jthilo's page

Tact-Tiles?

Is there any hope of getting a PDF version of a current product?

For example, I'd love to get Complete Mage and Complete Scoundrel but am utterly uninterested in having a physical copy of the book shipped to me.

Tyler, hello and welcome!

You're asking the wrong people. Paizo didn't publish those books; Wizards of the Coast did, and it is they who decide whether their products are offered in PDF format.

Nah, I was just pointing out a distinction that sneaks past a lot of people (including authors and editors of WotC and Paizo adventures). It wasn't a jab. Plus, some of the prices in those tables are wrong, so it's good to double-check your understanding.

Does anyone know why?

The 1st-level divine scroll is 25 gp. The 1st-level arcane scroll is 50 gp because it's a bard spell; a bard needs to be 2nd level to cast 1st-level spells.

Ahhh got it. You're fun :)

We all have to amuse ourselves... :-)

Perhaps they should just get rid of the number seven, there are sooo many wonders out there. We could have, Wonders of the Ancient world, and Wonders of the modern world.

We do.

Why only seven?

Tradition. It's like a "top 10" list. Why 10? Because that's the way such things are done. If they changed the number, then the phrase "eighth wonder of the world" wouldn't hold the same meaning.

I don't think the indignation is deserved. Nobody's trying to redefine history by saying the seven ancient wonders weren't wondrous. It's just one of those things that we have to redo every once in a while, like the AFI's 100 greatest movies. Someday somebody will make a movie that's better than Ben-Hur.

No, if I'm not mistaken, they are known as 'The Seven Wonders of the Ancient world'

Perhaps there are two lists, excuse me, now I gotta go google :)

The original list is now known as such, but the site Aberzombie references does not claim to be defining seven ancient wonders. This isn't even the first time a new list of seven wonders has been compiled. It's really just "seven things you have just got to see". Most of the ancient wonders are gone, so you can't see them. Hence the new list(s).

We know how the Statue of Liberty was built.

The Statue itself isn't all that wondrous, you're right. But what about the fact that France gave us such a gift in the first place? I mean, what sane nation would do that now?

Personally, I don't see how the Eiffel Tower, The Statue of Liberty, or the Sydney Opera House made the list, except through politeness.

Maybe because you added the "ancient" part? :-)

Also, last night, I was sitting in my basement with all the lights off, watching my ever so precious Firefly DVDs, when I heard an ominous sound.

<snip>

...a f&~*ing TOAD!

At the risk of inspiring a "weird stuff that happens while watching Firefly" thread, I've got an oddly similar story.

Yesterday I was watching a Firefly DVD when I heard loud and irregularly repeated banging in another room. When I went to investigate I found that it was a bird, flying into my windows over and over (this room has a lot of windows). I sat and watched it for a while; that bird had quite a routine: fly into window (head first, natch) a couple of dozen times, rest on a branch, drop a "bird bomb", and repeat. After 5 or 6 cycles I got bored and shooed it away.

Within an hour the bird returned, this time to the window nearest my head in the room where I was watching Firefly. I guess he showed me.

That is a separate bug, which I've never noticed and no one's ever reported before!

Probably because when people put things in their carts, they usually buy 'em...

As an aside, your previous post in this thread (where you talk about the thousands of unused carts) is not showing up in the thread. In case you're still hunting that particular bug. :-)

I've seen this happen as well. The problem is pretty easy to replicate:

0. Start with an empty cart.
1. Add an item to your cart.
2. Remove the item from your cart.
3. Sign out.
4. Sign in.

The item will be back in your cart. You can repeat steps 2-4 ad nauseam. The item will still be there.

We thought we fixed that bug. Can you try it again, and let us know if it's still happening?

Vic,

I was having the same problem after it was thought to be fixed as well. In case this information helps you track down the problem, here's how I worked around it:

1. I changed my transition option from "Pathfinder" to "refund".
2. I changed my Pathfinder subscription shipping option to "UPS Ground".
3. I changed my transition option back to "Pathfinder".

That did the trick. Without step #1, my shipping always reverted to "USPS Package" no matter what I chose.

In my heart I believe I have seen Illithid listed as a language, but didn't want to interrupt the game to look through the books for something to support my belief. Can anyone help me out here?

