gr1bble's page

The PDF will be updated within the next few days and you'll be able to re-download the new version then at no charge.

Awesome, thanks!

For those like Christina interested in a print version, I present to you ULTIMATE RULERSHIP, including an additional 4000 words or so and a page of full-color building tokens for all of the new buildings.

Is the PDF being updated with this content as well, or are the tokens and additional content for the print version only?

The Countdown Clock and Dominion of the Black do not currently have a big role to play in the Mummy's Mask AP, which is really much more focused on mummies and ancient Osirion than the plots and hints from the earlier adventures.

Hmmm... shame. I was almost ready to re-up my subscription (which I'm cancelling after Reign of Winter), because I love something focussed on the Dominion of the Black, but I think I'll hold off now. Not so keen on a generic "tomb raiding"/"mummy hunting" AP. Not that I think you guys won't knock the socks off it or anything, more that like Wrath of the Righteous, it's just not thematically something that I'm excited about running.

If you're going to do this, I'd recommend using Trailblazer.

Yes, it's 3.5, but it is a product that basically improves the "spine" of 3.5/d20 games - which Pathfinder is based on. One of the rules modules is around removing iterative attacks, without nerfing the fighting classes.

Thanks!

Nope. Cold Resistance requires a save once per hour if not using other protection.

Thanks - do you have a source for that? I guess it follows from a strict reading of the Energy Resistance ability, and assumes that each hour (or 10 mins if appropriate) of exposure to the cold environment counts as one "attack"?

So, I *think* I understand the rules, but just wanted to summarise and confirm:

Taldor
Cold resistance/Endure Elements: completely protects (no saves, damage, etc)
Cold weather outfit: completely protects (no saves, damage, etc)
Anything else: 1 save per hour, 1d6 non-lethal damage + hypothermia on fail.

Irrisen
Cold resistance/Endure Elements: completely protects (no saves, damage, etc)
Cold weather outfit: 1 save per hour with a +5 bonus, 1d6 non-lethal damage + hypothermia on fail.
Anything else: 1 save per 10 mins, 1d6 non-lethal damage + hypothermia on fail.

Is that right? The only thing I'm not really sure on is the cold resistance, and that is based on the old 3.5 rules and a post I found indicating that Jason Bulman agreed with that ruling.

Could you please cancel my AP subscription after the current AP (Reign of Winter) ends? I'm not terribly keen on the mythic AP, and I have more than enough APs now to last me for ages... though I'd like it suspended if possible because there is alwyas a chance that the next AP after mythic will be so good I won't be able to resist picking it up!
:)

By my calculations this makes my last AP volume #72, so please suspend/cancel from volume #73 onwards (and inclusive of volume #73).

Serpent's Skull had one of the best starts ever for a AP with the amazing "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv", which Iv'e ran as a standalone adventure. Then, I really liked "Race to Ruin" because ape men totaly do it for me. But the third adventure was the worst product Paizo ever published, period.

Kingmaker is a sandbox, which kills it as far as I'm concerned.

Absolutely agree. SS had a great start (one of the best AP starts IMO, right up there with Crimson Throne and Jade Regent - if you count "We Be Goblins" as the start...), and then from there each adventure seemed to get progressively worse until the final adventure up-ticked things a bit (though still not enough to compensate for the preceeding 3 adventures).

Kingmaker I've only played in, and then only about halfway before a TPK. While I did enjoy it, I can see how others might not - it was very sandboxy and driven by the PCs actions/goals rather than any overarching story. At the point of the TPK, we had no idea who the big bad was (in fact, to this day I still don't know).

I don't know much at all about Skull & Shackles, but I'm running Serpent's Skull and haven't really been impressed.

Here's my take on the books:
1) As mentioned above, a great little adventure, although the players found it difficult and a bit of a grind with all the disease.

2) Mediocre. The players I think enjoyed it much more than I did as a GM. The start was the best part - the remainder was very railroady and had quite a few bits that just didn't seem to make sense (story-wise).

