jasonfahy's page

Maybe everyone knows this, but I haven't seen anybody mention it: it seems like all the mutagens are absent from GM Core. They list the alchemical bombs, poisons, tools and all the other elixirs, but no mutagens, and that makes me think/hope they might reappear as an alchemist-only thing...?

If so, they'd be less weighed down by balance worries. Could be good.

Some physical evidence exists that you could mayyybe use to charge her with criminal conspiracy, or incitement, and it definitely sheds light on her motivations. But if you haven't seen that...it is as you say.

Spoilers for potential NPCs/enemies/interesting monsters (certainly not all of them, just several notable ones), obviously. List is randomised so you don't meet them in chronological order, but will contain physical descriptions. Be warned if you're sensitive to that stuff. These are the first three books:

Holy smokes - thank you! I either didn't get, or didn't notice, a notification that you answered this and slightly forgot about it, but it looks like you really put time in. Much appreciated. <3

Hey,

So I'm going to be playing in an AoA campaign soon, and I'm the group's miniature painter. If I were the GM I'd read ahead and compile a list of important, or visually cool, characters (allies or adversaries) to prep miniatures for.

Would anybody be up for giving me 1-2 short descriptions per chapter, that I could use as a rough painting guide? Something like "Hellknight with a 2-handed axe", "three martial tieflings all with different weapons", or whatever? It'd be cool to have "just the thing" ready when the GM's setting up those encounters. :) TIA.

When do you start actually being able to afford them, then?

I'm nearly level 3 and still couldn't grab a level 2 custom if I wanted to.

Their original plan was to make customs cost 500 x (party level)^2, but apparently that's being changed to a fixed amount. I've seen two people say 500 and 2000, but neither was a developer, so watch and wait.

The lack of character portraits is disappointing. With the amount of race/class combos available, there should be a LOT more choices for character pictures.

Somebody's already produced a 'mod' that adds eighty additional portraits, mostly from DeviantArt contributors. I haven't seen them yet, but people on the Steam forum were saying the average quality is pretty good.

My level 2 characters TOTALLY got wrecked by two spider swarms. Tried it a few times, started using torches to do fire damage, but... Gah!

If you've gotten Jhod back to Oleg's, he'll sell you a scroll of Communal Delay Poison for 375g. Takes that fight from miserable to manageable.

Zautos' wrote:

I would love turn-based combat in this.

Oof, yeah... and a grid.

So Linzi keeps charging face-first into the fray, and when I try to get her out of there, she gets an AoO... There seems to be no 5’-step or Retreat, which makes this really deadly. I’m glad I didn’t go with my original idea of Rogue/Paladin; the flanking would have been super tricky to set up.

Has anyone figured out a good routine yet that allows combat to start with squishies staying back and firing ranged attacks?

A simple start is to hand out light crossbows to the squishies, and confiscate [cleric of Sarenrae]'s scimitar - changes how their AI behaves.

Oh, one more thing: Has anyone figured out how to use potions in the midst of combat? I put them in my belt, but I can't see them in the action menu.

Above your character's hotbar at the bottom of the screen, there are little triangular pop-ups - A for actions, B for belt, and I think there's S for spells. Pop up the belt and you'll find whatever potions/scrolls/____ you've readied there.

Hi,

Finicky question - Gaetane the wererat ranger is listed as having Bracers of Archery, but it doesn't mention if they're Greater or Lesser and I'm not good enough at forensic statblock analysis to determine which it is; anyone know?

I saw a YouTube video about Graham's number, which is the upper bound on the solution to a graph theory problem - even arrow notation, invented to describe outrageously big numbers, doesn't even begin to get a grip on it.

In the video, one of the mathematicians said that if you could load all the digits of Graham's number into your brain, the entropy inside your skull would become so low that that region would become a black hole. So you could assassinate someone (more like 'everyone') by dreaming that number into their head. :)

You would, of course, need a loony GM who would let you just say "Graham's number" rather than having to recite the digits...

