jay jackson's page

i was being snarky

That's cool. But you know future and current gm's could make the mistake of believing that npc's should be able to determine exact threat assessment at a glance, so it was worth saying anyway.

i still say it is garbage that paizo took reach off the spiked chain and claimed it had too much going for it.

ok, then make a new weapon.

the spike chain was the only weapon that let people attack into both reach and adjacent squares. That is what made it so popular. now there is nothing for it. I would have been happy to have a weapon that attacked both close and far with nothing else and be happy to spend a feat. but no, you couldn't even make a new weapon to fill that concept.

don't waste my time with the spiked gauntlet and a reach weapon. i would have to throw away twice as much money enchanting both of them.

Well I may have an option for you that may interest you for a replacement for the spiked chain, or at least a fun new toy. It's called the Aklys.

This is a simple weapon that can be found on the pfsrd (ie. the link in the preceding line). It is described as being a short club attached to a 20ft. cord, it is also described as having a grappling hook set into the club. It has the ability to trip, to be used as a thrown weapon (more on this latter), as a reach weapon, or even as a club in melee.

When being used as a thrown weapon the Aklys can be thrown 20 ft., or the the end of its cord without suffering any penalties. Now what's kinda cool about the Aklys is that after it is thrown the weilder can use a move action to snatch on its cord and thus retrieve the weapon.

This is pretty cool in my opinion. Your snazzy new weapon is a simple weapon (in other words you don't have to worry about weapon proficiencies barring you from using it), it does everything that the spiked chain did (including having the option to trip), and it can even double as a grappling hook (at least in any game that the DM isn't a fan of railroads). To top it all off it is a mere 5sp for the simplest version. If you like however, I would personally looking into latter on upgrading the weapon by making it out of special materials, maybe eventually adamantium.

Just an opinion. For the table stats on this weapon just hit the Weapon button at the top of the page.

We're a little behind due to Snowpocalypse 2008, but a quick response:

We're focusing on established authors to begin with, but are definitely interested in uncovering some lesser-known folks in the long run. In kicking off the line, its important to get folks who have been tested and proved their mettle, both to publishers and to readers, but rest assured that there's far more to it than merely who has the most name recognition. At the moment I've got a huge stack of short stories and novels by various authors we're considering, and who ends up writing Golarion fiction will depend primarily on who shows the most chops.

Someday we may have open calls or submission guidelines - in fact, I'd bet on it - but in order to get a fledgling book line up and running, you really need to hit the distributors hard with some proven sellers. If a lot of people buy in and start spreading the word, well... then the sky's the limit.

Great news! I would love to write novels for Golarion when the time came for new writers to be chosen. Will you notify you valued customers and fans of such a talent search? Or would it perhaps be up to the individual? Me and a friend were working on building our own campaign world before Golarion had been a sure thing.

I've always thought the easy way to do epic is to have the characters go back to first, think 2nd edition human multiclassing. the characters keep all their powers of being 20th but can improve the lower level stuff. have most of the different leveled abilities max out at 20, skills, bab, ect. example: the 20th level wizard goes back and takes levels of fighter. 8 levels of fighter and their BAB maxes out, but they can continue to take more levels of fighter for the feats and other abilities.

Well truly at first glance that looks like a fairly decent plan. I do have to say though that the problem I have with it I believe is a simple but deadly one. If you were to truly play into epic levels, let's say to thirty as a nice round number, then you start getting a lot of different flavor clones instead of individual characters.

Sure you could have the sneak attacking caster or the frenzied cleric but basically you would end up with more or less the same three or four
clones, different builds that end up being the same type of character.

Another thing is logically from a roleplaying point of view to say that a wizard progresses to twenty and is as you say next to god like then why would he all of the sudden become interested in the art of swordplay? Sure early on in the game when the hero's are still deciding what their niche is in the game then you might have a multi-class warrior mage, spell slinging sword swinging wonder that is wonderful generalist to have in a pinch. But after this wizard has started to unlock the magical mysteries of the universe he is going to worry about his base attack bonus?

Not saying that that doesn't happen, but to put all epic level characters in that situation could limit creativity in their originally desired build. I am coming from the from view of no source books, the system as it is stand point.

Give me a couple of days to dig up the first draft of the notes I'd made on these, and we can beat them into shape.

Thanks, I'll try and be patient. Though getting this straight forward of an answer has me a bit excited for the new possibilities! I'll watch for your return.

Hi, Jay. You ask a terrific question.

Intelligent weapons are part-and-parcel of the fantasy mileu, and it would be a shame for the game to lose them.

But they were much more common in AD&D 2nd Edition than in 3rd Edition, for a couple of reasons: all the non-artifact magic items in the game became commodities, manufacturable by the players' wizards and clerics, and the designers didn't want PC's to just be whippin' out intelligent weapons; and they were another "semi-autonomous character," like companion animals, familiars, or cohorts (aka "henchmen"), and a party with too many of those gets seriously bogged down.