3) Unlike others above, we found this adventure very poor. On the plus side it was incredibly sand-boxy, on the downside, it was to the point where the players kind of lost motivation/interest. The set-up of the city (pre-PCs arriving) doesn't make a lot of sense, and with one notable exception the PCs really weren't encouraged to take any approach apart from "kill them all and sort it out later". If you're the kind of GM with lots of time to take a skeleton of an adventure and flesh it out into a good adventure then it could be right up your alley, but that isn't what I buy APs for...

4) Mediocre. Added a bunch of stuff into a supposedly already largely explored city, which left the players (and me) head scratching a bit. The players again became very frustrated with the madness mechanic (much like the disease mechanic from the first adventure). Had some good bits though (rival faction encampment, final fight and gorilla king being most memorable).

5) Very Poor. Suffered from everything that the 3rd adventure suffered from, with the addition of the second half being a horrible dungeon crawl with very little to challenge high level PCs. It relied on the PCs finding an non-obvious needle in a haystack to proceed, which even with high level magic proved to be difficult given the protections in place. The only thing saving this from being a "terrible" rating was the Urdefhans.

6) Good - we're only half way through it, but so far it seems to be "high level adventuring done right". Still suffers compared to the first adventure just for being high level Pathfinder play, with all the craziness that implies, but one of the better final modules for an AP I can remember.

So, in summary - two good adventures bookending a crap sandwich from our perspective. Ok, that's probably too harsh, but even with the little I know about Skull & Shackles, I'd recommend it over Serpent's Skull. Probably the worst Paizo AP I've played run (and I've played or run most of them) - it seems great in theory, but is actually pretty poor in execution.

That's useful feedback from both of you.

Anyone else?

My ideal companion to the core book would be an adventure path. I don't have time these days to be making up my own adventures/campaigns, and this way you would only have to focus on the "relevant" parts of the setting at first, and allow it to grow more organically over time (similar to Paizo's approach with Pathfinder).

My pleasure! That's part of the whole point of teasers, after all. :)

Indeed, alas that more game designers/producers don't share the same philosophy.

I've been looking forward to this game for some time now, and the more I read about it (including browsing the catalogue/reviews of the various Anachronistic Adventurers releases), the more excited I get! Can't wait for the kickstarter...
:)

Nonballistic riot shields simply can't stand up to direct hits from serious weapons with the rigidity of hardened and reinforced leather or iron. As a result even though they cover a fairly big area, they are only +1 AC.

Yeah, I was actually thinking after posting that it may be related to the material of construction rather than the surface area. I originally thought, for some reason, that the material would be as hard/harder than ancient shields, but the more I reflected on it, the more I realised that probably wasn't right.

I think something planescape-like would be a just perfect change of pace for an AP.

Agreed. While I don't think it's likely to happen, as Paizo seem focussed on Golarion, I'd buy the heck out of a planescape-like AP.

Of course, I'm a subscriber anyway, but it would be a good opportunity to update their outer planes guidebook... and I lap up all the support materials for APs that excite me (case in point, Rise of Winter and Skull & Shackles - not so much Serpent's Skull or Shattered Star).
:)

I sent out an update to the mailing list today... an example of a riot shield (modern equipment in Pathfinder game terms).

I have a question about the riot shield, shouldn't it give +2 AC (large shield) rather than +1 (small shield) base?

I.e.: What I picture when I think riot shield

That's how I'd play it: Ustalav is Transylvania!

That's what our GM has done - he printed out a historical Transylvanian calendar, and matched the (earth) seasons up to the Golarion seasons.

Generally looks cool - I like the advice section at least and the traits seem fun.

However, are the descriptions for the equipment list missing some entries? Just seems a bit weird that only three items have descriptions, one of which is "firewood", while things like "frost ward gel" aren't given any description.

It can't be too far away... I got my regular subscription email this morning, telling me that the first volume of the AP was about to ship in the next few days...

Congratulations APassingStranger. You have my shield mate. Apologies to the others who PMed me later - don't have the time to reply to you all to say you didn't get it.

Sure, I have one I'm not going to use. Happy to give it to a new pledger.

Kicktraq has this to say:
Funding: $60,569 of $25,000 (242% funded)
Projected Total: $1,211,380 (4845% funded)

Of course, before anyone gets too excited, that is after only 4 days, and it probably will swing fairly wildly for a while... still, pretty encouraging.

