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Launched just last week, only 23 days to go as of this posting. This is a really cool Steampunk skirmish game with high quality paintable resin figures!

Here's the information and here's the link to the kickstarter!

An action-packed skirmish game and range of steampunk miniatures. Join the revolution and battle across an alternate Victorian London!

A skirmish game with playing-card-controlled skill management and opposed-dice combat creating strategic, hybrid gameplay.
A range of intricately detailed, resin-cast, 32mm scale miniatures. Many Infamy: Welcome to The Big Smoke characters are based on famous individuals from literature and history, but given a steampunk twist.

An alternate Victorian London in turmoil through the development of advanced new technology. The city is packed with intriguing stories, fascinating characters and a deep history, making for a rich steampunk setting.

By backing and sharing this Kickstarter you can:

Grab yourself a fine haul of beautiful, high-quality miniatures at a reduced price.

Help develop the range and enable the world of Infamy: Welcome to The Big Smoke to flourish.

Be a vital cog (pardon the pun) in the refinement of the rules.
Get backer-exclusive early access to the living rulebook, from its alpha phase onward.

Provide feedback and suggestions on any of the rules, skills and stats, or simply enjoy playing the game before anyone else!

Get the Kickstarter exclusive miniature - Nikola Tesla - only available through this campaign!

If you want to know more, here's two hours of me gibbering on about Infamy: Welcome to The Big Smoke!

With the £10,000 goal target thoroughly smashed, the campaign has been unlocking stretch goals. You can see the completed stretch goals in the list below and check out more details in the campaign's updates or the various pledge images above.

If the campaign manages to go past £40k everyone pledging at Massacre or above will get a free Kickstarter Exclusive Nikola Tesla miniature.

Less than 70 hours remain in this Kickstarter for Albion's Legacy which is an Arthurian Legends board game and contains paintable metal miniatures.

They are fully funded and moving towards some awesome stretch goals.

Very US & European friendly with no customs fees and favorable exchange rates as it's a Canadian company who is doing it.

Better get on it quick before it's too late!

I figured I'd share another sweet kickstarter that just went live today.

There's a new Kickstarter for white metal figures by Red Box Games with some really cool barbarian figures that have interchangeable parts and very achievable goals to unlock some awesome heroes.

Here's what it says:

Please help Red Box Games to fund the production of a new set of Fantasy Barbarian hordesmen and their Powerful Heroes!

This is to fund the production of these new Helsvakt hordesmen figures. These figures will be produced in high quality white metal by a very reliable and tested production partner with a proven track record for great castings and reliable delivery.

The figures I intend to offer for funding are the semi modular HelsVakt Hordesmen and two hero figures. The Hordesmen set includes 6 bodies fitted for universally interchangeable heads ( 1 sprue of 6 options ), right hands with weapons ( 2 sprues of 3 options ) and left side shields ( 2 sprues of 3 options) and 6 25 mm round bases.

Minx Studio is running a Kickstarter that I hopped on real quick, it's got limited numbers for an Adventure Pack of figures which currently has 6 figures in it for only $95 CAD (with exchange rates it is about $87 US Dollars) and will continue to grow as things unlock. They are also selling an amazing Minotaur separately (only 23 left as I'm writing this) that comes with the Adventure Pack.

There's only 12 days left, as I post this, to get in on this (it ends on Wednesday, June 11, 2014) crazy cool Kickstarter.

Anyhow, it's a great deal for high quality resin figures to expand your collection and there are different tiers to be able to buy in and get the figures.

Here's what they have to say about it:

Wizards, Warriors, Pirates, Paladins, Minotaurs and more. Versatile Resin Fantasy miniatures for your tabletop wargames and RPGs!

Versatile, Paintable and Just Plain Simple!

Designed to fit in with a wider variety of games, universes and roles, our miniatures use general themes present in all fantasy realms.

Having painted armies and competition miniatures for years, we believe the painting experience improves greatly with simpler designs. Miniatures focusing on stronger posing, fabrics and shapes allow the painter to paint more freely and explore more advanced methods more easily.

High-Detail sculptures look great in photos, but the extra detail can add considerably to painting time, and really complicate colour selection.

We want you to feel comfortable building, painting and playing with our products and not just have them sitting on your shelf staring at you, complaining about how crowded its getting, that the orc next to them smells, or that the ogre beat them and stole their treasure, again!

