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Organized Play Member. 30,173 posts (31,406 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist. 6 Organized Play characters. 13 aliases.


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Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:
Almost missed this until someone pointed it out. Absolutely love the new 'ghoul fever'. So flavourful and horrifying to be consumed by. I know I won't miss rolling paralysis checks ad infinitum when a bunch of lower level ghouls swarm the party to see if one of them happens to crit fail (and won't really be upset that an higher-level ghoul doesn't randomly turn lethal when a party member is hard-locked for a round).

Yeah, I'll kind of miss the paralysis, since it's been so iconic for D&D ghouls for so long, but mechanically it didn't work too well in PF2e.

The incapacitation made it annoying to roll constantly, but ineffective for lower level ghouls, but then suddenly devastatingly effective when the ghoul boss shows up. It's far more of a shift in difficulty than you'd expect for the level difference.


Nelzy wrote:


Wraith wrote:


Sunlight Powerlessness A dread wraith caught in sunlight is stunned 2 and clumsy 2.
Wraiths stun lacks the While remaining in light part, so it looks like they only are stunned when they first enter sunlight, witch is abit wierd that they would rather stay in the light then move out and in again.

To be fair, they stay clumsy 2 in sunlight, since that doesn't naturally expire like stunned does, so there is motivation to get out of the sun.

It also makes it weird to put the "for as long as it remains in the sunlight" for the spectre. It seems unnecessary verbiage.


Megistone wrote:
Being stunned when caught in sunlight is still different than slowed, because a PC's action (say, ripping off a curtain) can immediately make the wraith unable to act or react.

The lack of reactions would be a bonus to stunned, but otherwise it would be the same I think.

I'd still usually rather have the permanent only one action in sunlight (but reactions allowed) than the loss of two actions (and reactions briefly) but then acting normally afterwards.

And I'd really hate thematically for the players to exploit the rules and remove and replace the curtain repeated to trigger the weakness more often.


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<Goes and digs through the "stunned during your turn" argument> Yeah, house ruling that.

Still not sure how I'm going to run the sunlight thing.


Spectres are slowed 2 when caught in sunlight. Wraiths are stunned 2 instead. Does this mean that after the first round in sunlight, wraiths can act normally? They'd still be clumsy, of course.

It seems weird, especially if the fight winds up moving from sunlight to shadow and back, such that they'd be better off staying in the light than moving out of it temporarily.

Or are they stunned 2 every round they being in sunlight. Which seems indistinguishable from being slowed, like spectres are.


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Captain Morgan wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:

A comfortable rural house costs 2,000gp.

A holy avenger won't get you that far with helping the poor. A few families at best. Better to use it during a full career of saving multitudes.

Throwing money at a problem alone is rarely enough to actually fix it. At best you end up treating the symptoms and not the problem itself, and at worst it makes things worse. You really need hard work, community cooperation, and good planning (and yes, also money) in order to really solve such problems at their root.

You misread what your link stated. 2000 is for a quality stone home. It's only 300 gp for a comfortable wooden house. A holy avenger is 2500 gp, that's fifteen families set up in comfortable homes for life. (Or half that if you are selling it, I suppose, but 7.5 is still more than a few.)

That also assumes you are taking the easy way out, of course. If the paladin put in the hard work you mentioned with their legendary diplomacy, connections, and reputations, they could instead rent a bunch of homes for even more families while working towards getting them sustainably employed. Get their druid friend to cast Plant Growth to boost their crop yield and what not. The whole "don't just treat the symptoms" narrative feels misleading because symptoms still kill people and get treated by doctors to prevent it, but there no particular reason a high level paladin needs to settle for that.

You can defend it, but its really just the "Reed Richards is useless" trope. We want to tell stories of fantastical heroes that can solve problems far beyond our own to make ourselves feel better about all the problems we can't solve. But because we want to keep telling those stories and we want the world to be recognizable and relatable, the heroes can't solve those problems for us. Pathfinder, much like Marvel comics,,has a vested interest in maintaining a status quo so these stories can keep getting told. Both also have geographies bot...

It's more the Batman problem, where we assume the billionaire could do more by spending his money on social improvements than on expensive tools to help fight crime dressed as a bat.

Which sounds great until one of the villains destroys the city or something because Bruce is building houses instead of bat-gadgets.

