The Unofficial Top 32 Guildhall

[Carl Flaherty]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Lord Fyre wrote:

I'll take too.

*Serves up two slices for Lord Fyre.*

You know, my son wants his paladin to kick your villain's butt. I'm gonna make that happen some day. Thanks for showing him to us Carl.

I hope then that I have given you enough to make credible stats for him. :)

[Trevor Gulliver]

Lord Fyre wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

Lord Fyre wrote:

I'll take too.

*Serves up two slices for Lord Fyre.*

You know, my son wants his paladin to kick your villain's butt. I'm gonna make that happen some day. Thanks for showing him to us Carl.

I hope then that I have given you enough to make credible stats for him. :)

Credible stats? Why would I worry about credible stats?

*cough*choke*

Sorry, a piece of humble pie got caught in my throat.

[Mark Thomas]

I'll have some of that!

[Trevor Gulliver]

*gets mark a slice of humble pie*

Enjoy, Bracht made it for us.

[Philip Snyder]

Can I get a Pepto-Chaser?

[Carl Flaherty]

Tarren Dei wrote:

*gets mark a slice of humble pie*

Enjoy, Bracht made it for us.

But, I see that you will be gone for a bit.

"You have work to do!"

B.T.W., Gratz. :)

[Trevor Gulliver]

Lord Fyre wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

*gets mark a slice of humble pie*

Enjoy, Bracht made it for us.

But, I see that you will be gone for a bit.

"You have work to do!"

B.T.W., Gratz. :)

Still, it was quite a different experience this round.

Thanks Carl.

[Eric Morton]

Congrats to this year's Top 8. Good luck hitting that Round 4 curve ball. :)

And on the off chance anyone's interested, I've posted a stat block that presents Aelfric's base stats as his default stats over in Aelfric's thread. (Though it doesn't follow the guidelines set by the preformatted stat block, so - as far as I can tell - isn't valid for contest use.)

[Mark Thomas]

Congratulations guys.

In my entry I just posted a little commentary about why the Dimond Dragon was a let down along with what he should have looked like.

If anyone's interested, enjoy.

[Carl Klutzke]

Congratulations to the top 8! Better you than me, guys. I think I did pretty well with the second Pathfinder character I ever created, but the inexperience was obvious. I wish I hadn't made such _glaring_ mistakes, but it's a relief to be done.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with... and who you use to come up with it!

[Carl Klutzke]

This is a question for those of you who aren't in the top 8: you top 8 gents have enough work to do already!

I understand I made a lame beginner mistake with the bracers not stacking with the armor. Everyone seems to know better (and I love the person who pointed out the obvious, "Why didn't you just make the mithral shirt +1? D'oh!). My question is, _how_ do they know better? I wasn't sure that would work, and I looked and didn't find anything in the rules that seemed to prevent it. So where in the rules is it explained?

Thanks!

[Lucas Jung]

Carl Klutzke wrote:

This is a question for those of you who aren't in the top 8: you top 8 gents have enough work to do already!

I understand I made a lame beginner mistake with the bracers not stacking with the armor. Everyone seems to know better (and I love the person who pointed out the obvious, "Why didn't you just make the mithral shirt +1? D'oh!). My question is, _how_ do they know better? I wasn't sure that would work, and I looked and didn't find anything in the rules that seemed to prevent it. So where in the rules is it explained?

Thanks!

This page from the SRD covers stacking, but the basic idea is that (with a few exceptions), bonuses of the same type do not stack. Although they are magical, Bracers of Armor provide an Armor bonus to AC, which is the same type of bonus to AC provided by (you guessed it!) armor. This is actually a pretty common mistake made by new players, which tends to make more experienced players especially familiar with the rule because they frequently have to correct "the new guy." Also, if you've ever played any of the more faithful D&D-based computer games (NWN being one of the best examples), you'd get a warning if you equipped Bracers of Armor in combination with armor, something along the lines of, "You have equipped multiple items which provide non-stacking bonuses to AC. You will not gain any additional benefit from the extra items."