Lincoln Hills wrote:

The next sleazy dive I put in my campaigns is going to be named "The Murder Hole." It's so evocative!

I prefer the Garderobe (sp) which was the old word for the lavatory in a castle.

Be careful with that one. Garde-robe means closet (literally, "where you keep your robes").

It could definitely be a euphemism for the lavatory, but depending where you see it, it wouldn't have to be. (If you like multilayered plays on words, it could be the homosexual-themed sleazy dive...)

1. The natural spell feat.

Limited experience with druids but I've found this okay.

2. Scaling buff spells and quantity/stacking of buff spells.

Those buffs are what some classes do, and you might have a player who looks forward to being the buff god, so I wouldn't mess with this without more information. Get collaborative with your players during character generation and decide then.

3. Wand of cure light wounds/knock etc in particular.

Insanely valuable for their price, which maybe means their price should be higher. (Do your players snap these up on day one as a matter of routine? If so, they might get colicky if you deny them the gear to which they feel entitled...)

4. Cheap/easy magic item creation and/or purchasing power.

Antithetical to the kind of game I like, but your mileage may vary.

(skipped a few where I don't have no strong opinion)

11. Fighters with only 2 skill points (house ruled to 4 IMC)

I houseruled them up to 4 as well and was content with the result.

a) in groups where item crafting and Use Magic Device are prevalent, you don't have to do as much to make sure everyone has a chance to do stuff out of combat, and

b) the skill list in Pathfinder is relatively short, I find, so characters don't need all that many points to keep up their must-have skills.

c) how much your players spend on fun, RP-related skills vs. how much they put every single point into combat/wealth-optimal skills might factor into how nice you decide to be with extra skill points. :)

Don't forget your backup spade!

That scene went from mildly interesting to hilarious for me when he pulled out the gardening spade. :D

"We've got a date with Destiny - and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."

My counter argument is, why would you play a massively multiplayer game and go out of your way to avoid interacting with the other players?

I would urge you to give other people a chance. They aren't all bad, I promise. :)

It's pretty simple - I play them for the 'Massively' and the 'Role-Playing Game'. 'Multiplayer' and 'Online' are strikes against them which I just have to mitigate/deal with. :)

Plenty of RP potential in those obscene stats. An all-18 character might think they're descended from a god. They'd have (justifiably) off-the-scale self-confidence. They might assume they have a special purpose and that it's up to them to find it. They could be unaffected by their ubermensch status, or could be tooth-grindingly condescending.

My concern wouldn't be boredom, it would be the risk of screwing up the game's challenge level and/or overshadowing the rest of the group.

(If I were GMing this outrageous character, I'd be tempted to bring in an all-18 nemesis - the "Child of Dark", or Kurgan, something like that, to show what it's like on the receiving end of all those +4s.)

As a paladin, you'll be smiting a lot...

Do you know anything about the campaign setting, or the antagonists your GM likes to use? The above can be completely true, or not very true at all, depending on those things. From level 1 to 3, you'll be able to smite zero to one bad guy(s) per day.

If your GM likes 5 minute workdays and all undead all the time, you'll be smiting a lot. If he's into neutral bandits and gelatinous cubes, you might experience some feelings of disappointment.

Edit: Sorry, dumb question; you said it's Carrion Crown.

Malwing, I've got a 4th level paladin in my current campaign (also 15-point) and initially tried to build him as two-weapon as well. In the end I backed away from it because of the feat/gear costs involved. Pathfinder's mechanics have a pretty good hate on for that fighting style. (Your smite bonus to hit helps with the TWF penalties, but only against a couple (evil) bad guys per day. Didn't feel like enough to me.)

I agree with carving the Dex to get some constitution (you could take Con 13 and Int 12, if my math is right, and have another skill point to play with. Being short on skill points drives me nuts.)

I was thinking, without the magic aspect.

Surely, someone in Golarion must be studying this.

Would they, though? In a world where magic demonstrably exists, the scientists would be studying magic along with everything that RL scientists do.