I don't know if it's what you think you remember, but perhaps you are thinking of qualith, the illithid texture/touch language mentioned in "The Illithiad"? A quote: "...they are hyper-intelligent beings, creatures that realize the advantages of other forms of communication". If you say there are mind flayer runes, there are. At least one other person (Bruce Cordell) seems to agree with your logic. :-)

Now, if you decided to give every Undercommon-speaking monster its own language, rendering the player's choice useless without telling him so, I think I'd cry foul.

The publisher informs us that both magazines are shipped at the same time via US postal service to Canada Post.

I think you have misunderstood this. When Dragon ships, all issues ship at the same time. Likewise for Dungeon. The two magazines do not ship at the same time as each other, however--check the shipment dates under "My Subscriptions".

I am running the Invasion of Redgorge in my SC campaign and I ran into a bit of a problem. Terseon Skellerang plays quite a big role in the whole invasion and yet, nowhere in the SCAP book is he given a stat block! What were those folks at Paizo thinking? :)

Those fools! It's a shame you don't know any of them, or else you could ask. :-)

Anyway, a practical (if uninspired) answer: the introduction to the book does provide his class and level, so if all else fails you could always fall back on that.

I meant to reply to this (and jthilo's original post), but I have been exceedingly busy working on other things.

No worries.

This really should be a per-user preference, and I intend to (eventually) make it so. For now, using your browser preferences to override is the way to go.

The only problem with browser preferences (using the "typical" interface) is that sometimes it's all or nothing. I already had Firefox configured to underline links (which is the default setting) but your site's style took precedence, as it should. I could set it to ignore all page color settings, but that's too extreme. That's why I had to dig into the user style sheet. It wasn't hard to do, but it did require knowledge of CSS and Firefox configuration files, which is not something every casual user will have.

Just what my old eyes needed. Thanks, jthilo.

Glad I could help!

A lot of new users would have trouble telling the difference between this and this

At least one old user as well!

Not all displays are calibrated equally, nor all eyes for that matter. In some combinations of eyes + viewing conditions (including my own), the site's style for embedded links is indeed too subtle, as you say.

I asked about this a month ago. No response, so I took matters into my own hands. As a Firefox user, my overrides can override Paizo's overrides. :-) I put the following into my userContent.css:

a:link, a:visited, a:active, a:hover { text-decoration: underline !important; }

Now all links are always underlined, regardless of what the site specifies. I could have made this a little more complicated and have it affect only links in certain places on paizo.com, but I didn't feel it was worth the effort. Problem solved on my end.

PostMonster General, might you at least consider not suppressing the underlining of links in the text of messageboard posts, news, etc.? This has made a world of difference for me.

I am looking for a good, FREE website about names. I am looking for a site that describes the orgin and meanings of names, particularly sur names.

I would prefer a site that would be good for teens with short attentions spans. OK paizo brain trust, can you help a poor man out.

http://www.behindthename.com/

http://surnames.behindthename.com/

I'm fairly certain that the casting spells from spellbooks rule came from 1e Unearthed Arcana.

Good call; thanks. Yup, page 80 of the 1e Unearthed Arcana describes this option, although I wouldn't recommend it: you can lose not just the spell but the entire book!

And actually you CAN still cast spells from spellbooks. If you don't memorize your full allotment of spells, you can take 15 minutes to cast a spell directly from your spellbook.

This, however, is not quite right. You're just repeating the preparation process, not casting directly from the book, and it can take longer than 15 minutes. See page 178 of the current PH, under "Spell Selection and Preparation".

So I'm awaiting my first dungeon magazine, which I just recently subscribed to. It says on my account it shipped out on March 20th, so I was wondering if anyone could ease my anxiety and tell me how long it usually takes to ship. Thanks!

Welcome to the boards! It depends where you live, but for me 16 days is typical. FYI, this should probably have gone in the "Customer Service" forums under "Dungeon Subscriptions". Cheers!

Ruh-huh!

jthilo wrote:

Oh, and your rost--post!--hasn't shown up yet...

??? Not sure what you mean by this. You were able to quote it, right?