I'm probably going to cop a bit of flak for this, but I'm going to go against the majority and say RotRL wasn't that great. Sure the first two adventures are great, but the third is *really* disconnected from them (though still pretty good), and the fourth and fifth are disconnected again and both largely dungeon crawls. If you like that kind of thing, they're well done, but after the first two adventures the rest of the campaign was a real let down for us.

CotCT is much better, though again suffers from disconnected fourth and fifth adventures (and a very - not well done IMO - dungeon crawl fifth adventure).

On the whole, I'd prefer CotCT to RotRLJR and JR to either (caravan mechanics difficulties aside).

Can't comment on KM or CC as a whole, because I played in the first (and only got up to the end of the third adventure) and am currently playing in the second.

Also chronologically:

Shackled City - Played, completed, although the DM interspersed other adventures and heavily modified the campaign.

Savage Tide - Played, left after the 2nd or 3rd adventure to move overseas.

Rise of the Runelords - GMed, finished with a TPK in the final encounter.

Curse of the Crimson Throne - GMed, finished with a TPK in the final encounter of the 2nd or 3rd adventure.

Legacy of Fire - Played, completed.

Kingmaker - Played, finished with a TPK in the final encounter of the 3rd adventure.

Serpent's Skull - Currently GMing, just starting 5th adventure (although it's taken us nearly a year to get through the 3rd and 4th adventures...)

Carrion Crown - Currently playing, just starting the 2nd adventure.

Yeah, there's a lot of TPKs in there...
:)

Thanks, that's cool that the order is already split to make it cheaper!

I have a bunch of items in my cart, that when I tried to check out, the store broke into two orders, each being shipped by USPS priority to New Zealand, and the total postage came to $124.86 - around half the cost of the things I'm buying.

Now admittedly I'm getting about 8 hardbacks and a boardgame, so I expect to pay a bit for that, but this seems a bit excessive. I had a thought that maybe I could split it into two orders, to get the "first ten" on shipping twice and cut down the cost, but a) this would be a pain, and b) it might end up as (or more) expensive as I'd probably get three separate shipments.

Basically I was wondering - is this figure accurate for that order? I'm sure I've never been charged that much before, even for other relatively large shipments to NZ - around $50-60 I expected, but this is nearly twice that (perhaps because it's being split into two shipments for some reason)?

Thanks - looks as expected now.
:)

Thanks. Looks like you also cancelled the Dragon Empires Primer though, which I do still want as part of this order please...

Add I just got a notification about order # 1891883 (supposedly shipping in the next week or so), and it contains the PF battles case and dragon again.

At this stage I think it's best if I just cancel the subscription and pre-orders - can that please be done?

Thanks!

I notice that the PF Battles Case and black dragon are still in my sidecart though - will I be charged for them with my next AP subscription payment in January?

Unfortunately, January isn't a good time to have a big subscription payment (and huge shipping to NZ), so could I please put the Pathfinder Battles subscription on hold and have it paid for and shipped in February?

If that isn't possible, please cancel my Pathfinder Battles subscription for now.

Thanks.

Can you please move order # 1841565 to my sidecart

Or, better yet, could you please combine with order # 1832322 (which *is* my next subscription shipment...)

Thanks!

Hi,

Can you please move order # 1841565 to my sidecart, so that it will ship with my next subscription instead of shipping separately?
I couldn't figure out how to do this myself...

Cheers,
Craig.

Thank is all, thank you.

Wow you guys roll epicly bad for minor magical items...

Yeah, we've just hit the same problem, and I used this tool to generate 500 items (50 at a time). The average was just shy of 1000gp. I suggested to the GM that we make it 5 slots per economy roll to sell for 1 BP, to account for the fact that we'll have to sell the occasional more expensive item for less.

Sweet, thanks.

By "all penalties", I assume that means "no bonuses"? I.e.: if you don't have a treasurer and stick to the "None" taxation level, you don't get the +1 Loyalty bonus?

Some roles (e.g.: councilor) have a vacancy penalty that state that your kingdom "cannot gain benefits" from a certain type of edicts (festivals in the case of councilor).

