as it is irrelevent), so I'll change it for a new form with the same idea: The fumbles would be on the five lowest results with a 1 in the roll, that would be 1:1 1:2 2:1 1:3 and 3:1, which makes five results out of the hundred possible with 2D10 making it the same probability than getting 1 on 1D20. Similarly the critical hits would happen on the five highest results with a 10 in the roll, that is 10:10 10:9 9:10 10:8 and 8:10 which makes five results out of the hundred possible with 2D10 making it the same probability than getting 20 on 1D20.

I tried a one shot with every check as 2D10 rather than 1D20, as a test run and thought of reporting it here. My players were the usual people I play with as GM or PC and veteran gamer in tabletop RPG and board-game.

As a result the checks throughout the session seemed to be resolved with more ease, but I think it's a matter of how it felt rather than a statistical result. Indeed the players all have computer related job which gave them technical insight on the consequence of switching D20 for 2D10s and with this knowledge they planned their actions with a more reliable average result of the dices, securing less bonus to ensure their success (they can get very creative). Personally I felt not much difference for game balance but it might indeed change how some players tackle challenges on. I didn't fell the need to change the base difficulty (including AC) from "10 + modifiers" to "11 + modifiers".

As a whole I think the change can work, but to preserve the original ambiance of D&D/pathfinder style games it should be better to apply it selectively. My original idea was to grant the 2D10 to beat a check when the PC are "competent" in the thing being checked and get them stuck with 1D20 when they are not.

So now I want to discuss the criterion under which to class the PC as competent or not, let's try to get them all in order:

Skill check: Easy one, they should get the 2D10 for class skill with at least one rank.

Ability check: As it works as a skill check (base ability modifier) with no skill associated they should never get 2D10 on such raw power contest, but a case could be made when a class special abilities gives a bonus to an ability check specifically (I'm thinking about some barbarian archetype which gives bonus to break things with strength check).

Attack check: I'm a bit stuck on this one, to gives the 2D10 with the used weapon's proficiency seems a bit too good as everyone would basically have it, but to restrict it to some criteria like a feats (weapon focus seems a good candidate) seems too stringent (and pointless as everyone would auto-take it). Maybe I will chose to apply the former since combat comes with the territory for adventurers, it makes more sense flavor wise to me.

Maneuver check: Easier as it is specialized enough, 2D10 would comes with a feat. The question is to make it part of the existing feats which levy the penalty for attempting the corresponding maneuver, to make it a custom feat with the former as a prerequisite or maybe part of the "grater [insert maneuver]" feats benefits (a bit too limiting in my opinion as they all have a BAB +6 prerequisite).

Save check: I would simply replace the benefits of the "improved save" line of feats (one re-roll on the corresponding save per day) with the benefit of granting 2D10 on the corresponding save check (powerful but still needs to invest two feats).

That's all I could thought of for now. Please give me your take on this: is it a good idea, is it balanced enough? Did I forgot some checks which needs to be decided upon, does some criterion needs clarification? Any feedback is welcome.

Thanks for all the comments. Wolin's bit on the maths behind it was particularly insightful as I didn't crunch the numbers myself yet.

I'll see to implement it for my next table if the players are interested to experiment a bit and report how it goes thereafter.

The more I mull this over, with the expanded range for criticals, the more I think you might be better off simply expanding the amount of tasks that characters can take 10 or take 20 with.

A separate d20-based game (Mutants & Masterminds) had an ability (akin to feats) called "Skill Mastery" that allowed you to Take 10 even in stressful situations. Perhaps that could be ported over for all class skills (that the character has at least one rank in)?

I think the math is solid for the expanded range of criticals - but at the same time, I think it'll be far less intuitive for the players and will lead to a lot of confusion (as we can see with Lady-J).

I own M&M so I'm familiar with this solution, I thought about it but the complete suppression of a roll didn't sit well with me, we tried before but it proved somewhat of a mood killer. I think it's indeed simpler though.

I'm not worried about my usual players, they all have a solid understanding of math and the idea of this modification came from our discussions about boardgames with dices. Newcomers might be put off but I usually don't include home rule with them unless they are a necessary fix to the game as written.

...in a 2d10 system 2 would be the most minimum value so 2 would be a miss, and 20 would be an auto hit just like in 1d20 systems making 2,3,4,5,and 6 count as an auto miss just because you want to switch up the rolling system is going to screw over the martials way more then just the single d20 only failing on a 1, and adjusting the critical threat range on the higher end will make crits way to available which may seem like a boon to the martials at 1st but will mean they will be taking a lot more crits to the face during the campaign meaning they are more likely to die as they are generally the ones taking the hits for the party so the game turns into i either crit this thing for lots of damage or i miss horribly with little to no middle ground or normal hits

I thought you were just being adamant on cirts being reserved for min/max number value, but in fact you seem not to understand the way I suggest to determine critical hit and miss range, which gives the exact same chance to get a critical hit/miss than with a D20 while using 2D10.