I just backed this project on KS called Map Flats and thought I'd share with my fellow RPG enthusiasts. It ends at 12:51 pm PST today (12/4/13) so less than an hour when I'm posting this, but for $60 you get over 40 double-sided pre-printed vinyl maps like the chessex battle mats we all use and are wet-erase.

As the title states, my question to the rest of the gamer community out there is: To power-game or not to power-game?

Lately all I see on the forums (especially in advice) are things along the lines of:

1) How do I build the best _____ ?
2) What is the best ____ ?
3) Casters are so much better than ____
4) Where is the ____ love?
5) Why do _____ archetypes suck?
6) Why can't I do ____ with ____ ability to make me more powerful?
7) Build me an invincible _____
8) My GM hates us, s/he TPK'd us!
9) And my favorite: Oh noes! ______ is broken!

So it really got me thinking:
* Why do so many people play to "win" nowadays?
* Where did the flavor and imagination go to?
* When did people stop building for concept(s)?
* Is ____ really that broken if played RAW?

My thoughts are that the generation of gamers has truly changed and want to make these uber heroes that will completely destroy and derail any attempt made by Paizo through AP's or a GM to run an interesting game. It's really turned to more of a video gamey type of thing rather than the danger lurking everywhere and things can truly kill PC's if they aren't careful.

Don't get me wrong, I like to play a powerful hero who is good at what they do too, but I also like to have a chance to fail and roll up a new one every once in a while. I like the different archetypes out there, I like the options to actually create a nice little background and play an completely unique character rather than God-Wizard 23045502...

What are your thoughts?

After reading and talking to other forum goers in the Advice section, it reminded me of a talk I had with my table about Paladins.

As we all know there are a lot of different gods out there and with each god there are different tenets/codes/dogma that their followers adhere to, within their followers are different races who have different ideals/morals/ethics. Some are gods of vengeance, some of love, some of redemption, and some of knowledge. Every god has followers and every follower is a different person.

The reason I bring this up is to discuss a house-rule my table and I talked about when dealing with Paladins. We spoke of allowing Paladins to be of any "good" alignment not just Lawful Good, when following a good or neutral deity with good-leaning tendencies.

I think that it would open it up for much more diversity than the "Mr. Lawful Stupid" being the main paladin (the cookie-cutter a lot of people like to play) in any given adventure.

Let's face it: Paladins are mortal, they have their own idiosyncrasies, they aren't perfect, and they have flaws just like any other class or person. I've always felt that they were much too restrictive by most people's standards and that a lot of people (quite a few on these forums) believe that some small acts done (when presented with basically catch-22's) constitute the falling of said paladin if he "doesn't play his alignment" perfectly.

So my question to the rest of you is how would this effect the rest of the game if I had a Paladin of Cayden Cailean who was CG at the table?

Could your table abide having this kind of guy in the group who was a holy warrior?

Would this somehow unbalance the game or break it?

I'm looking into building out a Wizard who specializes in the divine school taking the Scroll Scholar archetype (as per the requirement of the archetype) and eventually going into the Cyphermage PrC.

Keeping the old age, half-elf, and current stats. What would you do for the 1st trait, if anything and the feat selections?

Edit: I meant Scroll Scholar not scroll master, my bad.

If there's been a consolidated thread of this nature in the past I apologize for the redundancy of this one. I would like to have a sticky post of the best GM'ing "Tips & Tricks" from the community as a whole as I've seen a lot of new threads pop up over the last few weeks concerning new GM's and the seeking of advice therein.

So without further ado, I'll give some of my tips and tricks from being a GM.

1) Never say "No" to your players, there should always be a way for them to accomplish the tasks you set forth for them or that they've come up with when trying to role-play.

2) Keep a notebook or electronic means near at hand to jot down quick notes of NPC names you've come up with so that you can reference them easily and insert them into your campaign.

3) Always talk to your players beforehand on what kind of campaign they'd like you to run whether it be a high fantasy game or low magic game, whether the group as a whole would rather play in one of the AP's or a home-brewed setting. It should be fun for everyone, including the GM.

4) Ask for feedback from your group on how your game went, soliciting comments from your players will only make it better for the group as a whole and allow you to focus more on what the group likes and less on what they dislike. Example: They want to RP/Combat 70/30 rather than 50/50, this allows you to prepare more role playing scenarios rather than more combat.

