[Humor] Pathfinder Lexicon / Dictionary

[Celestial Pegasus]

In a game as detailed as Pathfinder, backed by the intricate fictional setting of Golarion, it can be helpful to have a 'quick reference' guide to a lot of important terms that keep coming up. ...This thread will not be that guide. Instead, it will be a humorous version of something like that! I'll get things started by offering silly, mocking, or sarcastic definitions of some terms. Before I do though, you are strongly encouraged to contribute your own definitions or request others provide some for certain words. Definitions should NOT be helpful or serious, but rather comical! Cynical humor counts so long as it's actually funny and unlikely to provoke fighting in the thread. (I would advise not defining Paladins, for example, for this reason)

Adventuring Party: A gathering of four or more individuals with notable skill at weapons, magic, trap-finding, and other talents who are invariably hampered by either extreme paranoia or complete recklessness. Paranoid parties will spend four hours stuck at the first door in an adventure written for level 1 characters, casting every possible Detect spell on it followed by Take 20 on every Knowledge, Perception, and Search roll they can think of. When this reveals no traps, they will proceed to take the door apart on a molecular level “just to be sure” and ask for additional Knowledge checks to verify the exact grainage of wood the door is made of. May eventually require Railroading to get the adventure moving again.

Reckless parties have all the strategical and tactical acumen of the Kool-Aid Man, plowing headlong into obstacles no matter how dangerous it may be. Players in such parties tend to have great need for additional Character Sheets and may be frequent customers of Herolab.

Alignment: A decades-running prank by Gary Gygax, whose effects have persisted long after his death. A system that uses a maximum of two words and/or letters (in abbreviated form) to briefly sum up what specific reasons, motivations, and/or justifications any given PC or NPC has for breaking down the door, killing everyone inside, and taking all their stuff. Alternatively used to start fights between players when they disagree on which of the aforementioned motivations are truly Lawful, Chaotic, and/or Neutral Good (or Evil).

Broken/Overpowered: Any weapon, spell, or equipment that does more than 1 damage. Alternatively any such game content that does more than slightly annoy monsters. Paizo Publishing primarily stays in business by selling books full of Broken/Overpowered content and Adventure Paths where you can use said content to completely crush an Encounter with zero effort.

Critical Fumble: An outdated method of resolving weapon attack rolls that hasn't been a core rule since at least D&D 3.5 and likely a little further back than that. The rule supposes that a Natural 1 on a weapon attack roll does not simply reflect an automatic miss, but that your character is so dangerously uncoordinated that roughly one out of every twenty attacks they make will cause the weapon to go flying out of their hand or their bow-string to snap or any of several other outcomes more fitting in slapstick comedy than heroic fantasy.

For comparison, a weapon droppage rate of 5% would probably be enough to earn a soldier the nickname 'Butterfingers' and/or an immediate discharge on the grounds of 'dangerous incompetence.'

Summoned Monster: A creature that has been plucked from one of several planar realms, at least partially embodying an ideal of that plane. Effectively the equivalent of 'clock scamming' that one finds in professional sports, the summoned monster's purpose is to slow down the game as the player has likely forgotten to apply relevant templates, feat-based stat adjustments, and so on prior to calling the creature onto the board.

Sufficiently devoted players may take great delight in flooding the table with hordes of the same creature type, leading to bizarre situations where a heroic fantasy adventure instead gets derailed into being a reenactment of Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds.”

That's all I have for now. Feel free to take a shot at more terms!

[Celestial Pegasus]

A few more!

Chaotic Neutral: Shorthand for “My GM forbids Evil characters, so I'm going to play a Chaotic Neutral character who regularly steals from orphanages, tortures kittens, sets Iomedae's churches on fire, and throws rocks at bears my allies are trying to sneak around.” Totally not Evil. See also: Alignment, Character Concept (or “That's What My Character Would Do”), and Roleplaying.

Critical Hit: A particularly successful attack that deals at least double normal damage. Player Characters score these on opponents who have only 1 Hit Point left, while enemies invariably land them when it will do enough damage to instantly kill your character.

Rest: A cessation of adventuring for roughly eight hours, taken by the Adventuring Party after approximately every fifteen minutes of action. Characters regain Spells, Hit Points, and 'X uses per Day' class abilities in this way, though there is a chance the GM will lose patience with this and have meteors 'coincidentally' land on the party's tents. Even if they're underground. Especially if they're underground.

Spell Resistance: A form of defense wherein an enemy becomes very particular about the precise nature of the fiery explosion that hit it. Explosions created by funny hand motions and chants may be completely ignored, while virtually the exact same explosion created by gunpowder and sparks will do full damage.

Sunder: A Combat Maneuver for players who don't want to be invited back for future sessions with the group. It sounds incredibly useful on paper, as this maneuver lets you destroy an opponent's important items. On the other hand, said items tend to constitute most of your party's resale/Loot value for the adventure so expert sunderers tend to be very unpopular.