Try reading again my suggestion and ask for explanation on the points you didn't understand but as long as you do not get what I meant your contribution will amount to nothing as it will be based on mistaken premises (or you are just trolling and it amounts to nothing either way).

i still stand by the minimum number value and only the minimum number value should be considered in automatic miss territory and the maximum and only the maximum value should be in automatic teritory

Well you are of course free to think this, but my post was about tweaking the D20 system with some use of 2D10 in certain circumstance, the consequences of such tweak, possible problems and their solutions.

Your principle of critical miss/hit being reserved to the minimal/maximal number value is all well and good, but it's all it is: a principle. It doesn't address the points we were talking about, nor does it bring any new one into light and is therefore irrelevant to the question at hand.

if you make it so they fail on a 2-5 in addition to 1 something that could have hit on a 2 now misses

They would fail on five result out of the hundred possible on the D100, making it the same chance to fail than one result out of twenty (the 1 on 1D20).

This should not be the classic 01 to 05 to avoid high addition result being fail though (since 0 = 10 on the D10). So maybe something like 11, 12, 21, 13 and 31 being the fumble with this system.

so now instead of 1 chance to get a miss you now have 5 chances to have a miss..... really doesn't seem fair to martials

I am not an expert on probability so I might be missing something but I don't see the difference in treatment (1/20 vs 5/100).

One potential drawback is if you are doing something outside of your specialization you will have a significantly reduced chance to succeed through pure luck.

For example:

Fighter with +10 to hit against AC 18, this benefits him lots since he now has a 79% chance to hit vs a 65% chance.

Now let's say there is a scenario the whole party is down except the wizard, he is completely out of offensive spells, the BBEG with AC 18 is severely wounded and almost dead. The wizard heroically picks up the fighters weapon and attacks the bad guy. Lets give him a +2 (since the wizard most likely would be not proficient and would dumped strength ).

The wizard normally would hit 25% of the time but with a 2d10 system he would only hit 15% of the time.

This would carry into anyone trying to do something they are not "good" at (Heavy Armour fighter rolling acrobatics, dex rogue making a strength check).

How much this would come into play would vary a lot though, depending on your GM style. If you don't make the PC's act out of their comfort zones/builds much it would come up a lot less.

Which is why I stated my intent to make the 2D10 roll exclusive to things PC are "competent" with in some way (to be defined), thus if you act in your specialty you stabilize your chance but acting out of it is akin to letting it up to luck.

For instance my first take on it was for class skill: if it's a class skill you get to roll 2D10, if not you get 1D20.

For attack roll I was hesitating: getting it with proficiency seems a bit too much but getting it with some class ability or feat (let's say weapon focus) a bit restrictive.

You completely eliminate the possibility of a critical miss.

With 2d10, there is no way to roll a 1. The lowest roll is 2

Sorry if I was not being clear, my precedent post also applied to critical misses as well, since the disappearance of the of the 1 result was not lost on me.

This is the closest you could probably get for critical rules:

Critical threat ranges change as follows:
20 becomes 18-20 (6% chance) and is considered a natural 20
19-20 becomes 17-20 (10% chance)
18-20 becomes 16-20 (15% chance)
17-20 becomes 15-20 (21% chance)
15-20 becomes 14-20 (28% chance)

A roll in the range of 2-4 is a critical miss (6% chance)

This stays fairly close to the traditional odds. It does give a slightly better chance of a natural 20 or critical miss, but you could always choose to reduce the range slightly if you feel it's a problem. Due to lack of granularity there is no way to map a 16-20 critical threat range to 2d10, but I don't think there's any way to actually get a 16-20 threat range so that's mostly academic.

As said the roll would be two differentiated D10, the addition being the check result and the D100 reading informing on the possibility for a critical hit or miss. Therefore the critical hit or miss can be based on the same probability than with a D20 (or even tweaked if need felt).

I had thought about crits but forgot to mention it.

I would translate the D20 probability of critical threat range to % and differentiate the D10 in the 2D10 to get a D100 reading thus keeping critical distribution the same without the need for additional dice roll.

I always thought the D20 systems suffered from their eponymous die of choice: 1 to 20 is quite a large range of result in relation to the flat bonus a character can generate in the beginning and the the fact that each result has the same probability hamper the capacity of players to estimate how their character would fare in face of a given threat.

And so I thought, why not makes the roll with 2D10 instead when the PC are in some way competent with what they must roll? This would bring the stability I was seeking and help players gauge their prospective performance as the can bet on the median result of 11 which as become far more probable.

The divers checks would get easier to beat but as stated the PC wouldn't get this benefit on all of them and I think about giving the same advantage to important foes and nemesis.

With that in mind do you think it could works without upsetting the balance of the game to much? As in being able to use AP without buffing encounters and challenges.

By the time my party was all the way down Skull's Crossing, our bard was already beheaded by the skull ripper, with no means to resurrect her handy (no cleric, best remaining healer was a paladin).

As Avaxial is mentioned to feel everythings that happens in the structure, he was of course aware of the death and promptly offered to "reattach your little friend's head and makes her functional again".