I've all but forgotten the AD&D rules, but I seem to remember that even back then, Bracers of Armor did not stack with armor, even though I'm pretty sure that AD&D didn't have all of the delineated types of armor bonuses found in 3E/3.5/Pathfinder. Maybe it was a restriction on the total number of items which could grant an AC bonus? I'm sure somebody around here still knows this.

At any rate, Bracers of Armor are meant to be used by characters who cannot wear normal armor (arcane spellcasters, monks, etc.).

[Mike Speck]

In 2E, both normal armor and bracers gave a flat AC, rather than any kind of bonus. If you wanted stacking boni, you went for rings of protection +X.

3.X = much better system in that sense. Imagine a lizardman, say, with natural AC 8 (10 is base, lower is better!), wearing chain mail and a ring. Heads exploded, but we didn't know any better. =0

[Eric Morton]

Carl Klutzke wrote:

I wish I hadn't made such _glaring_ mistakes, but it's a relief to be done.

Hey, at least you only made a few stat block errors. My mistake was hubris.

"I'll impress everyone by using the two most complicated rules in the game at the same time," I said. "Simultaneously getting polymorph and reincarnate to work is surely more important than paying attention to the other 90% of my entry," I said. Now that is a real mistake.

[Philip Snyder]

Epic Meepo wrote:

Hey, at least you only made a few stat block errors. My mistake was hubris.

"I'll impress everyone by using the two most complicated rules in the game at the same time," I said. "Simultaneously getting polymorph and reincarnate to work is surely more important than paying attention to the other 90% of my entry," I said. Now that is a real mistake.

"Everyone at Paizo loves haunts, so if I allude to them in my villain entry, I can flesh them out in my lair. It'll be awesome to be able to use Ssyth'ek even though he's 'dead'..."

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Hubrisee...

[Trevor Gulliver]

NChance wrote:

Epic Meepo wrote:

Hey, at least you only made a few stat block errors. My mistake was hubris.

"I'll impress everyone by using the two most complicated rules in the game at the same time," I said. "Simultaneously getting polymorph and reincarnate to work is surely more important than paying attention to the other 90% of my entry," I said. Now that is a real mistake.

"Everyone at Paizo loves haunts, so if I allude to them in my villain entry, I can flesh them out in my lair. It'll be awesome to be able to use Ssyth'ek even though he's 'dead'..."

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Hubrisee...

Who doesn't love haunts? Who?

EDIT: Read the thread. Too bad. You got questioned on the lair in the villain round.

[Joao Beraldo]

Ok! Here's the opportunity to congratulate the Top 8! I didn't comment before on their villains just so I wouldnt sound like I was trying to bash the opposition, but Ill try to comment on these as soon as possible.

I'm really happy the Twistwood witch, the flesh peddler and the headless caravan mistress made it. These were the three ones I really like

Im a little 'bleh' about wacky villain combinations. Bizzare things. Thats probably why the vampire rakshasa monk and the fiendish otyugh wizard cleric sounded so "eh..." for me... Also, personally, I could not picture something comic while reading Gulga Cench's description... An albino otyugh with tiny bat wings and a scimitar on his belt flying around... sorry Neil :)

Decent comments soon to come! :)

[Carl Klutzke]

Lucas Jung wrote:

Also, if you've ever played any of the more faithful D&D-based computer games (NWN being one of the best examples), you'd get a warning if you equipped Bracers of Armor in combination with armor, something along the lines of, "You have equipped multiple items which provide non-stacking bonuses to AC. You will not gain any additional benefit from the extra items."

I really haven't played D&D since AD&D version 1 (and not much of that!), and NWN is my only exposure to 3.x. And I made a Pathfinder gnome wizard last fall, but that's it. So my experience is severely limited. If I'd known I'd make it past the first round, I'm not sure I would have entered at all!

