uriel222's page

Alpha Protocol: Blergh

You know, Alpha Protocol had SO MUCH promise? I really, really wanted to like that game. That was definitely a case of just slightly taking on more than they could chew. Playing it, you could see what they were trying to do, they just couldn't quite pull it off. Arcanum (though that was Troika, not Obsidian) was the same way.

Be as it might, you see NOTHING of what they did in the past in what they do now.

And saying that I don't liek CRPGs because I don't like Obsidian's stuff... seriously?
I loved all those games (Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Torment, Icewind Dale 1 and 2) to death (never really got into Fallout 2, sadly) and all the games I've played from Obsidian (not counting Stick of Truth, haven't played that) they were a HUGE letdown with bad storytelling, worse characters and absolutely weird and incomplete questlines.
By the way: Bioware used to be someone as well, look at them now. What you did in the past is by now way an indicator of your present.

Not sure why [games you liked] aren't a good indicator of quality, but [games you hated] IS a good indicator of crap? Point being, you just can't reasonably say that the people who made Baldur's Gate 2 aren't capable of making quality games.

Out of curiosity, if you got to pick a developer to make your ideal CRPG, who would it be? Who's stuff don't you hate?

Yay, another thing I used to like that Obsidian got their grubby little hands on.

After all the games I enjoyed (bar Alpha Protocol, that didn't have a "prequel") that Obsidian completely ruined, I can't wait to see what they'll do with Pathfinder.
And here I was hoping they would quietly implode and nobody would ever talk about them again...
Seriously, this is one of those kind of news I broke out in hysterical laughter from. Behold, Obsidian strikes again. Question is: how will they mess up this time?

(By the way, I'm all with Hardwool from earlier in this thread on this one)

What is with the hate on for Obsidian? Here's who we're talking about:

Feargus Urquhart: Lead Designer of Fallout 2, director of Baldur's Gate, Producer of Baldur's Gate 2.

Chris Avellone: Lead Designer of PLANESCAPE: TORMENT.

Darren L. Monahan: Programmer of Icewind Dale, Icewind Dale 2.

Seriously. Check out their bios. If you don't like their stuff, you don't like CRPGs. As for bugs, I'll give you that, but Obsidian has been screwed over so hard by the big game companies it nearly killed the entire genre. They had, what, a year to get KOTOR 2 out the door? Now that Kickstarter lets them get out games without getting rushed, the sky is the freaking LIMIT!

Another possibility is they could be making the pathfinder adventure card game into a computer game, similar to Magic The Gathering, and Warcraft's Hearthstone.

That said, i'd prefer a CRPG. by far.

Not quite the same, as those are both COLLECTABLE card games. Pathfinder ACG isn't. Lisa didn't seem to rule it OUT, exactly, but that kind of project would be a bit of a waste for a developer with the RPG cred of Obsidian, wouldn't it?

It's Rise of the Runelords: the side-scrolling adventure!

Lord help me, I would buy that. Imagine the "Misgivings" from the second adventure as a Castlevania clone?

Okay, analysis time:

1) What it WON'T be:
- Taking over the MMO (Lisa nixed that)
- Converting Pillars of Eternity to Pathfinder (they've put too much effort into their own rules, and would likely have a backer REVOLT if they tried it)
- A new Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter (WotC and others hold the rights to those)

2) What it MIGHT be:
- A new Golarion-set game, using Pillars' rules (Maybe, but seems unlikely, as it kind of undermines the PFRPG)
- The other way around: Paizo is publishing the tabletop version of the Pillars' RPG (this seems ALOT more likely to me)

Any other thoughts?

[edit]

Or both... hmmm...

Yeah, I was interested in this line when I saw the Brass Dragon and the Lamashtu cultists, but I've been sold on it with the inclusion of Brodert Quink. I can't resist his sexy glasses and sagey ways. Pre-order, here I come.

This.

I have a TON of monster and maniac minis, but I need more "regular joes".

Add a few of these minis out in front of the shops and you're good to go...

Well, there's cunning

Cunning: This special ability allows a weapon to find chinks in a foe's defenses using the wielder's knowledge of the target. Whenever the weapon's attack is a critical threat, the wielder gains a +2 bonus on the confirmation roll if she has 5 or more ranks in the Knowledge skill related to the target's creature type (such as Knowledge [planes] for an outsider opponent).

Moderate divination; CL 6th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, true strike; Price +1 bonus.

Price +1 bonus; Aura moderate conjuration; CL 8th; Weight —

DESCRIPTION

A fervent weapon thrums with the divine power of a specific deity or set of deities.

If the wielder is an adherent of the deity or deities, she gains several benefits. First, the wielder gains a +4 insight bonus on Bluff, Disguise, and Sleight of Hand checks to conceal the weapon from members of other religions. On a successful hit against a flat-footed target of a different religion, the target must succeed at DC 13 Will save or be shaken for 1 minute. Finally, the wielder receives a +2 bonus to confirm critical hits against members of other religions.