In Golarion, paladins are paladins to fight great evils in a world full of great evils. If you fail because your equipment is up to par, things can get far worse, even for the poor.
Which doesn't mean that paladins, when not facing a crisis, wouldn't help in other ways, just that selling off their gear wouldn't be the best approach.

The other question is who would you sell the holy avenger to? By this argument, other paladins shouldn't buy it. Anyone who would can't be trusted with it.


I haven't read Goodkind, but I think some of the popularity is from various libertarians hyping it up because of his Objectivist takes.

I've also heard some claim that the writing gets better after the first couple books - until later on the political preaching gets even more dominant.


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I would actually love to see mini-players guides for the stand alone adventures. Especially the 1st level ones, where a couple of backgrounds tied to the module would be cool, but even for the higher level ones a few pages of what to expect would be nice.

Updates to older adventures for the remaster don't really seem necessary. Changes are generally minor enough to not be a big deal, so it would be a lot of work for little benefit.


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Thomas Seitz wrote:

Okay I'm impressed with the payoff.

Still think the Devil Dragon MIGHT be able to win if our guys don't get Sunny back on track.

Yeah, wouldn't expect Bloodfeast to do much more than give the team a chance to regroup.


AceofMoxen wrote:
thejeff wrote:
AceofMoxen wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
I also picked up my Rom Omnibus Volume 1. It’s…..GLORIOUS! I look forward to reading through it. Though, in hindsight, it did come out last week, so maybe that and Thor would have been worthy of the gas and time….
Is there significant X-men content? I remember some X-men/Rom crossover being in a legal hold, but I don't know how many issues that was.
IIRC there was a two issue crossover with the X-Men and then a later related two issue appearance of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that shortly preceded Rogue joining the X-Men.

It looks like this volume only has iron fist and power man 73. Ideally, Marvel will produce a paperback of just those four issues. I'm not sure I'm buying a whole omnibus for a few issues.

I did enjoy the Rom stuff in the recent Cable (2020) series. It had me laughing.

Looking a little deeper, it wasn't a crossover, but just an appearance. No X-Men issues involved. This should have the two issues of Rom that the X-Men appeared in (17-18, I think).

The two Brotherhood issues were in the early 30s and would fit in the next volume.


AceofMoxen wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
I also picked up my Rom Omnibus Volume 1. It’s…..GLORIOUS! I look forward to reading through it. Though, in hindsight, it did come out last week, so maybe that and Thor would have been worthy of the gas and time….
Is there significant X-men content? I remember some X-men/Rom crossover being in a legal hold, but I don't know how many issues that was.

IIRC there was a two issue crossover with the X-Men and then a later related two issue appearance of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that shortly preceded Rogue joining the X-Men.


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DungeonmasterCal wrote:
Velveeta Golem wrote:
Duh. Cheese is serious business. Well, at least real cheese (yes, American "cheese" I am looking at you).
Oh, you did NOT just put those quotation marks in...
Red-blooded 'Murican here and I hafta to speak up and defend the cheeses of other countries. American cheese sucks.

"American cheese" as a pasteurized cheese product sucks.

There are lots of great cheeses made in the US. Both Vermont and Wisconsin are dairy capitals that produce great cheese, even for the mass market, leaving out the excellent small craft cheeses.


graywulfe wrote:
Trip.H wrote:

That link was also a 404 for me Rene,

This is the page link that's active for me:

edited link

I think GadgetPhreak just had an extra space in there for some reason, almost got it.

Edit: Yup, yours had it too, so did mine. It's the forum formatting that's adding the space, no clue why.

Seriously, why convert "bundle-paizo-" --> "bundle- paizo-"

The forum software automagically changes any url into a non valid link unless you use proper url formatting. I don't remember the reason for that but I think it had to do with security or something.

I think it just throws a space in at line breaks. But not like real line breaks, some internal line break after so many characters.

Short URLs should work.

www.paizo.com


Set wrote:
Aberzombie wrote:
There was a similar story from Comico’s Elementals series back in the late 80s (maybe early 90s), where the evil (yet appropriately named) Shapeshifter pretended to be Morningstar’s boyfriend and knocked her up. The result was an egg that ended up eaten by a fish. As far as I know, the series ended before they could follow that story arc any further.

Man, that was a cool book! I still have the collected first six issues, but can't seem to find any of the others in my messy un-indexed collection of back issues.

Elementals is a title that really would have benefited from the modern trend of limited series for story arcs with breaks in between.