I guess I get confused that an armor bonus is an armor bonus, whether it's granted by armor or by magic. I think I saw in the magic items section that a _magic armor bonus_ does stack with an armor bonus, and thought maybe an armor bonus granted by magic is a magic armor bonus: it's not. My concern is that if this is a frequent newbie error, it needs to be documented more explicitly in the manual. Expecting people to already know the intricacies of the stacking rules, or referring them to the SRD, isn't good enough. I wonder who I should contact?

[Carl Klutzke]

Epic Meepo wrote:

Hey, at least you only made a few stat block errors. My mistake was hubris.

Oh, I did worse than that. I also didn't know the history of the game well enough to avoid presenting an existing rule as a new rule, and I didn't do enough to mitigate people's expressed concerns about my concept. But it's been a good learning experience all around.

[Trevor Gulliver]

Okay. Head-check. How you guys feeling?

Those were the first days in about a year I didn't check the Paizo blog in the morning. I don't know what that says about me ...

Here I was silly and thought I'd just do Bracht's lair ahead of time ... and with a lovely full colour 300 dpi map with impressive textures and carefully drawn body parts. I was so ready for round 4. And then ...

Nice one, guys!

[Eric Bailey]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Okay. Head-check. How you guys feeling?

Those were the first days in about a year I didn't check the Paizo blog in the morning. I don't know what that says about me ...

Here I was silly and thought I'd just do Bracht's lair ahead of time ... and with a lovely full colour 300 dpi map with impressive textures and carefully drawn body parts. I was so ready for round 4. And then ...

Nice one, guys!

Ha! This basically describes my experience exactly. I've been hyping the "Palace of Abundance" since round two, had a beautiful map ready to go over the weekend...

Then, blindsided.

That'll teach us.

Good luck, Trevor. Can't wait till Tuesday now.

-eric

[Neil Spicer]

Same for me. I had Gulga's entire lair pre-drawn...twice! Because...you know...it's hard to decide if you prefer it in black-and-white or living color. ;-)

--Neil

[Sue Flaherty]

I know that after this is all done, I'd love to see the author's ideas on their own lairs ::laughing::

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend. Good luck to all!

[Neil Spicer]

Gamer Girrl wrote:

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend.

I'll be doing that tonight, actually. It's game night with my local group. This will be the third session of Curse of the Crimson Throne that I'm running for them. Having a blast so far...

--Neil

[Trevor Gulliver]

Gamer Girrl wrote:

I know that after this is all done, I'd love to see the author's ideas on their own lairs ::laughing::

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend. Good luck to all!

That would be fun ... but only after all this is done. It would be way rude to post our versions of our lairs when someone else has one being judged and voted on.

After I saw the 'must not use your own villain' clause, I spent 30 min. staring at my lair thinking "Okay, change that wall of flesh to wall of spikes ... that pit could be full of something other than bile ... strip those monsters of their fleshgrafts ..." before I realized I was really going to have to start again from scratch.

I like my version of Bracht's lair too much to recycle it. I'll put it up after the Superstar has been anointed.

[Trevor Gulliver]

NSpicer wrote:

Gamer Girrl wrote:

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend.

I'll be doing that tonight, actually. It's game night with my local group. This will be the third session of Curse of the Crimson Throne that I'm running for them. Having a blast so far...

--Neil

You use hands to write with? I thought you otyugh's had flippers or something.

[Eric Morton]

Tarren Dei wrote:

You use hands to write with? I thought you otyugh's had flippers or something.

What does Bract use to write with? I'm guessing its not his hands. At least, not his own hands.

[Trevor Gulliver]

Epic Meepo wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

You use hands to write with? I thought you otyugh's had flippers or something.

What does Bract use to write with? I'm guessing its not his hands. At least, not his own hands.

Bracht doesn't have the money to graft hands and arms onto himself. He's up to his eyeballs in debt. Not his own eyeballs, mind you, but ...