So it seems like someone's cast a magical aversion field on the rules systems for intelligent weapons.

--+--+--

To my way of thinking, many of the issues surrounding enhancing intelligent weapons has to deal with just what an "intelligent weapon" is. There seem to be categories:

1) Undead weapons: Yesss... ssshow my mien to your enemies, my master. Let me sssee them while they ssstill live.

I can imagine some sort of necromantic ritual to bring a bone-and-sinew weapon to intelligent unlife. (Imagine a ranseur with ivory fingers that actually reach out to grab and trip its opponents, or a skull-topped mace that bites its targets, bestowing a negative level on a successful critical.)

2) Golem weapons: Guys, I think you need to drop me unconscious now.

I can imagine weapons enchanted much the same as golems, with elemental spirits raging inside them. The longer you use the weapon, the more it falls into the rhythm of combat, the greater its power, and the harder it is to control. Its intelligence might be limited, or not, but it might bear particular hatred for its opposite element.

3) Artificial Intelligence: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you sheathe me.

Once you've enchanted your mace to be holy, disrupting, and undead bane, installing a 'targetting computer' AI is only the next logical step.

Artificially...

This is exactly the kind of information that I was looking for. The story based aspect is quite something to go with, however I was curious as to the mechanical aspects of craft/enchanting such weapons as well. and all of the questions from before directly apply to the newly reformed idea. Thank you.

This is great! Exactly what I was looking for. And yes I would like Chris to post the rules that he home rules in his games. If anyone else has any ideas please keep them coming. I'm really getting a lot of questions answered thanks.

Hello. Before we get started let me say first that I really do not and have never known whether or not someone can actually enchant an intelligent weapon within the rules of the game. I was however thinking about perhaps creating a set of house rules for it if their were not any in place to begin with. Now with that said I would appreciate some feed back.

Are there current rules in place, and if so what are they? Now I'm not looking anything verbatim here, just if there is give me a rough idea what they are, and how they pertain to the weapon in question (that is only if it is not blisteringly obvious). Also this can be from either Pathfinder or 3.5.

Do you think that such weapons should be able to be enchanted? I don't wanna turn this into a flame war, but some differences of opinion followed by a nice heaping portion of logic would be nice. Try to post to me and not the person that posted before you, this isn't a debate thread (start those on your own thread).

Would this be a beneficial addition to the already existing rules of the game? Again this is an opinion question so I expect that people will disagree, but have the decency to keep it clean.

I think that covers everything for now but as this goes along I may have more questions, so bear with me if you will.

I can't give much advice on the adventure, as I haven't read/played it yet. But here's some general advice:

1) Make sure everyone fully knows what Sense Elements can do before you start using it. Re-read the book, twice.

2) If you're DMing a game involving deception and intrigue, and any of your PCs have Sensing or Detecting abilities, you need to know everything you can about them and plan for them.

3) If you're going to post very specific info about a published adventure (especially one involving deception/intrigue) on a messageboard, USE SPOILER TAGS. I don't mean to come off as harsh, but a lack of spoiler warnings is a pet peeve of mine...

Right spoiler tags..... *(whispers) I truly don't know how to use those at all* Hope everyone doesn't mind the few little things that I gave away, If i can I will change what I said a little. Thanks for the advice.

Alright my DM was running the first segment of the Crimson Throne, and our party was finally returning the brooch to the queen when all of the sudden things went awry. See one of our players was playing a shugenja and one of their abilities is called "Sense Elements". Basically it allows him to sense for an element and then determine whether there is any of that particular substance within 10 feet all around him, then use a spellcraft check to determine certain things about the item itself such as whether it is natural whether it has anything in it, whether it is affected by magic, and even the exact nature of the item itself. With every extra round, it taking a standard round in order to sense the first ten feet, he can then expand his sense by 5 more feet in every direction. Now this compiled with the fact that the party stood talking with the queens personal body guard for several minutes basically made it to where our shugenja was able to determine that the queen was wearing an object that gave her the spell glibness and that her misdirection spell was placed on her body guard. This is basically where he turns to the rest of the party and asks for a quick conversation in which he departs all that he knows and then the party determines what to do. Well needless to say we were all ecstatic that he had found a way into the puzzle box that was the queens ruse. however when the DM started looking through the book for what the actions would be for her if confronted with the current scenario he could find nothing. Indeed it appears that a fair bit of the plot was unraveled at that junction. However he does not wish to change what happened in the least, instead he was asking some of us for ideas about how to handle this. I was curious, everything else that I have said aside. How would you deal with the current situation, plot wise mind you. Thanks for and feed back.