That first arc was one of best things I'd read at the time it came out and still holds up pretty well. The series had some other flashes of brilliance almost up to that level, but it also had a lot of sub-par filler content, usually by other writers and artists.


Aberzombie wrote:
With Moon Knight in mind, I’ve got to say - I miss the days when they ran a series as long as they could, instead of consistently just starting again. Granted, sometimes I think it’s just desperation to try and make something of many of these more modern characters. Other times, I think maybe it’s just having a tough time getting a creative team to stick around very long. Or successively good creative teams to stick around.

Some of it is just being willing to take a short break and start over with a new creative team rather just just running some fill in issues and find someone new to throw on the book fast.


Sure, you can play ignoring the rules for Exploration mode and if you're used to rpgs it'll seem natural, but that cuts out a lot of mechanics they put into the game to handle the exploration side. That's kind of still my default for running it, since I don't quite have a good grasp on exploration and it's easier to fall back to how I've played in other games.


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Magus Tata wrote:
Outl wrote:


Ex3: Not just hazards, it seems that all monsters ALWAYS get to decide when to "start" combat. The party has no effect on this, even standard exploration activities such as Scout and Search have no effect. Even in an ambush, the monsters decide how close to get before the ambush is triggered. For instance: Two groups see eachother coming on a long straight road while still 3 miles away. The wizard prepares to fireball as soon as they get in range (500 feet). The enemies can decide to be within 40 feet before initiative is rolled.
Surely this is a GM issue rather than a rules issue. I’m certain that if we encountered this situation with my regular GM, and neither group was trying to get off the road, he would allow the fireball and then have us roll initiative. At worst he’d have a semi-simultaneous spell attack from the opposing party that coincides with the fireball

It's definitely a weak point in the rules though.

I don't think there's any "monsters always decide" rule. Not even sure where that's coming from. (I'm now imagining some monster just sauntering right past the PCs who want to kill him, but can't because he's not dumb enough to "start" combat.

In that specific case, I'd probably say "roll initiative" when the wizard wanted to cast. Just because he starts first, doesn't mean it goes off before they can act. No more than if the groups were facing off and one decided to start the fight. They don't get a free attack out of it. Even against unaware enemies, there's no surprise round anymore.

What I've actually had trouble with is Avoid Notice if you don't actually want to go straight into a fight.


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VestOfHolding wrote:
Mark Moreland wrote:
thejeff wrote:
But the two can't mesh. If I want people to be able to use it on Infinite and beyond, that's not an option right?
Correct. Infinite has the same exclusivity clause that's present in all of DTRPG's community content programs.
While Mark has already answered this question, I really really hope this sinks in for people: This isn't new with the coming of ORC. This is how Infinite has worked.

Sort of. I think the distinction is that people expected Infinite to work with ORC the same way it works with the OGL, so that it doesn't catches them off guard.

Pretty sure I'm right about that: You could combine OGL and Infinite material. For example, create a new monster, release it under the OGL and use it in an Infinite adventure set in Golarion. (Or use a 3rd party's OGL monster.)

But you can't do that with ORC content.


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Mark Moreland wrote:
Shrink Laureate wrote:
An ORC publisher could sue an Infinite publisher, or visa versa, because there's no such protection between the two.

That was always the case. In this situation, any protections they have come from normal IP law. If I publish the pizzafolk ancestry on Infinite, I own that copyright. So if a hypothetical publisher we'll call Chad Razmir—that guy's a jerk—releases a book referencing the pizzafolk elsewhere (regardless of what license he releases it under, be it ORC or CC or no license at all), he's using my copyrighted material without a license. I can sue him for that.

If I release the pizzafolk ancestry via the ORC only, I still own the copyright, but other ORC publishers, including that jerk Chad Razmir, can use it and there's nothing I can do about it, even if Chad Razmir puts it in a book I don't like or adds a bunch of his own content to my pizzafolk I find objectionable (like pineapple). That's the protection provided by the ORC.

Similarly, if I release the pizzafolk ancestry on Infinite and Chad Razmir makes a deep-dish heritage for it that also offends me (because pizzafolk should be flat), and he releases that on Infinite, he's good and there's nothing I can do.

If we're looking at it in reverse, if I release the pizzafolk (I'm sorry, it's lunchtime) via the ORC on paizo.com or DTRPG or itch.io or wherever and then Chad tries to make an adventure using them on Infinite, he's likewise violating my copyright on that creation.

If you want people to be able to use your content on Infinite, release it on Infinite. If you want them to be able to use it beyond Infinite, release it via the ORC.