[Neil Spicer]

Tarren Dei wrote:

You use hands to write with? I thought you otyugh's had flippers or something.

"Tentacles..."

"They're called tentacles."

"But more frequently, I choose to write using my hand of the apprentice. Magic is a wonderful thing."

[Sue Flaherty]

NSpicer wrote:

Gamer Girrl wrote:

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend.

I'll be doing that tonight, actually. It's game night with my local group. This will be the third session of Curse of the Crimson Throne that I'm running for them. Having a blast so far...

--Neil

OOoh, that's the AP I'm running, though it won't be my turn to make my players sweat again for a few months ... then it's Seven Days to the Grave time <eg>

Have fun!

[Sue Flaherty]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Gamer Girrl wrote:

I know that after this is all done, I'd love to see the author's ideas on their own lairs ::laughing::

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend. Good luck to all!

That would be fun ... but only after all this is done. It would be way rude to post our versions of our lairs when someone else has one being judged and voted on.

After I saw the 'must not use your own villain' clause, I spent 30 min. staring at my lair thinking "Okay, change that wall of flesh to wall of spikes ... that pit could be full of something other than bile ... strip those monsters of their fleshgrafts ..." before I realized I was really going to have to start again from scratch.

I like my version of Bracht's lair too much to recycle it. I'll put it up after the Superstar has been anointed.

Oh, yes, definitely after :) I wouldn't really expect anyone of you to have time until after the winner is announced ... who knows, you might be able to use it in your proposal, depending on what new twist the evil geniuses of Paizo through at y'all :)

[Trevor Gulliver]

Gamer Girrl wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

Gamer Girrl wrote:

I know that after this is all done, I'd love to see the author's ideas on their own lairs ::laughing::

Hope you all can uncramp your writing hands and unblur your eyes over the weekend. Good luck to all!

That would be fun ... but only after all this is done. It would be way rude to post our versions of our lairs when someone else has one being judged and voted on.

After I saw the 'must not use your own villain' clause, I spent 30 min. staring at my lair thinking "Okay, change that wall of flesh to wall of spikes ... that pit could be full of something other than bile ... strip those monsters of their fleshgrafts ..." before I realized I was really going to have to start again from scratch.

I like my version of Bracht's lair too much to recycle it. I'll put it up after the Superstar has been anointed.

Oh, yes, definitely after :) I wouldn't really expect anyone of you to have time until after the winner is announced ... who knows, you might be able to use it in your proposal, depending on what new twist the evil geniuses of Paizo through at y'all :)

Do not give them any ideas!

[Trevor Gulliver]

So, ... what are your villains making for the potluck?

[Carl Flaherty]

Tarren Dei wrote:

So, ... what are your villains making for the potluck?

Be careful. Paizo may add that (Villain's Pot Luck Recipie) as a requirement to the next round. :P

[Neil Spicer]

Tarren Dei wrote:

So, ... what are your villains making for the potluck?

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"Hah! I kid..."

"No really, it's just a mushroom dish..."

"And for dessert...well, it's a pudding...mostly."

[Eric Morton]

So I just posted an unofficial villain lair over in this thread. (Hey, I'd already set aside a bunch of time to design a lair, just in case. May as well use it to design a lair, even if it doesn't count for anything.) I'd be interested to hear what Bract has to say about my interpretation of his lair if he ever has the time.

[Trevor Gulliver]

Epic Meepo wrote:

So I just posted an unofficial villain lair over in this thread. (Hey, I'd already set aside a bunch of time to design a lair, just in case. May as well use it to design a lair, even if it doesn't count for anything.) I'd be interested to hear what Bract has to say about my interpretation of his lair if he ever has the time.

I'm going to read it thoroughly but I'm hesitant to comment. If you don't mind, I'm going to wait until Tuesday just in case someone else did Bracht's lair and my comments reflect on their contributions or something. I will say that you caught a number of things I imagined in Bracht's background.