First, I apologize for the lengthy wall of text below, but I believe it's relevant to the question/discussion that I'd like to talk about.

I'm very intrigued by the Dwarven Stonelord Paladin Archetype and am looking at building one up for a new campaign (carrion crown) that starts up in a few weeks. I'm curious how others would build up this class. I am thinking a melee tank that absorbs the punishment, shrugs off powerful hits and spells with a laugh and stands in front of his friends to protect them with his faithful earth elemental.

I know that a normal paladin or one of the other archetypes would be more "optimal" for the AP, but I want to play the stonelord. My current build idea is focused on grabbing a reach weapon so I grabbed the Dorn-Dergar and figured that nabbing PA right away would help with some extra damage to make it so that enemies would actually go after him. I was thinking about antagonize, but if we are dealing with mindless undead that wouldn't work too well to bring them towards me. I also figure to use my 6 level mercy (the only one I get) to get remove fatigue so that I can use my LoH to heal hit points and the fatigue caused by coming out of the defensive stance then move and go back into the stance.

I'm open to all suggestions as these are my rough draft ideas and my initial thoughts below.

My line of thinking:
1) Go for reach - use my 2-handed Dorn-Dergar with power attack, grab lunge, grab darting viper (to make the weapon none reach as a swift action instead of move action), grab cleaving abilities including the dwarf-specific one (though I'm not sure if you can cleave with this kind of weapon or not...) and maybe whirlwind down the line.

2) Go for defense - getting a nice shield, get full plate ASAP, and a good 1-handed blunt weapon (warhammer or something similar), grab some shield bashing feats, grab combat reflexes and go to down with bashing and AOOs if they close with me.

Stats (rolled) and I got super lucky with the dice:
15 Str
15 Dex
20 Con (18+2 from Dwarf)
11 Int
16 Wis (18+2 from Dwarf)
14 Cha (16-2 from Dwarf)

Feats:
1st - Currently Power Attack
3rd -
4th - Bonus - Channel Earth
5th -
7th -
9th -
11th -
13th -
15th -
17th -
19th -

My Traits:
1st - Subject of Study (Undead) +1 damage vs undead - This is a requirement in our game that we take 1 trait from the campaign.
2nd - Glory of Old - +1 vs Spells/Spell-like abilities/Poison (I know even with a +1 Initiative I won't be going first in my group, so I focus on beefing up the saves more here)

Dwarven Racial Traits:
Swapped out Hardy for Magic Resistant 5+level of SR against spells/spell-like abilities. Not sure if this would be better staying Hardy and combining it with the Glory of Old for +3s on the stuff.

Swapped out Stone Cunning for Rock Stepper - to be able to 5ft step over difficult terrain as I figured this would be better for a tank than someone who tries to spy out hidden doors with the others in the party (I believe we'll have an Elven Bard in the group) being able to do so better.

Ideas? Thoughts? Comments? What would you do differently?

Thanks in advance!
-Balrick

On another forum I'm in the middle of a discussion with a few people about the RAI and RAW of using a longsword as a two-handed weapon and whether the character while using the longsword in this fashion would qualify for feats that require someone to be using a two-handed weapon.

The RAW state that you can use a 1-handed weapon such as a longsword with two hands and receive the 1 1/2x strength bonus. I feel the common sense or RAI of this allows the PC to use a longsword (as long as the PC states they are using it AS a 2-handed weapon) as a 2-handed weapon. It isn't specifically written down anywhere that anyone can find that the RAW forbid this, but the rules lawyers are out in force with their own interpretations of this needing to be very specific.

I'm wondering what everyone else thinks here as this is where the question should be posed to the community and to the developers.

I'm thinking of building either a oracle who goes into the eldritch heritage OR a bard who goes into it. Just curious how folks on here would build these out to be good at helping the party. What would you do and why?

Guidelines:
25 point buy OR roll stats
Any paizo books (UC, UM, Core, AGP, etc)
Any race

I can't find anything other than "opinions" based on this question, perhaps my google-fu is weak.

The problem I'm running into deals with the Overhand Chop/Backswing 2H Fighter Archetype powers and whether the 2x strength takes over for the 1.5x 2H weapon strength multiplier on attacks, or if they are cumulative. I see no errata and it could be read either way. When looking at the descriptions of both of those powers, neither says that the 2H weapon's 1.5x strength multiplier is replaced, but both 2H weapon fighter powers say, "he adds double his Strength bonus on damage rolls..."