But the two can't mesh. If I want people to be able to use it on Infinite and beyond, that's not an option right?


pH unbalanced wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Bluemagetim wrote:
Attacking a downed PC is an evil act for an intelligent foe.
It might be, but it's definitely something damn near every PC would do if unconscious enemies got back up nearly as often as unconscious PCs do.

I had this issue with a player in one of my most recent games. Her character was CG and using coup-de-grace routinely on downed foes (like town guards), to the horror of everyone at the table. Soon figured out that she had picked up the habit from the Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous video games.

Culture definitely varies by table on this, but also by campaign. Had to point out that she was definitely making a bad impression on the townsfolk.

Seems like the first problem is why your CG PC is fighting the town guard.

It's a habit that's really easy to pick up though. All it takes is the GM healing up a few enemies to learn it's necessary. So don't do that.


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Bluemagetim wrote:
lol because deep down PCs are evil, tombrobbing, corpselooting, opportunists.

Because one person healed back from dead who drops a high level spell and TPKs the party, teaches you that down doesn't mean out.

Double tap to make sure.


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Bluemagetim wrote:
Attacking a downed PC is an evil act for an intelligent foe.

It might be, but it's definitely something damn near every PC would do if unconscious enemies got back up nearly as often as unconscious PCs do.


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Ravingdork wrote:

That's a nice story, NielsenE. Thanks for sharing.

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:
It is always a full round due to initiative shifting...

This assumes you're fighting a single adversary, which is rarely the case.

You won't have a full round if a minion walks up and kicks you in the head, or fireballs you along with the rest of the party.

Even with a single adversary, if they dropped you with a crit on their first attack ...

But the point has never been that you might not get hit again, it's that you won't have to roll your recovery check before others have had a chance to heal you.


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Bluemagetim wrote:

pg 442 Conditions are persistent. Whenever you're affected by a condition, its effects last until the condition's stated duration ends, condition is removed, or terms dictated in the condition itself cause it to end.

When we are talking about wounded this is the most basic thing we should consider. It is a condition. It is persistent. And persistent effects do not keep applying themselves additively over and over when they are referenced by another rule. The only way wounded could as a condition contribute more than its current value to dying on repeated applications of its effect is if the value increased between applications.
The new parens stating (plus your wounded value, if any) do create a new situation not possible before though. IF there is any new ability or effect in the game that can increase wounded outside of its normal method (losing the dying condition) that higher value would have to be reassessed into your dying value every time you fail a check or take damage. But if your still treating it like a condition with a value you would treat redundant application of its effect by only taking the highest value.

Conditions do however apply every time they're relevant. If you've got a penalty from a condition, you apply it over and over again every time you make an appropriate roll. (Persistent damage is the even more parallel case, where it does literally apply itself additively over and over again.)

What Wounded does in the new version/interpretation of the Dying rules is get added to Dying when you first gain Dying 1. Then every time your Dying value increases, it increases by 1 (or 2) plus your Wounded Value. It applies itself over and over because that's what it is. It's an increase in the amount Dying increases by.


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Ched Greyfell wrote:

I see it as [increase dying by 1] plus wounded value to get total.

Not [increase dying value by 1 and your wounded value] to get your total.

But what does that mean?

Let's assume I'm Wounded 1 and I get knocked down. My Dying goes to 2, right? Wounded + 1. Or is my Dying 1, but my "total" 2?
Then when I fail a recovery check, I still use my original Dying to calculate a new total? Dying 1, which increases to Dying 2, plus 1 from Wounded, to get a Total of 3, but my Dying is only 2? And even though it's never referred to as anything but Dying, it's this separate Total value that adds to the difficulty for Recovery Checks and I die if the Total reaches 4?

If I then make a couple Recovery Checks and my Dying drops to 0, I still stay unconscious because my "Dying + Wounded" Total is 1?

None of this is in the rules, but you need to invent it to treat it as anything other than [increase dying value by 1 and your wounded value]


Midgefly wrote:

I could see it being interpreted as essentially this equation:

Dying Total = Dying Increase from damage or failed save + (Current Dying Value + Wounded Value)

But that means your Dying Total isn't really your Dying Value, but a separate thing that you don't track, but only use to calculate when you die and what your recovery chance is and there's nothing else anywhere that suggests it's different.