The creator of a fervent weapon must be within one step of the religion to be attuned to the weapon, along either the lawful/chaotic axis or the good/evil axis. The target religion must be determined at the weapon's creation and cannot be altered.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS

Craft Magic Arms and Armor, align weapon; Cost +1 bonus

Price +1 bonus; Aura moderate conjuration; CL 10th; Weight —

DESCRIPTION

A patriotic weapon radiates with the collective power and strength of a particular nation of people.

If the wielder is a member of that nationality, he gains several benefits. First, the wielder gains a +4 insight bonus on Bluff, Disguise, and Sleight of Hand checks to conceal the weapon from members of other nationalities. On a successful hit against a flat-footed target of a different nationality, the target must succeed at DC 13 Will save or be shaken for 1 minute. Finally, the wielder receives a +2 bonus to confirm critical hits against members of other nationalities.

The nationality affected must be determined at the patriotic weapon’s creation and cannot be altered. At the GM’s discretion, the nationality named may be a specified human ethnicity.

CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS

Craft Magic Arms and Armor, summon monster I; Cost +1 bonus

And yet...

Sometimes, players have a character idea that really appeals to them, and they're looking for a place, any place, to play it. Or, they deliberately want to play against type for a "fish out of water" effect. Or, they ALWAYS play the same character, and don't have fun playing anything else.

I just wish I had the problem as a GM of having so many players that I got to complain about how the rejected ones reacted, either when I rejected them in advance, or when I made the plot reject them at the table.

Instead of trying to fight against players being invested in the game by knowing what monsters are which, why not change the monsters to something the players have never seen before? Either replace the monsters with rarer ones, or, better, use something like the The Random Esoteric Creature Generator For Classic Fantasy Role Playing Games And Their Modern Simulacra, and re-skin the monsters you were going to use anyway? Same stats, but the players don't know what to expect, and the CHARACTERS can my their roles to know.

Whether or not Golarion subscribes to "real-world" geography, the designers have repeated stated that their primary intent was to create a world where different kinds of stories could be told in different countries. So you have an Egypt parallel, a revolutionary France parallel, a "two countries on the brink of war", an "unexplored wilderness", etc.

Some of it holds up to scrutiny, some doesn't. Just remember, it's an exercise in worldbuilding for a game line not a home game world (though some was imported from the designers own games).

In many ways, you can think of it as more Faerun than Oerth. Ironically, Ed Greenwood takes worldbuilding detail very seriously (he always wants to know how they get the sewage out of the castles, for instance), but that didn't translate to the evolution of the Forgotten Realms. It makes really good business sense to do it their way (see: Paizo), but if you like your worlds to stand up to intense scrutiny, you're going to have to make a choice between limiting the kinds of stories you can tell, and creating a rational world.

1) "Vancian" refers to the writer Jack Vance, who created the idea of wizards who forgot their spells after casting (see Appendix N).

2) Multi-class is crippling is a reaction to Paizo's stated goal of discouraging the "level dips" common to 3.5-era character builds. It's mostly message board hyperbole, but it does have a point that Multi-class characters won't get access to the most powerful class abilities (like 9th level spells or the "capstone" powers)

Problem with Valeros is your turn often looks like this:

Hand contains two-three weapons and something that's not a blessing (e.g. armor/item)

You explore...

...and find a boon that you're not very good at acquiring (e.g. a blessing).

Your turn is over.

You didn't manage to play any cards, use any powers or do anything of much interest. You don't have any cards that can interact with other people's turns. You wait for five people to have their turns and then you go again... not much fun!

This.

If I were playing in a smaller group, I might not notice it as much, but with four players, it's getting to me.

Our group just played through the first two pre-AP scenarios with Valeros, Seoni, Merisiel and Kyra. IF I were to replace Valeros, who would you recommend?

I'm not sure exactly how they handle the license, but I can tell you I have one license on my PC and another on my laptop, and it works fine, whether my laptop is on my home network or not.

... Small hands.

How do you handle Valeros' small hand size? I've found playing him that I always seem to have the same hand: Big weapon, dagger or ranged weapon, armor, and one other card.

It's effective against monsters, but gets kind of dull. Does anyone have any strategy on how to play him?

What kind of floater doesn't go away when you close an eye?

I'd tell you, but WotC has the licence...

Feel better?

Paizo sees the many separate worlds that TSR made (Oerth, Farun, Krynn, etc.) as being one of the key causes of that company's demise, so they made a conscious decision to limit themselves to one gameworld. As a result, they've played down the idea of multiple "realites" in favour of just expanding the world to include a solar system. I suspect they only included the "real" Earth at all because it seems to figure so strongly in the Lovecraft Mythos, as well as being a setting they don't really have to support, since everyone already knows it.

Of course, for your home game, you're only limited by your imagination and gaming library. I dumped Spelljammer into my world, illithids, beholders and all (because I can).

For home games, it's based on whoever actually made the scroll, not who could. So, if you bought one off of a Summoner with scribe scroll, you pay Summoner price.

For Pathfinder Society, scrolls are always assumed to be made by Wizards or Clerics, where those spells are on their lists.