Being a scientist in Golarion and focusing on 'nonmagical science' would be like a RL physicist avoiding all the stuff about electrons. Weird, no clear reason for it, and it'd seriously hold you back.

(Oops. I pounced on this and didn't realize Dave J caught it first. I'll leave it up so you can point and laugh.)

To give you one data point, my group finished Rise a couple months ago and they were level 15 when it ended, about halfway to 16, on fast progression with five PCs.

That's with a GM who isn't much into sidetracking, and a group that didn't sidetrack much either. I'm sure you could easily be 16 when you reach the end, and maybe 17 if you really dug into the corners?

Wizards, bards and clerics have some especially good opportunities to interact with the story, if you care about that.

The idea reminds me of a story in a Dragon magazine, a loooong time ago.

*googles*

It's "Catacomb" by Henry Melton from issue #97 of Dragon magazine May 1985.

If you want to read it, the author put it online to be read (for free) here.

And remember, this is from 1985:
This was written back when both the Mac and the IBM PC were new and years before the web. This was before everyone knew to click a mouse or knew that underlined text was a hyperlink.

Wow, I had that issue - the cover art came in late because of all the dragonscales that had to be painted. :) Girl meets a big thief?

master_marshmallow wrote:

blahpers wrote:

Wiggz wrote:

There should never be a time when a Paladin 'falls' for killing an evil foe

Ahahah, what!?

Quote:

, especially if the evil foe provoked the battle.

(Scene: Tavern)

Drunken mercenary: "Hey, Paladin! Your MOM fell! In my lap!"

Paladin: *runs mercenary through*

Sure, totally legit.

Strawman is strawman.

You might want to look up the meaning of that term again.

It seems appropriate to call you out for using an example that neglects the 'foe' and 'battle' thing.

Does anybody on the council have a decent Sense Motive? That gives you a chance to notice when somebody's enchanted or dominated - and noticing domination actually has a not-too-outrageous DC. (I guess dominated people, try as they might, aren't good at 'acting normal'.)

Cure Disease, Remove Curse, Raise Dead, end of list.

I'd love it if characters got into visiting an oracle and asking for advice periodically. It's never happened. Guess I should stop sitting there wishing and drop some hints.

The 'useless' bit about armor class is that it generally goes up as you level and BaB also goes up as you level. It seems like a zero-sum game sometimes.

You struggle to get your AC to stratospheric heights, only to face monsters who have a +25 attack bonus that will hit you most of the time anyway.

My players were saying this at the end of our Rise of the Runelords campaign recently, as they got kicked around by rune giants.

I think the problem is people focus on the bad guys' first attack which is almost certain to hit, and decide from that that AC is pointless.

What we have to remember is that there can be two or three other attacks after that one. Pushing your armor doesn't mean you get hit zero times; it means you take 1-2 hits instead of 3-4.

In Foxglove mansion, to help the party feel better about walking around eating 'traps', I made a small jigsaw puzzle and wrote one of the family flashbacks on each piece, in chronological order. Whoever got clobbered by a haunt received a piece. (I used foam-core for the pieces - cutting them out was horrible but they connected decently. Heavy cardboard is probably smarter.)

As soon as the second piece came out, they understood and got pumped about combing the house - and when it was over I offered them an XP bonus if they could use the completed puzzle to explain the Foxglove tragedy to me. (They pretty much did.)

The primary design intent inherent in the Alignment system is to funnel jerks away from other players so PFO doesn't devolve into a murder simulator. That goal is paramount, and will not be sacrificed in order to satisfy an extremely small minority of players who want to RP Chaotic Evil (some of whom are undoubtedly arguing under false pretenses and really just want to grief other players without consequence).

It seems utterly consistent to me with what I've heard over the last two years. The statements of the devs back up the idea that this has been a consistent message all along.

Sounds like a decent plan. (...although I feel bad for the extremely small minority, and hope they understand the situation before anything really frustrating happens to them.)

Reputation is not divided between player and character in the game. There is only character Reputation. You're confusing the matter yourself by insisting that there is a Player Reputation function in the game.