Fumarole wrote:
aobst128 wrote:

Oh, I hadn't actually read the new rules. Yeah, adding 2 or more to your dying value on a failed recovery check while you're wounded doesn't sound right. Probably not the right interpretation.

Recovery Checks:

Critical Success Your dying value is reduced by 2.
Success Your dying value is reduced by 1.
Failure Your dying value increases by 1 (plus your wounded value, if any).
Critical Failure Your dying value increases by 2 (plus your wounded value, if any).

I fail to see how the above can be interpreted any way other than adding your wounded value when failing a recovery check. The same goes for when you take damage when dying and wounded. Some folks point to the conditions section to suggest there is ambiguity, but that section explicity states it is not complete, and to refer to the page where I got those lines for the rest of the rules. Also, even if it was true that the condition section is ambiguous (it's not), the rule about conditions not stacking is a general rule, and the rule above is a specific rule. Specific overrides general.

I still don't see "stacking". That's usually for 2 different sources of the same thing.

This is just how you use the Wounded conditions. It's got nothing to do with stacking.


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Bluemagetim wrote:

So what they wrote was in both pre and post remaster and does not convey the intent of stacking. It reads to me as check to see if my dying value is already including my wounded value. If yes then I remembered to do it and were good. if not put it in there cause you need to really know if your dead yet.

If they meant something different this text should have been adjusted from remember to to just do. Also I would have liked to see consistency in terms so if they wanted to increase dying by wounded again i would like them to have used the term increase rather than add.

When looking at recovery checks they use the word plus which is also not increase. Consistency there would have gone a long way.

Still don't see "stacking" here. I think it's all in how you're thinking about it. If you already think Wounded only applies to Dying once, then applying it whenever dying increases seems like stacking.

But if you look at it as affecting how much Dying changes by, then it's not stacking. Every time Dying increases, you apply the Wounded value.

Much like if you have a status bonus to damage it doesn't stack with other status bonuses to damage, but you don't think it's stacking if you add it every time you do damage.

As for the "plus vs increase" in the recovery checks, that's consistent. They're used differently. Your Dying value is increased. It's either increased by one, or by one plus your Wounded value if you have one.


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Baarogue wrote:

Is this thread bait?

The only outcomes I can see from threads like this about any clarified rules are people getting salty or in denial about being on the losing side of the old arguments, or gloating about being on the winning side. The new bit nulls all old debates and doesn't give any room for new ones, much like the clarification on doubling persistent damage did before it

It's "bait" in the sense that it's intended to draw the discussion about Wounded/Dying off of the Remaster Changes thread since it was consuming all the oxygen there.


They'll kind of need to put out a remastered Beginner Box at some point fairly soon, right?
Be awkward bringing people in with the old Beginner Box and then expecting them to jump straight to remastered rules.


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Bluemagetim wrote:

You can run dying and wounded properly with no confusion by using the entry's for dying on page 443 and wounded on page 447 while treating wounded as a condition with values

If you look at 411 and tour read is not consistent with 443 and 447 then its due to misinterpretation and misapplying conditions.
Honestly 411 doesn't tell you anything new but the reminder that doesn't exist on these other pages that also contain the rules for dying.
The game hasn't changed when it comes to dying, the rules are the same in both preremaster and remaster. The taking damage while dying had the reminder text pre as well. The only difference is the recovery check entry on 411 and 411 only has in parens a statement about plus wounded value if any. Some have taken this to mean you now treat wounded as if you could stack its effect. Thats not how conditions in pathfinder work to my understanding and in applying conditions with values or their effects which no where have ever been applied in a stacking fashion. Wounded is a condition like any other and has a way of gaining it and removing and increasing it. Asside from the actual value increasing it would never apply its effect higher than the value and never stacking. We all know conditions to be that way in this game. Unless developers say thier intent was to change wounded to be a condition that works didferently than other conditions and can apply its effect stacking its probably too soon to believe it can. I believe dying and wounded are not different from before.

The "stacking" argument makes no sense to me. There's no sense in which Wounded is stacking. You add your Wounded value when you gain Dying and every time it increases (failed recovery check or taking damage). That's not stacking any more than adding a damage bonus every time you damage someone is.

I don't like the rule and I'm not sure it's presented clearly, but the problems have nothing to do with stacking.


Bluemagetim wrote:

Thank you.

Its interesting that they say the most significant information and dont say that you increase dying by the wounded value stacking each time you roll a recovery check or take damage. That would have been very significant if it was a rule change.