The understanding of everything Paizo makes is that every module and AP takes place simultaneously, except for things that are direct sequels (like Curse of the Everflame --> Masks of the Living God --> City of Golden Death, or that Shattered Star comes AFTER the old 3.5 APs, Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness and Legacy of Fire).

In other words, unless it's an obvious sequel, it doesn't assume anything else about the world past what's in The Inner Sea World Guide.

Displacer Beasts
Gith

Lemmy wrote:

Personally, I'd just remove the "target touch AC" and "blow up in your face 5~15% of the time" stuff. I don't know why every game feels the need to give firearms a weird gimmick and then compensate for it with an even weirder gimmick.

+1 to this.

+2. Why this design trope keeps cropping up never ceases to amaze. Somehow, shoving five feet of steel through a person is "meh", but shooting an underpowered, tumbling, musket ball into someone is "OMG!!!1!".

It's almost as bad as the katana-fetish, but not quite.

Why don't you post your character, so we can see it in detail?

Take a look at the FAQ Button over there ------------>

Push that, and it flags the post for attention with the FAQ response team. If enough other people mark it FAQ, then the 33rd amendment to the Constitution requires Paizo to respond with an answer within 24 hours, subject to Presidential Veto.

It turns out that trying to describe Kaer Maga to an artist is really, really hard, especially if you can't sit down with them and talk it out...

I love creating really weird stuff, but I admit that it sometimes makes art orders harder than they need to be. :D

Well then, looks like you're just going to have to take up drawing, aren't you?

This is a "badwrongfun" kind of situation.

Obviously, there is disagreement among all the people at the table over a few finer points of the game:

• Does casting "evil" spells MAKE someone evil?
  
• Is a character's alignment supposed to reflect their actions, or vice versa?
  
• Should a player be in control of the alignment of his/her own character, or is the GM supposed to take Pharasma's role and judge the soul?
  
• If any RAW or RAI is making the game less fun, should the group just change it, or are rules supposed to be static (like chess)?

These are the questions that need to be answered within the social contract of your gaming group. There are no right or wrong answers to the above questions, just what results in the most fun for the particular people at that particular gaming table.

Fighter,

Rogue,

Black Mage,

Red Mage

Turn off the snark.

I move for my job all the time, and I'm always scared that will happen to me. That really sucks, man.

Well, as Jacobs has said, Pharasma doesn't mind people restoring souls to life, she just objects to raising them as UNDEAD. After all, even if he brings them back, they're still going to die eventually.

Yes, and no.

See, it still should end up as a legal item, the same as if you made a Cloak of Muleback Resistance from scratch. The GM still has to allow the item.

http://paizo.com/paizo/about/schedule

Lord Snow wrote:

It's a safe bet that the PCs will attain a mythic tier once during the midsection of the adventure, and another one for completing it, so tier 3 by the end.

Your bet isn't just safe. It's assured.

Ah, the hubris of the adventure writer... :)

How would that be any better than this?

That is a terrible spell.

Export your character to BBCode, paste that into a post, and someone may be able to help. Otherwise, trying posting the question over at the Wolflair forums.

Like I said, if your group is the kind to try and "milk" kits, just don't use them, or price/weigh them yourself. If your group is the kind that will never notice or care about the price and weight problems, just ignore it and use the kit.

Too easy.

If the player just wants to have a quick "stuff I need" pack, go with the kit, and it's price and weight.

If they seem like they're abusing it, like buying multiple kits, or buying a kit and selling the pieces (or you just know they're the type to buy ladders and sell 10' poles), go piece by piece.

So...

She appears human, but is much, much older than she seems?

And her name is Galfrey?

Does she have two hearts, by any chance?

The kits don't balance like that. The designers didn't cost out/weigh each piece, they just kind of eyeballed it.

tl;dr If you're the type to look up the weight of each item, and get joy from that, use that. Otherwise, just go with the kit and don't think about it too much.

Just make the kingdom itself his de facto liege. In other words, he must serve the kingdom, and place it's well being above his own, etc.

Hero Lab

i think you accidentally your verb.

That's okay, I didn't really mind. And I do appreciate the link. One problem with Paizo's coverage of GenCon is that my RSS feed from them get deluged with blog posts, at the same time they're announcing important stuff, and I miss it in the crush.

I AM super excited about this, though. I love old-time radio plays, and being able to listen to a RotR game in the car sounds GREAT!

I just hope the quality is there. Because you're only getting the voices, it's all too hard for actors to sound "phoned-in", as many video games have learnt the hard way...

Here you go.

...oh.

Audiobooks for Pathfinder Tales are still something we're very much looking into, but in the meantime, working with Big Finish on the Rise of the Runelords adaptation has me really excited about these audio dramas! Hopefully you'll all like them as well!

Wait, what?!? What audio drama? When was this announced? WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED?!?

You still roll dice in a tower, you just roll them INTO the tower.

Or else use a dice cup.

Or even roll them into a box so they bounce around.

People can "fix" dice rolls without even meaning to, and if this person is rolling too well, all the time, that's probably what's happening.

Is it really only 30 mins a game?

Get a dice tower. They look cool, you still use real dice, and they eliminate ANY chance he's affecting the rolls, unconsciously or otherwise.