Please correct me if I'm wrong in my assumptions below.

Information:
STR 20 = (+5)
Raging bumps to STR 24 = (+7)
Power Attack = +6 at BAB of 5 [edited from +4, my bad]
Weapon Bonus = +1
Weapon used = Falchion 2d4 (18-20 crit)

Assumption of the Overhand Chop (OC) = 2 x STR bonus and it taking over the 1.5 multiplier of a normal 2H weapon being wielded on attacks...

*Normal OC non-raging = 5 STR bonus * 2 OC multiplier = +10 damage
*OC with Raging = 7 STR bonus * 2 OC multiplier = +14 damage

So what I come up with non-raging and using my power attack:
2d4 + (10 OC) + (6 PA) + (1 WB) = 2d4 + 17
---> On a crit 4d4 +34

Raging:
2d4 + (14 OC) + (6 PA) + (1 WB) = 2d4 + 21
---> On a crit 4d4 + 42

OR does this add into the fact that you already get the 1.5x multiplier and then it goes up even more?

Assumption if strength is CUMULATIVE with the 2H weapon 1.5x strength:

STR 20 = (+5) * (1.5) ---> (+7) * (2) = (14)

Raging 24 = (+7) * (1.5) ---> (+10) * (2) = (20)

Doing a CUMULATIVE Strength OC:

Non-Raging:

2d4 + (14)+(6)+(1) = 2d4 + 21
---> 4d4 + 42 on a crit

Raging:

2d4 + (20)+(6)+(1) = 2d4 + 27
---> 4d4 + 54 on a crit

First time poster here, been trolling the forums for about a week or so and see a lot of great advice and wanted to see if the community here would critique my barbarian (wild rager)/fighter build and what I plan on doing with him. We had a near TPK and had to roll up a few 4th level characters

Anyhow I know there are probably more effective builds for dealing damage and whatnot, but I chose the "wild rager" archetype for a 2 level dip in a (hopefully) 20 level AP. I wanted to give my character some flavor so I'm not asking for any advice on the barbarian wild rager part of it, because that's part of his background story and I'll have to learn to deal with the wild raging confusion possibilities.

I'm asking for a critique on the 18 levels of fighter and how to maximize his DPR with his feats/traits. I like to try to have things all planned out in advance so I'm not poring over the rulebooks and looking at webpages while at the gaming table. Below is what I currently have and what I'm planning about taking and the levels at which I was thinking of taking them. I've read about how cleave rules at low levels but then sucks at higher and how whirlwind is just good in certain situations, so that's why I felt going the critical feats tree, step up and strike tree, and penetrating strike tree may be best, but I've never played a character like this before so I'm open to suggestions on how to do this and what levels to take the feats at.

Feel free to give me any advice you have on how to optimize this guy for beastly damage output!

Ability scores (after adding in his racial bonuses and bonuses to levels):
STR: 20
DEX: 16
CON: 18
INT: 12
WIS: 15
CHA: 9

Current Weapon: +1 Masterwork Falchion
Current Armor: +1 Masterwork Agile Breastplate
Current Equipment: +1 Cloak of Resistance

Current Traits:
Birthmark - +2 Save vs Charm & Compulsion (which I believe should work to help save vs his Wild Rage confusion, but correct me if you think I'm wrong here and what would be a better alternative trait).
Killer - Add weapon's critical modifier to it's critical bonus damage

Current Feats (fgt lvl/barb lvl):
2/2 - Power Attack
2/2 - Weapon Focus (Falchion)
2/2 - Nimble Moves
2/2 - Step Up
2/2 - Furious Focus

Planned Feats (fgt lvl/barb lvl):
3/2 - Following Step
4/2 - Weapon Specialization (Falchion)
5/2 - Step Up & Strike
6/2 - Death or Glory
7/2 - Improved Critical
8/2 - Critical Focus
9/2 - Greater Weapon Focus (Falchion)
10/2 - Bleeding Critical
11/2 - Lunge
12/2 - Penetrating Strike
13/2 - Greater Weapon Specialization (Falchion)
14/2 - Staggering Critical
15/2 - Greater Penetrating Strike
16/2 - Stunning Critical
17/2 - Dreadful Carnage
18/2 - ???

Again, I appreciate any thoughts that would improve my character.

Thanks!