No, I copied and pasted from the Atom feed. It still doesn't show up in the HTML version of the thread (although your second post does).

Edit: now it has appeared.

That's because our code saw your angle brackets as a potential HTML tag and stripped it out. I suppose we could make the code smarter about what tags really are HTML and which aren't, but I'm not sure I want to maintain a list of "bad" tags.

Rello, Rary!

A list of "good" tags might be better, but I'm confused:

An alternative would be to escape all angle brackets and skip stripping HTML altogether, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea.

Why not? Elsewhere you said:

The messageboards run on our subset of BBCode, not HTML -- HTML tags and entities should not be used.

So, why not escape all angle brackets?

Oh, and your rost--post!--hasn't shown up yet...

The Atom feed for a user's recent posts is titled "paizo.com Recent Rosts by <user>" (in the XML file itself, not on the web pages).

Edit: also, the "less than" sign didn't get properly HTML-escaped in this post.

It isn't part of the RAW, never was, and is one of those wide-spread house rules that everybody uses

Not everybody...

and nobody can explain.

Oh, I don't think it's much of a mystery. With the way D&D's spell system works, I'll bet a lot of PC wizards at one point or another ran out of spells in a bad situation and asked their DMs in desperation if they could treat their spellbooks like a bunch of scrolls. And while we all have a player now and then who has read the PH cover to cover several times, they don't all do that. If the DM tells them this is how something works, they might just figure that's the rule.

Seems like even an old codger like me can still learn something. Wow...

Thanks for the grunt work!

Spoiler tag. For those times when you really, really want to let the cat out of the bag, but don't want to spoil it for everybody. {spoiler}This is a spoiler.{/spoiler} Spoilers look like this: ** spoiler omitted **

Gary,

At least one RSS feed reader (Sage, the one I'm using) doesn't hide the spoilers since you're relying on ECMAScript and CSS to implement them. I don't actually care about that, but I thought I'd mention it in case it bothers you. :-)

You're right. The next time I roll the site & and < should be properly escaped. People should just type them normally. The messageboards run on our subset of BBCode, not HTML -- HTML tags and entities should not be used.

Hi Gary,

&gt; and &quot; should get that treatment as well, although they're less likely to cause problems when mishandled.

The rest of the validation errors, well.... Maybe someday.

:-)

I believe that spells are described as a bunch of scribbles and notes that don't actually read well...

Dang! When I saw your name show up I was so sure you popped in to exclaim "it's LOSE, not LOOSE!". :-)

Hi,

I've noticed that the ampersand ("&amp;") and less-than ("&lt;") characters are not properly HTML-escaped when we include them in our posts. I didn't find anything on the site explaining that users are supposed to escape them manually, and people who don't know HTML probably won't realize they're doing anything wrong.

Right: &amp; &lt; (I escaped these manually)
Wrong: & < (the way many people will type them)

I'd include an HTML validator link for this post, but I think all the other HTML errors would obscure the appropriate messages. :-)

I'm at work atm so can't be 100% sure of the casting from the spellbook, but I just "know" that I have read about it somewhere.

Oh I don't doubt it (and I've been there myself), but I wonder about "somewhere". :-)

This is one of those things that I've encountered so often, I suspect people just assume it must be in the rules. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, so if you do find it please pass it along.

I know that you could cast spells directly from your spellbook like a scroll in earlier editions,

Hi again,

Actually, now that I think about it... I'm aware that some DMs allowed this as a house rule in earlier editions, but I don't see any reference in my AD&amp;D 1e books or in my AD&amp;D 2e RTF files about this being something a wizard can do. Let be bounce the question back to you: can you provide a pointer to a rule that said this was ever allowed? Now I'm curious. I've heard about this from so many people, but I don't think the rules were ever on their side.

I know that you could cast spells directly from your spellbook like a scroll in earlier editions, but can't find any rule for it now, anybody out there that could point me in the right directions if they know where it is?

Hi Oxiplegatz,

According to the v.3.5 Main D&amp;D FAQ, you cannot cast a spell directly from your spellbook. A spellbook is not like a scroll.

If not I guess the easy way is just to let the wizard cast it like a scroll and loose the spell from the book. But when he does that and buys the spell again, he need to make a spellcraft check to be able to write it correctly, right?

