flupwatson's page

Hi,I emailed this on Sunday, but I haven't got a reply yet , so I decided to paste it here as well:

This is concerning Order 2642604 which I placed earlier this day. If it is at all possible, I would like to cancel one item, Burning Wheel: Torchbearer Player's Deck. The reason is that I thought that one deck would be sufficient for all players, but now I understand that you need a deck for each player. Sorry, I just didn't read the description carefully enough. If possible, I'd like to replace it with Munchkin 2: Unnatural Axe Expansion - Revised Edition. The difference is $4.46, which of course I'm happy to pay, just let me know how to go about doing it. I'm assuming it wouldn't make any difference to the shipping charge.

Thanks again for your help,
Phil

I have a 6th level alchemist. As I understand the vanilla bomb does 3d6 fire damage. For the explosive bomb, it states in the rulebook that creatures that take a direct hit burst into flame doing 1d6 fire damage per round. My question is whether this extra 1d6 fire damage starts from the 1st round, in addition to the 3d6 original damage, or from the second round. thanks in advance!

I'm playing an alchemist with a flaming rapier and I was wondering if it's allowed to apply poison to it. I haven't seen anything in the rules to contradict this, but logically it seems strange. If the sword deals fire damage, wouldn't it burn the poison off?

I just got a group of expats here in Moscow and since I was the only one with books and gaming experience I'm the GM.

I never really understood how much I suck at improv and acting until our first session. As a player, I never had many problems (maybe because I mainly played a fantasy version of myself), but as GM and having to act out different NPCs it's really hard. What's worse is that my group insists on doing it all 1st person and they themselves are very witty. It's not that I don't have a sense of humor myself, but it's just coming up with comebacks and appropriate reactions of NPCs is really hard for me.

Any else find themselves in such a situation? Any advice?

One thing I've never been clear on. Should the GM roll for the players to notice or know about stuff? For example, the party enters a dungeon with unusual feature X that isn't immediately obvious. Should the GM roll a dungeoneering knowledge check secretly or should this only be rolled by the players who explicitly state "I want to use my dungeoneering skill to see what I know about X"? Or another example, players encounter some new kind of monster. Should I roll for them as GM to see what they may know about it already, or should I wait for them to inquire as to what they know and let them make the roll? In other words, should these kinds of checks generally be passive (secretly rolled by the GM) or active (only rolled when the players state they are using them)?

Of course, I know there are probably cases when one or the other is appropriate, but some general advice and guidelines would be greatly appreciated.

I just recently got on google+ and was really impressed by the number of rpg fans hanging out there. What was really fantastic though was playing there on via video hangout. There was almost no lag, 6 of us playing at the same time. It really felt like playing in person. We were playing OSRIC, and most of the other games seem to be old-school retro clones, I guess because they don't use figures and tactical maps.

I haven't been able to find out any games with Pathfinder, though, and I was wondering if any of you hang out there and if there are any games going on.

I've got a most unusual pathfinder campaign going on with triplets two girls and a boy, age 11. This is here in Moscow, and I'm getting paid for DMing because it's actually an English conversation lesson.

The problem is one of the girls HATES combat with a passion and just wants to talk and role-play. The other girl doesn't mind a fight here and there, but gets bored if combat lasts more than 5 minutes. The boy as could be guessed is a total munchkin and just wants to kill monsters and take their treasure, but also is impatient and shouts at me to hurry if I have to look stuff up or if things drag.

They all love treasure and XP, arguing endlessly over who gets what, and so there has to be SOME combat, but it needs to be speeded up to an extreme.

I've taken to shortening battles artificially - for example, in a fight with a mummy, I had a talking bird fly in to give a tip to one of the characters to use fire, and then when the sorceror cast spark, poof - the mummy goes up in flames, battle over.

I've also thought of scrapping initiative for each character and going back to 1st edition AD&D initiative rules. We actually did play AD&D at first before pathfinder, but they found combat slow there as well, so I need to figure out how to speed things up even more.

Any advice? What to do when players want role-playing, XP and treasure, but lightning fast combat? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I've been re-reading the rules and looking at other posts here, but I'm still a bit confused on using intimidate in combat due to all the contradictory views.

If I understand it right:

1) you can only specifically target one foe at a time (i.e does not affect multiple monsters)

2) It does not stack, i.e. if you intimidate someone you already have intimidated (shaken condition) they won't have the fear condition, but will just be shaken longer.

Have I got it right??!!

I haven't yet had a chance to try out the new classes in the Advanced Player's Guide, but just flipping through I couldn't help but think in what a precarious position the alchemist must be in - one stray push down the stairs and either boom he explodes with a flash or if he's lucky all his precious potions just shatter and he's SOL. Looks like a fun character to play but still I have to wonder how viable this class would be. As a DM I like things to be as realistic as possible and I'm sure I'd have to house-rule a chance of everything shattering and spilling and even perhaps exploding in case of a rough shove.

Just curious what others think on this!

I've been playing AD&D 1st edition with my 10 year old daughter and we recently switched to Pathfinder. It's been going great, but now she's expressed the desire to read the books herself, and a part of me cringes everytime she picks up the Bestiary. I keep waiting for her to read about the Ogre and ask me, Daddy, what's necrophilia? It hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

BTW, I personally love the adult themes in Pathfinder, stuff like the temple to Calistria in Absalom with elven prostitutes - it's something you'd never find in mainstream Hasbro owned WOTC - I'm just wondering if I should keep the books away from my kids or not. I don't mind the sex stuff so much, it's just the necrophilic cannabilistic incestuous ogres that bother me a bit.

I ordered Game Mastery Guide from Amazon.co.uk and was a bit dismayed to find that pages 33-48 were COMPLETELY MISSING. I was wondering if anybody else has had this issue, or if it was just a strange printing fluke.

Of course, I could have returned it, but it's a bit of a hassle since I live in Moscow, Russia and my local neighborhood post office has it's delivery section shut down due to lack of workers - so I just use the PDF for the missing pages. Mainly I'm just curious if I was the only one or not with this problem.

I was really surprised that you don't publish monster cards. I've just started GM-ing Pathfinder and one thing that slows down the game is having to flip through the Bestiary for monster stats. So it would be great to have cards for stats, plus the pictures could be shown to the party.

I would be all over any monster cards published as I imagine many others would be. I still have very fond memories of the AD&D monster decks published by TSR in the 80s.

So please, Paizo, please, publish monster cards!!!

My initial common sense and experience playing AD&D is to say no, you can not use your missle weapon to someone you are engaged with in melee, i.e. an adjacent foe.

However, there is the point-blank feat which would seem to allow this, and I don't see anything in the rules to say you can't, and this feat seems to reward players to run up and shoot the monster in the head with their bow.

I would like this explained though, because if somebody was adjacent to you and hacking at you with a battleaxe, it would seem impossible and even silly to able to parry and block blows and still be able to get a bow shot in.

This may sound like a silly question, but I come from AD&D 1st edition background where there are no feats, so I wanted to clarify.

The Ogre in the Bestiary has a +3 Will save in the stats. Further down I see that it has the iron will feat, which gives a +2 to will saves. Is this +2 already calculated into the +3 stat or do I add it, giving +5 if say my cleric wants to cast a sleep spell at it.

So in general to all bonuses from stats, feats or whatever get included in basic monster stats in the Bestiary?