I don't think Prox is insisting that there is player rep, but it'd be nice if there was. It's a weakness of the system that I can create one character to use for newbie-griefing, gold spamming and antisemitic rants, but the game stops penalizing me for that behavior as soon as I switch over to my paladin. (Intentionally over-the-top example, but I suspect you'll get what I mean.)

Some, but not all, of the chaotic evil characters will be played by real-life sociopaths, and it'd be nice if the rep system could discern between the two types and consistently make one feel less welcome than the other.

From what I gathered in my fleeting experience, you were supposed to learn the ropes in high-security space where the risks were low and predictable, and then move into lower-security (higher reward) areas when you felt ready. Not terribly different from going Northshire - Goldshire - Westfall, or whatever; you're facing bigger dangers and increasingly far away from help.

But then players figured out how to suicide-gank newbies even in high-security space (for teh lulz) and the developers decided rather than interfere with the new phenomenon they'd just call it a feature.

(I don't take this to mean regulation created what Eve has become, or that Eve didn't have enough - it just had ineffectual regulation, and not much will to tweak the regs and get them working decently.)

This all still seems to be more trouble than its worth. The community will naturally police itself. The more we restrict players the less it looks like a sandbox

Really? A group of internet gamers? I think they'll naturally police themselves about || that much. If players are restricted too little, it'll look like Lord of the Flies.

Thanks, JA - P6 and the campaign idea I'm working on right now are just about perfect for each other. It's great to have a system expert finding most of the pitfalls before I fall into them. :)

Lincoln Hills wrote:

Level: The most overused word in Pathfinder, thanks to the fact that thirty-five years ago, Gary Gygax was using his thesaurus to prop up the short leg of his couch. "Level" can - among other things - reflect the precise degree to which a particular spell will ruin the plot, the power and XP which an adventurer has accrued, the amount to which said adventurer has mastered the skills of a particular class, the relative scarcity or prevalence of magic items in a gameworld, the actual distance above or below the ground in a dungeon, the 'average party level' showing what sort of monsters the party should be able to overcome, the 'effective party level' showing what sort of (more powerful) monsters the party has actually been overcoming, and so on and so forth. In short, anything that's not measured in "points" or gold ends up measured in levels.

Level

There was a bit in the 1st Ed DMG about this - Gygax said that for a while they were using 'rank' for character level, 'order' for the levels of monsters and 'power' for the level of spells, reserving 'level' for how deep you were into a dungeon. They eventually decided that it sounded artificial, and lapsed back into using 'level' for everything.

* Ask GM about prohibited classes/races
* If I'm late to the party, ask what the party needs
* Take several days struggling to come up with some concept that I'm excited about (I can get terrible block at this stage)
* Rough out a tiny amount of backstory, get the GM to ok it
* Get out a couple character sheets and start crunching numbers, pondering specifics of backstory while I'm at it

DrDeth wrote:

sgtrocknroll wrote:

Just got a +1 Bow enchanted.

Problem is need multiple types of arrows (Carrion Crown) and GM disallowed 'Abundant Ammunition' claiming it's brown.

As an alternative, he will allow me to enchant my bow such that I can change the arrow used into whatever material needed: for a +2 adder on the bow.

I know +3 weapons bypass silver. Considering I also use Cold Iron and Adamantium, is this +2 mod cost worth it? Or will a +3 weapon do the same thing?

"it's brown"??

Sorry, meant broken.

Thought I was about to learn some cool new slang. :)

jasonfahy wrote:

A guy with 7 wisdom has below-average wisdom, but he isn't spectacularly foolish. If people are roughly on a 3d6 stat distribution, then he's just under 1.2 standard deviations below average. (...for adventurers, and the case has been made that non-adventurers have sub-3d6 stats.)

Yes. *IF*. But since that's not the case, your analogy and nice math is moot.

"Basic NPCs: The ability scores for a basic NPC are: 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 8."