What exactly does this mean? That they are automatically set to the lowest level? That the players still choose a level, bonuses don't apply but penalties do? Or that there is no effect at all from those sorts of edicts (i.e.: no bonuses or penalties)?

Or something else entirely?

Highlights from the other thread, just so we have everything in one place:

Exploration

The effects of roads and rivers on travel time are covered in the Pathfinder Core RPG, in Chapter 7. (These factors weren't really talked about in the exploration phase since you can't build roads until a hex is claimed, and you can't claim a hex until it's explored.) By building roads, you're making it easier to move around in your kingdom, which is why you gain those bonuses to Economy and Stability.

Rivers do not count as roads for farms, and they actually can cause more problems than they solve for travel, since you can't cross them easily at most locations. Again, rules for river travel itself are found in Chapter 7 of the Pathfinder RPG.

Ninjaiguana wrote:

I'm assuming that the players start out by deciding on their starting hex, and then must expand out from that hex at the usual speed and BP costs? Basically, they don't get any 'free' hexes added on, even if they've explored and subdued them, right?

Correct. No free hexes. First you have to spend the time to explore the hex, and then you have to claim the hex; two steps.

Claiming hexes are indeed the point at which you start sending settlers and citizens and soldiers into that hex and they start building homes or whatever. Your PCs can certainly say that they rule over all of the hexes on the map, but until they're officially "claimed" during the proper point during kingdom construction, the PCs are just blowing hot air.

The king of Pitax is essentially doing just that. He claims to rule a lot of the land north of the city of Pitax, but he hasn't had the time or resources to clear and explore and claim any of those hexes yet. They're still techniclaly no-man's lands.

And as for increasing consumption when you add hexes... not only is Jason right about the fact that you have to support the settlers who live there, but you also have to pay for patrols through the region to prevent banditry and monsters, pay for tax collector and other government worker wages, repair roads or buildings or things, and pay for longer amounts of travel time.

Basically, the size of a kingdom is directly related to the cost to keep it up and running. It costs more to run a larger kingdom than a smaller one, and since Consumption is the number of how much it costs to run a kingdom, increasing a kingdom's size by adding hexes also increases total Consumption.

Erik Freund wrote:

The existance of Pitax/Mivon brings up another question. How far south can the PCs travel or settle before things start to get dicey?

The maps we provide in the adventures of the Stolen lands pretty much conform exactly to the borders of how far the PCs can expand their nation before things get dicey. The top row of hexes in part 3 are technically part of Brevoy (and that adventure explains how to handle things if the PCs claim those hexes) and the bottom rows of hexes in part 5 are technically part of Pitax, but that adventure is all about a war between the PCs and Pitax.

So in short, the adventures have you covered. As long as you don't expand the maps in size, you won't need to worry about things getting dicey at all until the adventures themselves take that into account.

Cities & Buildings

I suspect that graveyards having a bonus to economy is a typo. They're really cheap to build, and giving them 2 bonuses for only 4 BP is an error. They should only grant a +1 bonus to Loyalty.

And tannerys, mills, and smiths are different buildings for 2 reasons.

1) So we could get more buildings on the list.

2) Because they have different needs. A tannery smells TERRIBLE and shouldn't go next to a house. Mills need rivers. Smiths have neither of those requirements, and are a significantly common building to see in RPGs. So, three different buildings.

The "buildings" are meant to be representational. A single "block" in the city grid is 700 feet to a side or something like that, so there's a LOT of buildings in there. The purpose of the "house adjacency requirements" is to ensure that your players actually build houses in their cities and to make it a bit more tricky to build the structures that actually increase your nation's stats. They're also to give places for everyone that makes a building function places to live, be those people employees, guards, street sweepers, customers, or whatever.

Majuba wrote:

For the buildings that are required to be "Adjacent" to a house, what counts as Adjacent?

Anything counts as adjacent; left, right, above, below, diagonal, or even across streets.

But you can't "double duty" a house. Once it's used as a prerequisite for another building, it can't serve as a prerequisite for a second building.

DM Wellard wrote:

Is there a limit on the number of districts you can have in a city?

Not really. A GM can certainly limit the number of districts a party puts in a single city if he wants, but multiple districts would be the only way you'd ever be able to model a really BIG city, after all. A city the size of Westcrown would take, IIRC, nearly 30 city grid districts.