After seeing the dice for the Rise of the Rune Lords campaign I'm counting on paizo to pull out another awsome set for Curse of the Crimson Throne. however the description isn't quite as enticing as I would have hoped. Mayhap they look better than they sound?

Man I can't wait until the Campaign Setting comes out. I was curious are you going to be shipping out the book to major book retailers such as Books-A-Million and Barnes and Nobles? And, if so, what is the approximated date of arrival for those dealers? Thanks

I really feel like this issue will always truly boil down to non-magic using characters and magic using characters, as a symbol of balance. However that, I believe, is a mistake in itself. When has anyone ever stopped and truly believed that a fighter should be as powerful as a wizard? The whole fantasy basis is that magic, like science, can be used to do more awesome (referring to grand) things than any one soldier/warrior could do. So what happens science/magic gives the soldier/warrior a gun,bullet proof vest,grenade,medical pack,night vision goggles/enchanted sword,enchanted armor,alchemist fire,cure light wounds potion,circlet of low light vision in order to level/destroy the playing field. And then if you wanna get technical, you have the super smart scientist/mage who figures out how to build the atomic bomb/cast a giant sized meteor swarm spell and kill half a large island. Besides in what fantasy have you ever heard of a warrior being able to match the power of a wizard?

I agree with Charlie on the point of giving each character a niche. This is downright necessary at times for good game play. Now some niches that my group usually enjoys using are: Melee combatant, ranged combatant, scout (usually a rogue, or a ranger), sage (a person with many knowledge skills, several people can fill this roll), spell caster (this role could be anything from a blaster wizard, to a battle field control druid), and generalist (this is like the swiss army knife of the group, when all else fails try the generalist. Sorcerers do this very well). There are others but these are basically the main ones that we use. I have even found that two or more people in a group can fill the same roll and not only work well together but totally dominate because of it. Such as two ranged combatants. These characters are very scary when paired up to be a defense for the spell casters, or even the leading line of pain before the enemies crash against the melee fighters.

That is exactly what I was looking for. I now see that others have similar if not identical aspects for writing as I do. I was always sure that some others had a want but I didn't really know, and still don't, how many there were. My friend and I have an idea for a world and characters central to it's plot, however that is more of an iffy sort of thing than writing for an already working world known and liked by gamers. Hopefully I can pick up a gazetteer soon. Thanks

Alright well I have to say that with the discovery of Pathfinder and the entire Paizo line I have been truly impressed. Especially when I heard about all the plans that they had in store for this relatively new system. I became still more impressed after I found out about some of the people that where on the Paizo team. One of the names that caught my attention is Ed Greenwood. Greenwood having my total respect for his contributions to the gaming world, and for his novels that came from those advances.

So this and the current changes with DnD going on at the moment, got me to thinking about my views on working with wizards of the coast. I had always planned to at least attempt to write for the Forgotten Realms series, but with my opinion of the changes made to the realms my plans seemed to drift in a direction opposite to my own wants.

Therefor I wish to ask the question that this whole post is leading up to. Does anyone know whether or not Paizo will be allowing people to create novels surrounding their new campaign? Will they be interested in creating an all new line of novels surrounding the new world of theirs? And if so who would I see about some information about the for mentioned new world?

It seems that everyone that is against the idea of maybe 1 to 2 extra hp a level is concerned about the weakness of their mage leaving the gameplay. One thing that should cross your minds though is that, whether or not your mage is up front and center or not won't make much of a difference with the strategies or traps of the enemy dungeon. Most likely "if" (yes I know that it at times can be a big if) the enemy knows which person in the party is the wizard, then they will try to take out him first. This is usually the case in the games that I played in. All you have to do is make sure that the enemy does a little recon. work before the first encounter, then your wiz. is boned.

Personally as a 3.5 player and someone who has played 4th I have to say that at first level minions are harder to beat than solo monsters. Minions do rock the house, but I still like 3.5 better. Of course it doesn't help that the usual DM in our corner of the DnD universe came up long ago with meaningful minions and so 4th didn't do a whole lot for me. It is, incredibly, a lot like WoW. It is fairly fun to play but it has lost more of the special flavor that DnD is known for with it's changes. Options are as you said an "illusion". Chose, you are either a archer ranger or a two weapon fighting ranger. No wiggle room for something else. Also magic is no longer something that a wizard can use for fun, and generalist wizards are S.O.L in their former roles. The rituals for magics that aren't done in combat are not worth the time it takes to cast them. While it make take a wizard all of 6 seconds to cast a spell to alter the battle field, it takes ten minutes to open a door with knock. The purpose of a specialized wizard is to be like a swiss army knife, but with the 4th edition rules it's like a swiss army knife that was made to work only with Vista. I don't know, maybe I'm just resistant to change.