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Antihover.................................................................. ........................................................................... .........
Forward: Take from this what you will. If you agree with me then continue to take my movie advice. If not, then find someone else who's tastes are the same as yours.

Suggestion: Wait to see it on TV...if nothing else better is on.

Review: I should have listened to my original instincts about this movie when I kept seeing promotions for it through silly Carl's Jr. commercials and other advertisements. This should have been a clue enough to avoid it, since I don't remember The Dark Knight eating Big Macs. But the ads for the actual movie seemed decent enough. I should add that Superman was never my favorite superhero, even though I have seen Smallville a number of times. When I saw Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan's name attached to it, though, I thought this had the potential to be a good re-imagining of Superman (like the Dark Knight trilogy) and I would keep an open mind. This movie has rocked my faith in Chris Nolan.

The movie begins with a very strange sequence on Krypton that, for a lack of a better word, includes Kryptonian Pterodactyl mounts that people apparently fly around on. There's an extended aerial combat scene with plenty of lasers and explosions, and it almost felt as silly as some of the "new and improved" combats added by the new Star Wars 1-3 movies. I just tried to look past this, since I don't read the comic books and maybe things like this are in them that the average viewer might not know about. When we eventually get to Earth it doesn't get much better.

This was a movie that seems like it didn't know what it wanted to be. Some of it tried to be serious, and other parts were just plain hammy and awful. It was a movie trying to take itself far more seriously than it should have. This is compounded by the fact that the scenes felt like a sequence of disjointed, fleeting moments that never really had cohesiveness or a solid direction. It never melded to make a solid movie and really felt like a bad, made for TV mini-series. The sentimental flashback scenes don't work in a movie that carries cheesy lines such as "You know they say it's all downhill after the first kiss", or that uses cliche scenes of military personal and "Mr. Scientist" discussing their plans in the "Let's Solve S**t" control room.

As far as characters, this movie was too scattered to ever stay on one character long enough to care about them. Russel Crowe and Michael Shannon are two accomplished actors that can't save this movie, even with an addition of Kevin Costner and Diane Keaton. Shannon has moments of good performance, which you'd expect of him, but are overshadowed by scenes of hammy overacting and yelling. You almost expect him to stop mid-scene at points and yell "ACT-TIIIIING!". Crowe never seems that attached to what's going on. Costner and Keaton aren't around long enough to care what they think or what happens to them. Louis never draws you in enough with any sense of sex appeal to care if she ends up with Clark, which brings us to Superdud. Henry Cavill's performance ranges from barely competent, to wooden, to hammy and awful. There are times where he feels like a 1950s Superman and is about to say "Have no fear! Superman is here! Off and away!" The one good thing you can say about him is he looks like what people expect Superman to look like and he's pretty damn ripped.

And the action sequences? The only good thing added by this movie was the sonic boom effect they did for flying. Other than that it gets pretty stupid and, yes again, hammy. Much of it feels like an even more over-the-top version of a Matrix movie as Clark and various bad guys hurl each other through an endless amount of buildings and collide with each other in giant mushroom clouds of dust. And Superman, the guy who never kills people, NEVER tries to draw the fight away from crowded areas and continues to fling people through buildings and be flung which looks like it could probably lead to HUNDREDS of deaths if not more. Seriously, this movie seemed like it had a quota of number of body hurls and buildings falling per x minutes of film time. By the end of this I was hoping Zod would destroy the earth to spare mankind (and the audience) of having to endure more of this movie that drags on WAY TOO LONG.

I'm not sure if there was a conflicting vision where Chris Nolan lost control, but I'm really hoping this was NOT the movie he intended to make.

If you Like: Superman as a character and like superhero movies in general you might like this if you're just looking for mindless action entertainment.

This annoys me not only in D&D/PF, but across all RPGs in general:

Have your damn dice ready and don't roll them all individually!

People complain about slow combats, but this contributes sooooo much to slowing down the game to a crawl.

1) Have your dice ready when your turn is coming up. Granted if you're a spellcaster you may be looking through your spells for something, but when you're a fighter? You already know you're going to hack at the guy you just hacked at last round. Have your dice in hand ready to throw. Don't say, "I take another stab at him" then look around for your d20.

2) Know your stupid modifiers or have them written down. Don't sit there and when you roll an 8 go well uhh +2 for this..uh +1 for that uhhh ...no you should know the modifiers already and just say "15" or "8+7..15"

3) Roll your damage at the same time you roll your attack. If the damage is a d8 just roll it with the d20. If you miss? doesn't hurt you wasted the d8, but if you hit now you have your damage already there and ready. Don't roll attack then go looking around for your stupid d8.

4) If you're doing 2+ attacks do them both at once just declaring which one is the first attack..it shouldn't take long before people know which is which. Same with damage. A d8 for your first and d6 for your second shouldn't be hard to figure out.