Of course, your kingdom needs to be able to AFFORD all of those districts!

I originally had the structures take one month per square, so that a castle (for example) would take 4 months to build. The reason I chose to abandon this was twofold:

1) It really slows down the startup of a city. And if your players decide to build a 2 or 4 square building, the fact that they'll need to wait 2 to 4 months before they can see a return on their investment could well put them DEEP into the hole on their Build Points. That's not something you want to hit the players with at the very very very start of the kingdom building experience, because they'll just get frustrated and aggravated.

2) Because it's simpler to say that buildings are finished quickly so that you can quickly apply the modifiers to the kingdom. If they're delayed, you run the risk of forgetting to apply the modifiers.

Buildings that upgrade is a cool element. We had this in there at one point as well, but had to cut it for space reasons and because it felt weird (in the way we had it working) that a busy merchant town, for example, would have a waterfront but not, necessarily, a marketplace (assuming your marketplaces upgraded into waterfronts). Also, by not allowing buildings to upgrade, you make the land in a city grid all the more important; you can't "save space" by stacking effects, basically.

In the end, it does start to stretch verisimilitude to have a castle or an arena built in a single month, but keep in mind also that magic can speed things up considerably... and if you want, you can even say that even though the castle only got placed on the city grid in a month that the town's been planning to put that castle there for months or even years. In the end though, it's a sacrifice that I think is necessary in order to ensure that the game is fun and moves quickly enough to keep the attention of all the players.

Economy

Tem wrote:

The one detail I'm still missing is the classification of items that the PCs want to sell (and thus convert directly to BPs). If they've found a +1 sword while adventuring, is it a minor or medium magic item? It appears on both lists so can they choose or is it automatically the lower (or higher)? I can see circumstances where each of the two options might be better.

An item that appears on both lists should always default to the lesser. So a +1 sword would count as a minor magic item.

We've specifically NOT assigned direct gp values to how much a mine or any resource can bring in, since the game's economy has some disconnects between things like society economy and PC magic item economy.

Mines do nothing more than add to a kingdom's economy score, and when you make economy checks that helps you earn more Build Points. Mines aren't intended to fill PC pockets with gold, and they won't "play out" unless you want to houserule even more realism into the system.

...

TRY to resist allowing the PCs to mix gp and BP. Things will get messy if you do.

If the PCs want to buy an item that shows up for sale in one of their cities, they just buy the item with their own gp and that's that. Doesn't impact the kingdom at all, beyond opening up an empty item slot.

But you really REALLY should try to convey to the PCs that "BP" and "gp" are two different systems. We included methods to translate the two back and forth out of necessity, but if you can get away without crossing these streams, your campaign, I suspect, will be the healthier for it.

If you want gold mines to be worth more, it's a pretty simple thing to just change the economy bonus it grants up to +2 or more.

And here's the secret: we DID playtest these kingdom rules, but they're really still brand new. The longer a kingdom runs, the higher its scores are gonna get, and the more into weird unexplored territory you'll get. I'm REALLY curious (and a little nervous) to see where things end up in the long run at the end of the campaign. I'm relatively sure it's going to end up having kingdoms that are pretty stable and successful, but that's sort of the goal and the point. We don't want building a kingdom to be SO TOUGH that folks give up. And by the time "War of the River Kingdoms" begins, you'll probably be needing a LOT of BP to fund those armies and keep them going...

So what I'm saying is that if you think that a building or a resource needs to have different numbers... try out some changes! If things get to a point where you think things are getting too hard or too easy to run the kingdom, you as the GM have the power to have some event like a famine or a sudden run of good weather adjust the stats for the kingdoms any way you want to bring things back in line with what you want. As long as you couch these adjustments in the form of descriptive events during the Event phase, the ultimate success of a kingdom should be pretty easy to adjust.

You can attempt to sell a magic item once per Income phase per district.

So if you only have one city, you can only try to sell one item per Income phase. But if you have multiple cities (or a city of multiple districts) you can try to sell a magic item from EACH district.

Other

Command DC and Control DC are the same thing.