Also what they do say is most important in that section it says when you gain dying thats the time to increase your dying by the wounded value. Or more technically when you drop to 0hp you gain dying and increase it by your wounded value.

But they also don't say anything about how dying increases once you have it. That sidebar doesn't include anything about what happens when you take damage while you have Dying or what happens when you fail a recovery check.


Karneios wrote:
thejeff wrote:

The other question here in terms of how much this changes how the game plays is beyond the encounter when someone goes down. I'd assume it's now beyond the question to push on if you can't clear the Wounded condition.

So you've got to Treat Wounds to clear that. Which also means you probably shouldn't rely on Treat Wounds just to heal up, since then you won't be able to clear Wounded. Unless you're in a place where you can safely hole up for an hour of course.

Seems to me this could dramatically shorten the adventuring day.

Wounded goes away on successful healing with treat wounds as well as going to max hp

Ah. Brain fart. Somehow I was forgetting the full hit point part.

So as long as you can fully heal up without Treat Wounds it won't be a problem. Or with Treat Wounds, but then you need an hour or more likely Continual Healing.


The other question here in terms of how much this changes how the game plays is beyond the encounter when someone goes down. I'd assume it's now beyond the question to push on if you can't clear the Wounded condition.
So you've got to Treat Wounds to clear that. Which also means you probably shouldn't rely on Treat Wounds just to heal up, since then you won't be able to clear Wounded. Unless you're in a place where you can safely hole up for an hour of course.

Seems to me this could dramatically shorten the adventuring day.


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Kekkres wrote:
My issue with the new dying rules is less the lethality they have in of themselves and more the disasterous way they interact with persistent damage. If you have wounded 1, and a source of persistent damage and get knocked to zero, the party has exactly 1 turn to bring you into the positive before your dead.

And if you're not wounded and you've got persistent damage, the party has to heal you up because even at Dying 1, persistent damage is really bad, so odds are you're about to be Wounded 1, in range of an attack and with persistent damage still eating away at you.


James Jacobs wrote:
thejeff wrote:


Even though it's been relocated would this still make a good module to use as a prequel for Malevolence?

You could with a bit of work, I suppose, but thematically and story-wise the two adventures are pretty different.

In the original campaign, which I ran as a sandbox set in Crookcove with a town map and regional map that the PCs could explore as they wished, I had a LOT of dungeons and adventure sites scattered around for them to discover, and the seeds in Rusthenge were one of those that could have developed over time into a larger threat to the region, depending on how much they followed up on them.

But the print version of Rusthenge is pretty different—Vanessa wrote it and brought her own story elements and themes to it and made it her own, plus it's tied into the lore of New Thassilon in a way that the Croockcove one didn't (which was instead tied into social conflicts in southwestern Ravounel between humans, strix, and xulgaths).

Kind of what I expected, honestly. Thanks.

Been wanting to run Malevolence for awhile, but want to start this group at 1st level and lack the time and spare brain cells right now to come up with anything appropriate so I saw this and wondered.


James Jacobs wrote:
WanderingVoidWolf wrote:
Late to the party here, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with rust now since rust monsters are getting the ORC boot.

This adventure was deep in development when the OGL thing happened, and at that point, in a world where we feared that the OGL would be deauthorized, I put this adventure through a quick "de-OGLifying" pass. Turns out things weren't as bad as I'd feared, and this adventure ended up being able to be published as an OGL adventure... but the one rust monster in the adventure (which was also featured on the cover) had been changed to a different rust-themed critter.

There's a lot of rust stuff in here, and while the fact that there's no rust monster will catch some gamers who aren't following the whole OGL thing closely off guard, it really didn't impact the thing at all that much.

"Rusthenge" itself is a location I created in a game I ran at the office, and was part of the same campaign in which I created the haunted house that showed up in "Malevolence." It's tied to themes other than just a rust monster, and is itself exported from my homebrew setting. I'm not gonna spoil more about it yet... but the location itself as it appears in this adventure is different than what my players went through in that campaign, beyond moving from southwest Ravounel up to New Thassilon.

Even though it's been relocated would this still make a good module to use as a prequel for Malevolence?


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Aberzombie wrote:

So….turns out not only did they have Wolverine #1 (the ‘82 limited series, not the original ongoing series), they had the other three issues as well. So now I have the entire limited series!

Huzzah!!!!

That first Wolverine limited series was so damn good.