Bracht, however, has a tear in his eye. Not in his own eye, mind you ...

[Eric Morton]

Tarren Dei wrote:

I'm going to wait until Tuesday just in case someone else did Bracht's lair and my comments reflect on their contributions or something.

Understood. I wasn't expecting you (or Bract) to comment while the lair competition was still underway.

Thanks for taking a look, though.

[Trevor Gulliver]

Hey guys,

My son has really wanted to post more comments but I asked him to restrain himself as it might be seen to reflect on me. He really wants to talk about what he loves about your villains etc. Do you guys mind? I'll stop talking to him about my opinions so that they will truly be his own ...

Trevor

[Curaigh]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Hey guys,

My son has really wanted to post more comments but I asked him to restrain himself as it might be seen to reflect on me. He really wants to talk about what he loves about your villains etc. Do you guys mind? I'll stop talking to him about my opinions so that they will truly be his own ...

Trevor

I would love comments on my villain or item (as an alt-I only got some of the judges feedback).

Does your son have his own account? If so I say let him post, if not then I would wait a few more days/weeks. For those who have moved on anyway, the rest of them should be open game.

[Sue Flaherty]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Hey guys,

My son has really wanted to post more comments but I asked him to restrain himself as it might be seen to reflect on me. He really wants to talk about what he loves about your villains etc. Do you guys mind? I'll stop talking to him about my opinions so that they will truly be his own ...

Trevor

I don't think anyone will take it as words from any mouth and brain but his own :) I'd love to hear what a younger gamer thinks about this!

[Mike Speck]

If he's interested in commenting on Dalatai, he should feel free!

[Matthew Stinson]

Sartel loves children... no really, she does. Honest.

[Matthew Stinson]

I updated the Arcane Poison feat on Sartel's thread if anyone wants to go check it out.

[James F.D. Graham]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Okay. Head-check. How you guys feeling?

Here I was silly and thought I'd just do Bracht's lair ahead of time ... and with a lovely full colour 300 dpi map with impressive textures and carefully drawn body parts. I was so ready for round 4. And then ...

Nice one, guys!

Tell me about it!

I too spent my time "getting ahead of the game" by working on a lair.

If only I had the Count's power to see that coming!

[Trevor Gulliver]

I've been so busy trying to keep up with the contest that I haven't had a chance to really sit down and read the entries as thoroughly as I wanted too. Now that I have, I've just got one thing to say: "We rock!".

There's some really enticing ideas kicking around here and I'd enjoy running any of these villains as a DM and there were a ton of goodies I'd like to give out in the magic item round.

[Neil Spicer]

Time to dust off the Guild Hall again.

I know this part of the competition is extra stressful and everything. But, I just want to take the time now to offer up an early congratulations to everyone still competing in Round 4. And the same goes for the rest of the field from earlier rounds, many of whom we leaned upon for the great work and ideas they crafted with the villains we selected for our lairs.

I've always loved this contest. I followed it very closely last year. And every element of the creativity, rise-and-fall of various competitors, feedback from the judges and community...it's all just a lot of fun and a breath of fresh air for the industry as a whole. And it's great entertainment for anyone just following along. I'm so glad to be part of it. And I'm really proud of how Round 4 has turned out so far. I raise my glass to all of you.

Sincerely,
--Neil

[Eric Bailey]

I am absolutely honored to be part of this group. You guys put out some stellar work this round. This is going to be a tough, tough voting round.

-eric

[Trevor Gulliver]

raidou wrote:

I am absolutely honored to be part of this group. You guys put out some stellar work this round. This is going to be a tough, tough voting round.

-eric

Ditto. I'm proud to have gotten into the Top 32. I'm damn proud to be here in the company of the crazy 8s.

[Eric Morton]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think this year's eight strongest contestants moved on to the Top 8. Good work guys! I look forward to following your work, learning from it, and - if I'm lucky - figuring out how to reach your level in time for next year's competition.