I think that's everything...

Thanks guys - that makes a lot more sense now.
:)

They receive the combat training package under the Handle Animal skill on page 98 of the Core Rulebook.

I have a similar question - I've tried searching the forums but can't find an answer.

Can a 1st level cavalier choose a heavy horse as his mount, or is he restricted to the basic horse (light)?

These are adventure hooks that we included to make Brevoy an interesting place for someone to set an adventure or campaign. Since "Kingmaker's" about the Stolen Land and the River Kingdoms but not so much about Brevoy, there's not going to be much more about these events in Kingmaker.

That's good to hear. The character I have in mind is a bastard (as in the campaign trait) of the previous king, who intends to carve out his own kingdom and continue his father's legacy (an order of the cockatrice cavalier). I was a little concerned that events that unfold in Kingmaker would mess with that background story...

So far, I think the best idea is that all subs be sold as "PDF subscriptions with a free print version (for just the cost of shipping)."

Either I'm very obtuse in my writing, or you really do have a disconnect because that's exactly what I was saying too!

That said, rangers do seem to get the short end of the stick with many of their attacks - they are damage fiends, but are often stuck with attacks that target AC and little else. The price you pay for being a ranged murder machine.

I should mention a couple of things. First, I play in a couple of regular 4e games, so while I definitely find it is far from a prefect system, I'm not a hater or anything. Second, my data is based upon the play of an actual 16th level melee focused ranger - i.e.: not a "ranged murder machine".

I might be dragging things a bit off topic here, but my reply was specifically aimed at your comment that "if you are, you're doing it so wrong". My point is that it's perfectly possible/viable to make a character that *does* use twin strike most of the time (of course it's debatable whether it's due to poor design in 4e - I personally think it is). This particular PC has a few "non-combat" focussed utilities and some encounter powers that are very situational (burst/reaction type powers). The upshot is that for each combat, he'll have maybe a couple of daily powers (of which he'll likely only use one) and a couple of encounter powers that are useful in that particular combat (one of which is usually disruptive strike, which doesn't count as his regular round action), and then spend the rest of the fight (around 80% of his actions) using twin strike.

Debate it if you like, but the above is factual data, based on actual play, and I disagree with your assertion that the character or the way it's being played is somehow "wrong". It's being played well within the framework that the rules support/encourage.

Under the above idea, you're paying for the content. The price is the same whether you accept that content as pdf, or pdf and paper. Envision the following (adapted from the Pathfinder Adventure Path subscription page):

Ongoing subscriptions are fixed at a 30% discount off of each volume’s single issue price. One ongoing subscription will enable you to download a PDF of every new volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path as it's released, automatically continuing each month until you choose to cancel it. Instead of paying for your subscription all at once, we'll automatically charge your credit card each month. You only need to sign up once, and never need to worry about renewal notices or missed issues!

After each volume is released, subscribers who choose to will be shipped a print version of that volume—a $19.99 value—for only the cost of shipping; the print version itself is FREE!

It's all in how you think of it. People who really want the print product benefit from having access to the pdf's if desired. Those who want only the pdf's receive them regularly at the usual pdf price and won't miss issues. They have the option of receiving the print copy if they are willing to pay the shipping. For international customers, this cuts the total cost of "subscribing" significantly.

I see you beat me to it! This is exactly what I want to see. Make the subscription to the content, not the print product, and provide subscribers the "option" of getting a print copy for the cost of shipping.

Of course, depending on the costs of warehousing/destroying/distributing the left over print copies, it could increase costs slightly... I don't see that being significant, but that's something only Paizo has the hard data on to judge.

So we have to look at risk vs. reward. The reward for our customers is increased convenience, and the reward for us is probably not going to be dramatically high. The risk, however, is potentially crippling our main business.

I'm not willing to take that risk.

I'm no MBA, but I'm not following your line of reasoning here. I think what is being proposed is a PDF-only subscription at the same price as the current print+PDF subscription.

I can't see how - even if every single subscriber changed over from print+PDF to PDF-only - this could possibly hurt Paizo's bottom line. Even in this worst case scenario, Paizo's income remains the same and their costs either stay the same (assuming they continue printing the same number of copies and destroy the leftovers or give them to charity*), or decrease (by printing/distributing a smaller number of print copies).