So, the lowest stat of NPCs in Golarion (DM fiat & racial modifiers notwithstanding) is a 8.

Hmm. Pretty narrow, rigid viewpoint.

If your party ever has to haul babies out of a burning nursery, don't forget that a human doesn't ever, ever weigh less than 95 pounds. ;)

As a DM I am not looking for ways to strip the paladin of his powers or put him in a catch 22 situation with no way out.
What I want to do is make sure that there is a code to follow and that the paladin is played as a holy warrior devoted to his beliefs, not just a game mechanic short cut to a fighter with smite powers.

This, I think, is the most important thing you should communicate - that you aren't making it your personal mission to code-f**k the paladin as quickly and frequently as possible.

I don't give a lot of code specifics to prospective paladin players, but I tell them that I want to see, maybe once or twice a session, that their code is causing them to do or not do certain things. I also try to give them in-world feedback, through commentary from NPCs, so they have an idea how I think they're doing.

I hate to see it when people apply the behavioral standards of present-day Europe to a violent fantasy world full of implacably evil nasties. Doesn't work very well!

I feel like I have to jump in on the "biggest fool in Golarion" thing, because I'm pedantic.

A guy with 7 wisdom has below-average wisdom, but he isn't spectacularly foolish. If people are roughly on a 3d6 stat distribution, then he's just under 1.2 standard deviations below average. (...for adventurers, and the case has been made that non-adventurers have sub-3d6 stats.)

That's around the 12th percentile, which is low, but not mind-blowingly low. A north american man at the 12th percentile for height would be 5 foot 5 1/2". Is he short? Sure. Do people come from miles around to point and laugh at the short guy? No, because he's not far enough from average to really stand out.

7 wisdom is unwise, and to some of his friends he might be the most unwise person they've personally met - but it's not like he's incapacitated; he's just -1 behind the guy with totally average wisdom.

I have an aversion to dumping myself, but let's not go completely hyperbolic about it.

My group just got into Runeforge (last stage of part 5) today. It's been 21 months since we started.

I found myself frustrated in the first half because the party had less agency than I like - the narrative takes its sweet time getting going. (Or rather, there's a lot of slightly-related events occurring and it's a while before the party unravels enough threads to see what's happening.)

This may have bugged me more than it bugged my players - fortunately they stuck with it - but maybe check with yours and see how their understanding of the story is. If they don't have much clue, and are frustrated because of it, I wouldn't be too surprised.

What the builds showed was the conventional wisdom about other factors were actually fairly wrong.

Something about this worries me - if 95% of people can't get decent performance out of a class, and then you (through extensive system mastery) make that class perform well...that doesn't mean the class is okay. It means most players who try that class are going to have a mediocre experience, and that's a problem. The game should, above all, be balanced for players with typical levels of skill. If it's also balanced for players with very low/high skills that's wonderful, but it makes sense to go for the big group in the middle first.

(I don't mean the game shouldn't reward skill! But the performance vs. skill curve should be fairly linear and not too steep. If most of the community is finding a class weak, which can be ascertained by some pretty basic qualitative canvassing, then the curve is probably too low, and flat. If it spikes upwards at the very highest levels of skill...that isn't a heckuva lot better.)

5297 before AR? (BAR? :) )

I admire the DMs who are great at improvising - I have little bursts of success at improv but it's definitely a weak point.

I hope players keep in mind that they also have some responsibility to help the story work - if the DM is clearly trying to hook you with something, and it doesn't require you to go hugely out of character, work with them a little! It strikes me as dickish when the DM has spent weeks working up her Modron campaign (or whatever) and a player becomes completely adamant that instead of engaging with the story, they want to get polymorphed into a Kuo-Toa and go join an underwater circus. (Or whatever.)

Is there a list anywhere giving ideas of what you can actually say when you cast a spell?

I could just make up something, but I am pretty sure someone has compiled a list of what words you use for various spells somewhere.