Can't remember now if I bought it as it came out or tracked it down early in my collecting. Probably the latter, it came out a bit before I was really able to buy stuff regularly.

Definitely bought the Kitty/Wolverine series that came out a couple years later, that built on the whole Wolverine/ninja thing.


DungeonmasterCal wrote:
Yep, if folks weren't White New Englanders with long lineages and old money, he basically felt they were trash.

And even the rural white New Englanders were likely degenerating into weird cults or something. "the decayed side of the Whateley family"

Or in some cases the old English nobility - see The Rats in the Walls.


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The Raven Black wrote:
Ed Reppert wrote:
If you decide that CS should not be involved in the Forums, then you've reduced us to one way -- email -- to connect with them. That's probably a bad idea.

It has been this way for some time now.

Email-only helps immensely with Ticketing, which is the modern efficient way to deal with receiving many many customers' varied requests.

Some kind of web based interface would help even more.

It's long frustrated me that we can start subscriptions through the store, but have to email to stop them.


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Aaron Bitman wrote:
AceofMoxen wrote:
Anyway, remember when Jimmy Olsen's comic was cancelled for only having a million readers? Today's comics often sale less than 50,000. They are at the peak of average quality and already dead.

Um... I'm now squirming in my chair. I'm afraid to argue with people on the internet, running the risk of flaming. But I can't help it; I'm compelled to challenge the notion that the Jimmy Olsen comic was "cancelled" in 1974. At least, that's not the way I see it.

Yes, DC Comics was getting into trouble in the 1970s, as it continued to put out silly, campy stories, while some other MARVELous titles were appealing to more readers with their serious approach. DC had to cut down on its titles. And rather than cancel Lois Lane's series and Supergirl's series, DC rolled all three of those characters' books into a single series, Superman Family, thus keeping the three titles alive until its cancellation in 1982.

In other words, Jimmy Olsen's series didn't die; it metamorphosed like a caterpillar.

At this point, I can imagine someone saying to me "Aha! So you admit that Jimmy Olsen got cancelled in 1982, at least!"

But by that time, DC Comics had changed, having acquired so many talented writers and artists. Now DC was giving us wonderful Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes stories. And its two most famous characters, Superman and Batman, were now finally getting the serious kinds of stories they needed. Individual titles can come and go, but...

The simplest, biggest difference I see between now and then is that back then comics were cheap entertainment pumped out for kids. They were available everywhere and while some kids certainly followed titles and held on to them, they were marketed as disposable impulse buys.

Kids have a lot more demands on their attention today, but more than that, comics are now sold (at least the physical ones) in specialized shops that most kids just won't wander into. The books themselves are not only more expensive, but much more sophisticated, overwhelmingly with multi-issue plot arcs. They're not disposable impulse buys anymore. They're marketed to adults and to older teens and often to long term collectors.

There are a lot of reasons that happened, some good and some bad. It might be that the shift away from the kid's market led to comics downfall, but it might be that other changes made the decline in sales there inevitable and it was only that shift that let comics continue at all.

I will say that I personally benefited from it, since I was growing up as that big shift was happening. Comics matured along with me, both in my teens and with the independent boom and things like Vertigo coming along a bit later. If comics had stayed limited to what they were when I was young, I doubt I would have kept reading them all these years, however much nostalgia I still get from some of the old series.


Warped Savant wrote:
Kasoh wrote:
Warped Savant wrote:
Kasoh wrote:
If they wouldn't actually do it, then its not actively evil intent.

Yes, good and neutral people will occasionally commit evil acts. If you Detect Evil on them during one those times they will read as evil even though that person typically isn't evil.

Hence why Detect Evil can give a false positive.

Yes, they should be stopped from committing whatever evil they were about to do, but does that mean they should die for a moment of weakness? (The answer to that will vary greatly by person, but that's kind of what this entire thread is about.)

Sure, its the example I take issue with, not the idea that Detect Evil can ping on a normally good person.

Thinking about doing evil is not an "actively evil intent." That is just a thought. People have thoughts all the time. Its when a person has decided to act upon those thoughts where they gain actively evil intent. (Because they intend to do evil, actively.)

Sorry, I forgot to clarify; yes, I agree, simply thinking evil thoughts isn't enough and my example was wrong. Detect Evil can give a false positive if a neutral or good person is commiting or about to commit a planned evil action.

Can Detect Evil fail to ping if the (evil) target is actively planning something Good?

Can I use that to fool the paladins?