That would be a house rule, but I'd say that the normal rules on pages 178-179 of the Player's Handbook would apply.

they said i can't do that anymore :(

No, they said you (or anyone else really) can't post content from the magazines; if you know the answer to the OP's question (an issue number) you can certainly post that.

Magdalane, it sounds like you want "The Serpent of Aledorn" by John P. Buentello in issue #150.

When I'm reading a block of text (in a product description, messageboard post, etc.) I frequently miss noticing links because they're not underlined and their color is not very distinct from the plain text color (black). It's not an issue for things like navigation blocks where just about everything is a link, or for generated tabular content in which you know where to expect links.

Given a choice, I'd prefer having them underlined instead of brightly colored. I overrode the settings in my browser to use the default link colors, and they're a bit jarring compared to the rest of this site's style.

For what it's worth, I use LCD displays exclusively; maybe the color change is less subtle on CRTs? Does anybody else find links in plain text hard to spot? I stuck a link in this post, and I still almost missed it, despite knowing where it is.

Heya I'm new to D&D but not rping and I do have alot of books already (3.5 mostly). I've never played a game yet but Im a quick learner and was hoping that maybe someone could help me out in getting a start in playing on here?

Hi Nixon,

If you're looking for a game, you should post in the Gamer Connection forum.

the goblin ninja pic is the ONLY one not working on my computer

I'm using Firefox under Linux and I have the same problem with this image. I get:

The image "http://paizo.com/image/product/catalog/MEM/MEM004_500.jpeg" cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

All of the other standalone image viewers I've tried display the file okay, but the JPEG decompressor from ijg.org doesn't like it either. There is either something screwy with this image or a problem with JPEG code used by both Firefox and IE (if there is any).

BigDaddyG, in the meantime just save the image and view it offline.

What is the one true faith?

Wenta! ("Divine spellcasters make their holy water from blessed beer or ale.") This gal gets my vote.

anyone know where to find stats for vegepygmies?

Yup: Tome of Horrors (from Necromancer Games) has 'em:

http://www.drivethrustuff.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=3019

and they were incorporated into the S3 conversion on EN World:

http://www.enworld.org/downloads/index.php?cid=9

As has been stated, you'll need an EN World account to access the downloads.

Stebehil wrote:

A possible example would be this: In OD&D X2 Castle Amber, there is Father Simon, a chaotic cleric of Level 14.

I don't think I would make him a 14th-level cleric in a conversion.

I just downloaded the conversion for X2 from EN World to see how Simon got converted. I see where it says "Simon, Clr 10: see Part 10" but part of the document seems messed up. This could be a problem with my document viewer, but every creature in Part 9 is labelled "THOUL" and every NPC in Part 10 is labelled "Sephora". :-/

So, what did the converter do about Simon?

A possible example would be this: In OD&D X2 Castle Amber, there is Father Simon, a chaotic cleric of Level 14. While this is a stiff challenge in the original module (which is written for 6-10 characters of level 3-6, IIRC), it technically constitutes a CR 14 in 3.x D&D.

Nice one! I don't think I would make him a 14th-level cleric in a conversion. He has only 5th-level spells, which would make him 9th or 10th level. The text specifically mentions him using quest, though; I would either drop the spell from his list or make him 11th level. I'd also point out that eight 6th-level characters (using the CR system as a guide) are the threat equivalent of four 8th-level characters, so the gap may not be as wide as it first appears.

Still a challenge, granted, but I think the point is that you do have to make judgment calls like this, and I don't believe the conversion policy prohibits you from doing so. That encounter is supposed to be hard, and with OD&D in particular the rules don't quite work the same way (as you point out).

But then, at higher levels the CR system is not that good. Remember, a Balor, a 20th level human barbarian and a 21st level commoner have the same CR...

Ha! On the next episode of "Celebrity Deathmatch..."

I tend to think that's a shortcoming of the NPC classes rather than the CR system. I'm not saying the latter is perfect, but I don't think 21st-level (epic, no less!) commoners are what the game rules were designed for. :-)

(Edit: if that 21st-level commoner had the hundreds of thousands of gp worth of equipment appropriate for his level, he could be just as dangerous as that balor. Most commoners don't get anywhere near that level.)