For the paladin wasa real conundrum: he couldn't make a pact with the devil but he still wanted to save his friend! The fighter didn't like the bard and was all for letting her in this sorry state (role-play reasons behind this, not a dick move) and the ranger didn't care either way. In the end the rogue put an end to the debate by jumping in the circle without warning accepting the deal to save the bard (he his the most benevolent of the group and wouldn't suffer not to save her when he could have).

With this Avaxial and promptly kept his end of the bargain: the bard was in one pieces again if unconscious... BUT, as the paladin attempted to "lay of hand" her back to her senses, he indeed waked her up by the pain he inflicted upon her. At this point the group realized that she was being made a "functional" undead being and she now had all the associated trait even if her alignment stayed unchanged.

The bard's player was thrilled with the impromptu development and the paladin's player lamented on allowing the devil's deeds to unfold so much that he declared the pitfiend his nemesis taking an oath to thwart his plans whenever possible starting with restoring the unwilling bard to the living world.

Cleric can devote themselves to a concept rather than a god so it could very well be devoted to the pantheon as a concept, you'll have to determine the pantheon alignement and domain as the rule would have you.

Now for having devotion toward multiple god, personnaly I'd rule it as a no can do if I'm GMing. Indeed peoples pray to different gods depending on their purview and cleric are no exception, but while a cleric might pray to another god for certain things his devotion stay to his patron god.

So no double booking gods in my vision of this.

Now the question becomes can you even use dispell magic to counter a spell with instantaneous duration?

You sure can.

The effect of a spell with an instantaneous duration can't be dispelled, because the magical effect is already over before the dispel magic can take effect.

Counterspell: When dispel magic is used in this way, the spell targets a spellcaster and is cast as a counterspell. Unlike a true counterspell, however, dispel magic may not work; you must make a dispel check to counter the other spellcaster's spell.

So as the counterspell option isn't a dispel attempt (even if a dispel check is requiered) it certainly can counter instantaneous spells.

(and ninajed).

I won't deny there is sound argument in all this, I tend to forgot that Pathfinder setup is quite Manichean. Still it's only my pov but I see such action if not evil at least "not good" and I still think such a retribution from the PC seems a little out of place at this moment of the action.

If I ever try (again) to run this AP I'll still do all I can to keep my PC in sandpoint at this moment.

Mr. Jacobs was nice enough to go ahead and include "The PCs should be Xth level by Y event" for the entire campaign, so I'm just using that data for my party and dropping experience entirely.

Actually I was thinking of doing that as well.

One of my GM did not tell us about xp gain and just indicated when we leveled and I found that removing this numerical aspect of character progression helped a lot to invest the player more into its character background and RP. It was also convenient for my GM who could adjust our progression to his campaign and vice versa.

So I plan on mastering RotRL now that I got my hand on the anniversary edition and I'll probably forgo telling my player their exact XP as well (only problem is that I am still missing a player =p).

Isn't their some ritual option for magic which would allow for greater result in return for more time and material spent?

I've always seen the spell described in the books as the handy battle spell, sure proof and battle tested but if you let some time and peace to a magician he should be able to improve on that.

Well I don't mean he does it wrong, how one manage his campaign is one's own business and I realize my opinion on the subject was uncalled for seeing as the topic was just for sharing the experience and not for any advice on game mastering.

Yet I stand firm on the fact the evil status of a race shouldn't be used as an excuse to allow such extreme action without it having the proper consequence.

Congratulations on your unprovoked acts of genocide.

This! There seems to be not so "goody-two-shoes" people in your team with that would be hellknight, brutish rogue and all but this still was an unnecessary, completely free act of mass murdering.

I started RotRL a number of time (each campaign died down quickly due to lack of time from both PC and me) and each time Shalelu comes in and mention the goblins tribes, I face the problem of PC all too eager to go on a rampage and have to strive to make them stay in Sandpoint.

Even if it's just goblins it IS mass murder even more so if it is not aimed at Thistletop but at random tribes justified by the need to "calm down the little pest". It is evil and heinous would I be GM, I am not sure your party would be regarded exactly as heroes upon returning in town. Sure some would be delighted, especially those who lost someone in the goblins raid and the prowess as warrior might be praised, but still there should be more than one people who'd fell uncomfortable with their "heroes" being able to burn down a whole village (implicitly including women and children) without a second thought.

Good and evil set aside it is also tactically wrong for PC to set up against random goblin tribe without any intel indicating the cause behind the latest goblin uproar lies here. Thistletop could be a legitimate target, so to prevent my PC running there I emphasis on the towns vulnerability as the book says but also at their crucial lack of information on exactly who or what they are dealing with.

Not a PC's death but during the initial goblin assault on Sandpoint my druid PC lost his animal companion to the gob commando's horseslayer.

The animal was an Owl by the name of Edith (bad pun intended for french speaker) and I kept emphasizing during to this PC during character creation that this kind of companion is suited for scout duty, not combat.

But despite all warnings she kept having it attacking the ranged fighting commando finally earning the goblin's attention and wrath (and to be honest the volatile looked quite appetizing to him). One crit later and the owl was no more.