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Freehold DM wrote:
My number 3 all time favorite starfighter is now officially canon. I am happy.
1 would be y wing. 2 would be z wing. 3 would be... I'm out of letters.

3 would be the Colonial Viper (the old one). 4 would be the Starfury.


Thomas Seitz wrote:

Honestly while I appreciate Millar's honesty, I don't think this solves the problem of drawing in MORE of an audience. You only do that by having others TELL people this is a comic they should be reading.

I say that especially after what I consider a VERY successful relaunch of Thor by Al Ewing. He gets Thor. He gets the Mythos. He gets EVERYTHING about it.

The same is true about Hickman who's newest stuff I REALLY enjoy.

I don't need people to come back to enjoy comics. I enjoy comics when the stories are there. Immortal Thor is proof of that.

Jason Aaron's Thor was great. I wasn't impressed with the Donny Cates version. Haven't gotten the shipment with the first Ewing Thor yet, but what I've heard for reaction to it sounds good.


Yeah, basically I'm trying to think of "big names" who aren't currently doing Marvel or DC comics and who aren't just retired. Or at least retired enough not to want to commit to a regular long term series rather than just a mini-series or something.

Claremont did an X-treme X-Men series a little while back, but he's in his 70s. He's not going to sign on for the long haul again.


Aberzombie wrote:

Saw an article about an appearance Mark Millar did on a YouTube channel. Millar threw out the idea for industry veterans to come back to Marvel and DC and commit to two years runs on one or two titles, just to try and help improve sales.

I would not be opposed to this.

It will most likely never happen.

Are there no "industry veterans" on Marvel or DC titles now? What qualifies as "industry veteran" anyway?


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Tristan d'Ambrosius wrote:
I think the background Asgardians could be pretty subtle

Loki could. But in general the Asgardians don't come with that power set out of the box. They're no more of a threat to the entire nation or to the people in power than your average human who can study magic or touch an alien artifact or fall in a vat of radioactive waste and get superpowers.

They're a threat to people around them, but in a normal , detectable way. Their physical toughness makes them a threat to police and military troops and superhero response teams, but hey...

But that's by contrast with skrulls specifically, not aliens in general. A random Kree or Chitauri or whatever other kinds of aliens we've seen isn't that kind of sneaky threat and are usually less physically powerful than Asgardians, but he wanted all aliens banned.


Eternals are at least as much from earth as humans are. You could make a strong case for the Asgardians as well, depending on your take on the metaphysics of gods in the MCU.

But that's all parsing the President's language too finely. It's perfectly reasonable for him to want them all gone, even if he's technically wrong about some of the categories.


The only thing that seems a bit of a problem to me is that while the sum total of the 3 books is roughly the same, previously you had a good start with only the one main book. The game was playable with that (and a bestiary for monsters, which is still needed with the new 3.)

Now I believe you'd need both Player One and the GM book, correct? Not a big deal for those who were going to buy both anyway, but a higher barrier to entry. At least for those who don't want to start with only Nethys or whatever.


Aaron Bitman wrote:

Ah, X-Factor!

Now you've got me reminiscing myself.

I remember back in the 20th century, when I was single and free, going to my friend's house and reading his old comics, especially the X-titles. He had started collecting X-Factor from issue 16, but I was fortunate enough, when browsing in a flea market, to find the 1st issue in a fine condition at a low price. I found issues 2, 3, 4 and 7 as well. I still have all of those.

It was nice to see the old X-Men back... but I felt a few details should have been handled differently. Those were kind of irritating.

For instance, "The X-Terminators" should have been the name of the team that advertised getting RID of mutants. The "X-Factor" name could have been for the spandex team. Wouldn't that make better sense? Instead it was the other way around.

Of course, I thought the team members were pretty stupid not to realize what the terrible consequences would be if they publicly hunted mutants.

And I loved the Beast as blue and furry. With that appearance, he was my favorite X-Man (with the possible exception of Xavier, if he counts). So I didn't like seeing him go back.

And I never found Apocalypse to be a convincing villain... but maybe I shouldn't go there.

Yeah, it was this weird mixture of cool and stupid.

Also suffered from a writer change in the middle of that first Apocalypse arc. Layton, imo, wasn't very good and the basic structure of the series reflected that. The villain hinted at in those first issues was originally supposed to have been the Owl, but when Simonson took over, she either changed plans or didn't actually know what Layton had been setting - creating Apocalypse to fill the gap.

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