Thanks,
John

The Dragonlance books frequently showed Raistlin's verbal components - they were things like (let's see how I do from memory)

"Ast kiranann kair soth aran / suh kali jalaran" (Fireball)
"Ast kiranann kair Gadurm soth-arm / suh kali jalaran" (Lightning Bolt)

...and something that ended "suh tangus miopar" which I think was Sleep.

Excalibur uses one incantation for everything Merlin and Morgaine do, which sounds like
"Anhal nathrakh / urth vasst bethud / dorthriel dien-ve"
repeated over and over. If you rehearse some nonsense sounds like that and use them in a couple permutations, it goes a long way. (Latin's good too, especially if your players are sharp enough to catch the odd bit - Rowling pulls that off pretty well with the pseudo-Latin magic words in Harry Potter.)

If your ranger/rogue is feeling underutilized, areas like Thistletop are a good opportunity to put them to work doing recce or silently eliminating bad guys to keep an alarm from being raised.

Some DMs allow parties to plow through a dungeon one room at a time, others have every bad guy in the place come crashing down on you with Japanese-fire-station efficiency the instant there's a loud noise...and most of us are in between. Anywhere along that spectrum can be fun, provided you and your players have similar expectations.

Except the weapons can be Virtue Weapons as well. Thus a weapon can be forged and used with Virtue Magic... which was Xin's original emphasis prior to being killed by the Runelords.

Where do they talk about virtuous weapons? I don't remember any mention of the virtues except in the appendix about the origins of sin magic.

So one of my players gave me a neat idea a few weeks ago, and it's coming together in an interesting way that I feel like writing about. :)

Background Event #1:

Background Event #2:

So I wanted to redeem my screwed-up RP-ing of the devil, and wanted to come up with something neat for the cleric. The solution, in two parts:

The cleric has made one sally so far, saying that it's not a real victory to kill a sin mage with sin magic, but the others weren't persuaded. I assume he'll start to turn up the volume as the decisive moment gets closer.

(It struck me as nicely devilish that the fiend is repaying his debt, endangering a hated enemy, and nudging heroic mortals towards corruption all at once.)

Asus Eee Transformer Prime. (And an LG Android phone, but I don't want to do much of anything with that tiny keyboard/screen.)

Breaking most of your rules for the sake of comedy:

Pianos!

*Reads thread*

What is wrong with these people? Sexual assault in a game without warning is one of the worst things you can do, especially if you have no idea about what has happened in the lives of the players and their loved ones.

I suspect the reason it comes up so often is it's a reliable way of upping the emotional stakes and establishing that a character is nasty. If your audience reads action books or watches action movies they're probably a little numb to assault, battery and even murder - so if you want to make them despise your villain, you need something with a little more oomph.

(This sounds a little flippant as I re-read it, which I didn't really intend. Because of my own experience and the experiences of some girls I care about, I'm not able to relax enough about SA to want it in my games. However, if some other group knows that they can use it as a device to ramp up tension without stressing anybody out or desensitizing anybody...go for it, I guess.)

So rape is a common reoccurring thing in other people's campaigns?

I had a brush with it at a tournament game, of all places, with a female paladin and a bunch of bandits. It didn't even happen, and still I was physically shaking afterwards. After that the likelihood of me ever having it happen to one of my players went from...well, from a pretty firm zero to an absolute zero.

I could understand a group dealing with that kind of encounter for the sake of the big payoff (bringing harsh, violent justice to the rapist) but generally speaking it's higher emotional stakes than I'm comfortable with in a game.

Hold the "alt" key. Then press the associated numbers on your number pad (you can use the onscreen keyboard which can be found in your Accessibilities folder which should be found where your Accessories folder is found). So if I hold alt and press 2, 2, 9, then release alt, I get "σ". So making the emoticon I used in my reply is "alt+229"_"alt+229", resulting in σ_σ.

Alt-ernatively (see what I did there), pull up Word or Writer, something with an Insert Character/Symbol command and dig into the Greek letters it's almost sure to have. Those eyes are the lower-case letter sigma, which is the 18th letter of the Greek alphabet.