5) If you're a DM you should be able to consolidate d20s when X bad guys that are the same (or even if they aren't) are going on Y number in the initiative, so you don't have to sit there and roll the same d20 X amount of times trying to figure things out. Roll Xd20s then figure damage.

Am I alone in this?

So there have been a countless number of zingers thrown at 4e (myself included), but this thread is not designed to spark an edition war. I'm just curious as to why people think 4e is the bees knees since I've never "gotten it" myself.

Give your reasons of why 4e is better than 3.x/PF

1. The artwork on the PHB1 cover was cool?

I found a leaked tape of a Paizo seminar on how to moderate forums

HERE

Let's see if people can take a joke.

HERE

This thing cracked me up and was so dead-on. Since he was playing a certain version of GURPS, that one could very easily be interchangeable with Hero and all its variations, especially Champions.

I'm looking for a good, simple fantasy RPG to use for a dungeon crawl one-shot. Suggestions? Links? I couldn't find anything searching through rpg drivethru.

I searched and couldn't find anything on this.

Fey Magic (Su): At 15th level, you may reroll any caster level check made to overcome spell resistance. You must decide to use this ability before the results are revealed by the GM. You must take the second result, even if it is worse. You can use this ability at will.

I don't understand what the benefit of this is?? You cast a spell. The DM rolls for spell resistance against that spell...and then you have him roll it again so it's just as random the first time? I don't understand what use this has other than if you were trying to "read the GM" and metagame to figure out if its a good result or bad and reroll it.

It's just providing another random roll like if you did 2 attack rolls without seeing either and then just randomly picked one. What benefit does this have or is this just an utter waste of a 15th level bloodline power??

I've mulled over whether or not to open these floodgates, but since my other thread got closed after about 1500 posts and the other threads are boring I'll do it...

Everyone by now has heard it somewhere on here. If you associate cheesery/munchkining/"optimizing" etc. with being a rollplayer you'll likely get at least one guy who will link the "Stormwind Fallacy" (or SWF as we'll now call it). And yes, if someone posits, "IF you spend time working on the mechanics to make an optimized character THEN you are bad at roleplaying" he is making an error in overgeneralization. He's stating that everyone who works on their mechanics doesn't care about roleplaying without exceptions. You can obviously do both. There's no argument there. Let me also nip right here that this is not about badwrongfun. If you like to just roll dice or you just like to theatre act, that's fine. This isn't to demean either but lets call a potato a potato.

Here's my problem with the SWF, especially when its used in the discussion of games as a whole: If you make a game that's designed a certain way to be mechanics heavy and mechanics focused it does not mean every player who plays it is going to be a rollplayer. You will, of course, get good roleplayers playing it. BUT, whether intentionally or not, you are creating a culture for the game that will draw certain types of players more and create a certain type of game culture.

Good examples of this on either side of the spectrum are 4e and VtM. I'm referring to the oWoD one because I'm not as familiar with the new one. Now are there going to be hack n slash rollplayers in VtM and excellent roleplayers in 4e. Yes I understand that. But the way you design your books and mechanics and what you focus on will change the culture of the game. Pretty much the first thing done in 4e (and many games) is rolling up stats. If I'm remembering the VtM book correctly (I gave mine away a bit ago :( ) When looking at both: how much content is given before getting to stats? VtM started with a cool story at the front and even 2e had a gameplay example in the front. That's now gone. How much of each game is devoted to mechanics vs. other stuff? How much space is dedicated fleshing out your background and personality BEFORE getting to the mechanics part? How much are "adventures" structured around storyline and plot and people than monster stats and encounters? How much is released content devoted to non-mechanical content (setting, people, places, history/events) vs mechanical (monsters/items/weapons etc.)

I find it hard for anyone to question that VtM isn't more roleplay oriented than 4e (as a community as a whole) and a large part of that goes to how the books are written and structured.

To finish with my point again: a game being mechanics heavy/focused does not mean all players are rollplayers, but it does create a certain culture for the game and draw a certain type of players (intentionally or not). Let's say you took 100 WoW players and presented them with 4e and let's say oWoD Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade for something a little more comparable than VtM. If they were looking for something more like WoW,how many do you think would pick Vtm over 4e? I'd say not very many.

Requests for this thread:
*Please read people's full post carefully so you can respond to what they're actually trying to say. Threads get cluttered with pages of people going back and forth devolving the thread into: "I like chocolate" "Why do you hate caramel so much?" "You caramel lovers are all suppressing every other candy. Just like Hitler". Pay attention to people's qualifiers like "some", "maybe", "a few", "it's possible that" etc. so you can see how far they're going in their argument. If you think you know what someone is saying, but aren't sure ask instead of accusing them of something outlandish (unless its obvious you're just joking)
*Please only post things related to the thread that [you think] add something interesting to the conversation.
*Please keep personal remarks about others at a level low enough that it doesn't draw the attention of admins who delete posts like its going out of style. That got the last thread locked.