I guess if you want to 'return' to a more complete version of C1 in STAP, you have to do it in my game. :-(

So much gaming, so little time... still running Shackled City myself!

Think of it this way: your players get an exclusive adventure not available anywhere else. :-)

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Which really makes distribution a non-option, because often more than mechanics need to be "tweaked"-- there were no ELs in 1e, so could you end up (with straight number-crunching conversions) with an adventure for 5th level characters that has encounters ranging from EL 0 to EL 15.

If a particular monster changed significantly between rules editions, though, such that it doesn't represent the same threat level, why not advance it or underpower it to match the original difficulty?

I can't think of a case where an encounter that would have been appropriate for a 5th-level party in 1st edition became a 15th-level challenge in 3rd edition (or a similar change in difficulty). I'm not doubting you, but did you have an example in mind or were you being hyperbolic?

Which really makes distribution a non-option, because often more than mechanics need to be "tweaked"-- there were no ELs in 1e, so could you end up (with straight number-crunching conversions) with an adventure for 5th level characters that has encounters ranging from EL 0 to EL 15.

Agreed, which may be why we don't see more conversions. Some of the original adventures do have a wide range of "EL"s, though; just because they don't say "EL way-out-of-your-league", that doesn't mean they aren't. :-)

If the adventure had severely unbalanced encounters, that's a "feature" of the original. If a particular monster changed significantly between rules editions, though, such that it doesn't represent the same threat level, why not advance it or underpower it to match the original difficulty? I Am Not A Lawyer, etc., but doing so is also straight number-crunching and seems reasonable by my reading of the policy document (which may not be a valid interpretation).

I'm completely ignorant of copyright infringement issues. I thought it wasn't a problem as long as you weren't making any money off it. I guess that's not the case?

No, it doesn't matter whether you make money or not, or even whether your "intentions were good". If you copy copyrighted material without permission, you have infringed.

(Edit: poor choice of words on my part. You can't charge money for your conversion, but not charging doesn't automatically clear you of wrongdoing.)

WotC produced a policy explaining what they consider appropriate in converting their old products:

http://wizards.com/d20/files/ESDpolicy.rtf

You can do whatever you want in the privacy of your home but if you want to distribute your work, what other posters have said is correct: limit your conversion to raw mechanics only and do not include any other material from the original product. Changing the flavor or intent of the adventure is specifically an infringement (you'd be distributing a derived work, which you don't have the right to do).

I know that the current printings of the Player's Handbook say "Special Edition" in the printing information on the copyright page (I've got one such copy) and contain some corrections not in earlier printings. Has the same thing been done yet with the Dungeon Master's Guide or Monster Manual and if so, is that what I would get if I ordered these books through the Paizo store? (I'm not looking for the $75 leatherbound books, just regular hardcover books with the updated content.)

Does anyone even look at this thing?

Yes, but you'll probably reach more people on the gamer classifieds at enworld.org or wizards.com. Some people also like accessdenied.net. Better still, try all four!

I'm pretty sure I don't want to get involved in your puzzle, but it's object-oriented programming if I ever saw it. And this:

The ability to "become" something else is an extraordinary ability, which no longer functions.

sounds like someone's code won't work with the latest compiler. :-)

I don't have the gestalt rules

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/gestaltCharacters.htm

are such characters so much better that single-classed PCs need so many points to make up the difference?

It depends. I wouldn't mix them in the first place, so I'd say "no". However, sometimes a gestalt character ends up needing more points. For example, even a gestalt cleric/sorcerer who starts with Wis 16 and Cha 16 doesn't get enough level-based stat bumps to cast 9th-level spells in both classes without magical enhancement. Not that the character couldn't afford such enhancement, but it's still more of a resource drain than a single-classed character might have.

I did a quick search, and issue 95 doesn't seem to be available for download as a PDF. Does anyone know why some issues are available and others are not?

Because some back issues have sold out and some haven't. If a PDF is not available (at least for the 3e/v3.5 era) it means they still have back issues; when they sell out, the PDF becomes available.