Now, admittedly there could be additional costs incurred by having to warehouse/destroy/distribute the extra printed copies, but I think this would probably be offset by the extra income stream that people not interested in a print+PDF subscription would create.

Speaking as someone who recently suspended (and will probably cancel) my subscription due to shipping costs coupled with a worsening US->NZ exchange rate, I'd be quite interested in a PDF-only subscription at the same price as the current print+PDF subscription. The benefits to me would be:
1) I'd save money on the shipping costs (a significant chunk of the cost, once converted to NZ dollars).
2) I'd still be able to support Paizo.
3) I'd get a regular (semi) predictable purchase without having to manually find/purchase each issue individually.
4) I'd get the PDF at the same time as current subscribers rather than a month later (this would be a condition for purchasing a PDF subscription).

That's basically the bottom line for me, and after receiving email communication trying to entice me back as a subscriber, I think it fair to come here and reply.

* Just wanted to register my dislike of the idea of having my print copy shipped to a prison. Veterans, schools, libraries, charities are all fine by me, but if I thought my print copy could end up "sponsoring" a criminal I'd probably have second thoughts about such a scheme.

A ranger does not spend 90% of the fight using Twin Strike at level 29 (and if you are, you're doing it so wrong).

Well, I don't know about level 29, but the level 16 ranger in our weekly 4e game seems to be about 20% daily/encounter powers, 80% twin strike (and envious glances at everyone else's "cool" encounter/daily powers - his words, not mine).

Please suspend or cancel my subscriptions (Pathfinder AP and Pathfinder Companion). Regrettably the NZ dollar has taken a nosedive over the last few months and shows no sign of recovering. Now that the Second Darkness AP has finished I'd like to take a break for a while and see if the dollar recovers (probably at least 6 months).

My preference is for a suspension for now, but if this period is too long for that (I can't find the rules anywhere...), please just cancel.

Thanks, I've really enjoyed the AP and Chronicles thus far, and this isn't something I'm doing lightly.
:(

For example, why should a lvl 15 Cleric be forced to pay caster level 15 on a wand of CLW, when the spell itself has a max caster level of 5? (as in, it cures a max amount of 1d8+5).

This is *why* I hope the change is intentional. It actually encourages clerics to create wands of CMW/CSW/CCW instead of just the wands of CLW which are better value for money when it comes to out of combat healing...

So, I noticed a couple of things when investigating the party's (frighteningly effective) wand of Enervation:

1) The effects of a negative level listed under the spell Enervation don't tally with the effects of a negative level listed under Energy Drain. Specifically, as written Enervation doesn't result in the loss of HP or spells/slots. Is it intentional that they have different effects or an oversight? If the latter, which is correct for PRPG?

2) It seems that when crafting items, you must use the creators full caster level. I recall in 3.5 that you could choose to use a CL lower than your characters actual level, but can't find anywhere in the PRPG beta that states this. Is this (again) intentional? I certainly hope so, because it'll stop all those CL 1 wands of CLW...

How do you mean? PCs normally get one AP per day, barring milestones

While technically true, this doesn't reflect the actual chances of a PC having an AP available in any given encounter. A Milestone is every second encounter, so a typical PCs day goes like this:

I'm no statistician, but as you can see, for any given encounter the chances are higher than 50% (and on odd-numbered encounters exactly 100%) that the PC will have an AP to spend. IME, PCs tend to hang on to their action points for serious/boss encounters, so most PCs would have an AP available for this sort of "campaign ending" encounter.

...all using standard array...

This is very suboptimal. In 4e, much more than even in 3e, having your primary stat as maxed as possible is key. The extra +1 or +2 to hit that it gives you over the standard array is much more important than any advantage you'd gain with a more "balanced" array.

Yeah, but 1d12 Brutal 3 would be 1d9+3 -- and we have no d9 to roll.

There is no brutal 3, and I suspect there never will be - at least not on a d12 weapon which when up sized to large becomes 2d6...

Of course, there is still the problem of requiring odd-sided dice with brutal 1 weapons, which is why I suspect they went with the reroll mechanic...