That being said: LET'S GET IT ON!

1) When making a new character, should a player beforehand, tell the GM what class he wants to run and ask what materials he's allowed to use? Or should a player create the character he wants and the GM should figure out a way to accomodate him?

2) When it comes to optional materials: Is the burden on the Player to prove why he should be allowed to use certain optional spells/classes/feats etc. or on the DM to show why these materials should NOT be used?

Why or why not?

I saw another thread about HD and this idea occurred to me. It may have been suggested already, but it could alleviate some of the grumbling about being easily schwacked and it doesn't "break" the existing system.

1st Level (as normal): Max HD + Con + bonuses
2nd Level: Roll for HD with a minimum of 1/2 Max i.e. if your HD is a d8 you roll for HP with a minimum of 4 (so if you roll a 2 its now a 4)..+Con + bonuses yadda yadda
3rd Level: Same as second level but 1/2-1 so the d8 would be minimum 3
4th Level: 1/2-2
After this you should be more than fine in staying alive. Combine this with the ability to choose getting a +1 HP for favored class and I think its workable.

Sound feasible?

Like so.

You get extra points for standing on the table when doing it.

I'm tired of seeing all these stupid female gamer threads where people are asking things like "uh what do you of the other mysterious gender like to do in an RPG?" or complaining about chauvinism in the game. I have yet to play an RPG where there was any sense of "machoness" considering the average RPG player could get beat up by an average woman. The issue it comes down to is sensitivity.

The solution to this problem is simple. Don't categorize all women as a certain type and take it as a case by case basis. If there is a girl going to join your group (and no one is that familiar with her) someone definitely should clear her beforehand that your in-game content gets graphic and your OOC chatter gets pretty raunchy. If she knows that beforehand and joins then she has nothing to complain about because she knows what she got into. Obviously you're not going to have the entire table change because one person came in. There are plenty of women who can handle this, and there's some who can't and there will be other games for them.

If you have one or more women or a few people who are sensitive and form a group you should let the more raunchy player know he may need to tone it down for the dynamic of this group. In this case the raunchy guy knows what he's getting into.

Also, if you come into a game understand how CERTAIN GAMES ARE DIFFERENT. Don't come into a WoD game or something dark and expect it to be PG or lollipops. That's probably not how the game is going to be. If you can't handle a more mature game then you should probably play something different.

/end rant. Don't need my ring of protection +5. Come at me bro.

When I used search I saw this addressed before, but I couldn't find it actually answered by a Paizo representative.

If you have a strength penalty and use a weapon two handed does it help mitigate that penalty?

Example: -1 str penalty (*1.5 = 1.5 ... 1.5 - 1 = - .5 (and rounded up or down by rules?)

other one: -2 str pen (*1.5 = 3...3-2 = -1 now)

obviously you wouldn't add additional penalties two handed like -1 * 1.5 to make it now 1.5 for using that extra hand.

Is there an errata answer I didn't see someone can link me to or will this just have to be houseruled?

As the title says: How often does your DM get surprised or thrown by something you do? I seem always be the one to throw off what the DM's plan off the tracks and usually it's from doing something pretty reasonable from the character's point of view. Here's a few examples:

In an old ADnD game there were free wizards (illegal) and school wizards or whatever and I witnessed a free wizard being dragged away screaming something to the effect of "Free wizards forever!". What did I do? I just stood there inconspicuously and watched him get dragged off. The DM expected me to go save him and I'm like...uhh why? Why would I help some random guy I don't even know and attack the authorities and paint myself a target? It would be the equivalent of the police dragging off some pothead and I'm like Wait! I smoke pot! And attack them to defend him. Doesn't make sense. Either way, to not mess up the game we went back after him.

WFRP: we're traveling down a river and get waived down and go to a town that gives us free drinks..which are poisoned, but the towns people say they're desperate because there's a witch so once we kill her they'll give us the antidote. I'm a troll slayer ready to start killing people but I oblige for the time being and we kill the witch and her people. We go back to town and they say we didn't get all of them so we have to go back. Uhhhh no. I threaten them. They don't budge. I grab the towns leader's husband and I cut off some fingers for the antidote. They're more compliant now. After that I'm like lets get out of here and the town leader tells me we're sentencing them to death if we don't help them....shoulda thought of that before poisoning us. PEACE! lol the GM had more planned for us to do but we left so he had to improvise.

Or last game I did for WFRP there's a brawl in a bar between dockers and fisherman and I know one of the dockers. I ask, am I good friends with this guy and the DM says he's an acquaintance. I'm a rogue so I'm like lol ok and jump over the bar and sit and drink the bar's booze then sneak out the back. He seemed to be expecting me to join the fight and l'm thinking..why? I had nothing to gain from getting in a random brawl.

Are you also "that guy"?