[Chemlak]

Loot Everything of any tangible value in the Game World not (yet) owned by the Player Characters.

Player Characters A group of murderhobos loosely affiliated, whose ultimate aim is to take possession of Loot.

[Celestial Pegasus]

For what it's worth, Loot doesn't have to be 'of tangible value' to the PCs for them to care about it. A GM could probably depict some goblins randomly playing around with a stick, and the aforementioned PCs would kill the goblins primarily to take the stick from them. Even if it turns out to be a completely ordinary stick. Pretty apt definition overall, though!

[Talonhawke]

BBEG A enemy figure who has some how managed to rise to some form of power within his tribe, religion, or other group despite the fact he usually dies to Adventurers within 18 secs of actually confronting them due to his egotistical need to confront them at odds of at least 4 to 1.

[Talonhawke]

Sorry missed that nothing to see here

[Celestial Pegasus]

As for Big Bad Evil Guy, that one is... ...probably about right, now that I think on it. Outside of ones that are disgustingly overpowered (in the normal sense, not this lexicon's sense), most of them seem to get cut down in one hell of a hurry.

[cmastah]

CMB: This comprises a number of stratagems to do anything from tackling your foes to violating them. You roll this number.

CMD: This is how you avoid being violated. No rolling here, you're purely at the mercy of the dice....that the attacker rolled. Good news is, thanks to the way grapple works, you won't necessarily carry that facehugger's baby till the NEXT time it rolls CMB....with a +5 bonus.

Skill Focus (skill): The feat you picked up because you didn't realize the wizard/sorceror/cleric in the party will be able to compensate for in a few levels...perhaps even compensate for right now.

Commoner: The source of the last couple of points of XP you needed to level up. He was probably evil. Like his kids.

[Vincent Takeda]

Crafting The most forbidden form of magic.
Balance Your enemy doesnt have magic item crafting feats, so why should you?!
Fair making me happy by doing things my way.
WBLWealth By level. When the amount of gold you'd have if you sold all your gear is equal to your chararcter's level.
resource managementA GM's active participation in the process of guaranteeing that the more dangerous your enemy is, the less options and tools you will have at your disposal.
GrognardA player who can still whoop your butt when his armor class is -10.
WishAs in real life, something you strongly desire but will never get.
Rule of CoolYour death will only be as glorious as the amount of foolishness with which you undertake it.
SynthesistA summoner who names his eidolon 'codpiece'
Entitlement Schadenfreud.
FeatCantrips for slasherbasherbonkers.
RAW A list of suggestions on how the game should not be played.
Murderhobo The class your gm played before he became a gm. A habit he's having a great deal of difficulty breaking in his new position.
The Big Six The 6 most devastating entries in the bestiaries, who, if you are not able to defeat handily in rapid succession, indicate you haven't optimized properly.
Optimize Taking the necessary time to ruin as much fun as possible before the campaign starts.
Full Caster The laziest form of optimization.
Healer The role assigned to the player least likely to make it to game night.

[Honorable Goblin]

Paladin: A person who's been granted great divine power in exchange for promising to always be a bossy, holier-than-thou goody-two-shoes, and thereafter mercilessly murders anything with a capital "E" in its Alignment. Invariably, these characters wind up in situations where no mater what course of action they take, they will be forced to break their oath and lose all of their cool toys.

[Chemlak]

Game Master (GM) The player nominally in charge of running the game, managing everything from NPCs, to encounters, the weather, and the Plot.

Plot The alleged in-game reason for the Player Characters to be working together.

Railroading The only realistic means for the GM to advance the Plot as intended. Vociferously hated by Players, who will do everything in their power to avoid the Plot, often by accident, in their tireless quest for Loot.

Players The people who play the game as Player Characters. Often pimple-faced teen boys, or neck-bearded basement-dwellers (cf. Grognard). Diet primarily consists of potato chips, pizza, and Mountain Dew. Well-versed in "optimisation" (cf. Power Gaming).

[Chemlak]

Campaign A series of related Plots, lovingly crafted over endless hours by the GM. The Players will remain largely ignorant of it.

Campaign (Game) World The fictional setting in which the Player Characters live. This setting has been lovingly crafted by the GM (probably over the course of several years) as a fascinating, dangerous, entertaining place to have Adventures. All of which will be ignored in favour of the quest for Loot.

SKR Abbr. Sean K Reynolds. Game developer. Widely acknowledged as the 3rd most hated man on the Internet. Responsible for many Overpowered additions to the game. Day-slave to Jason Buhlman.

[sowhereaminow]

Straw Man Arguement: Term used on gaming messageboards to differentiate your opponents position containing incorrect assumptions, rule misinterpretations, and outright lies from your position containing a different set of incorrect assumptions, rule misinterpretations, and outright lies.

[Tiktok]

Dice:

d20 The die that favors a "1" against spells such as phantasmal killer, prismatic spray, and harm

d12 Most commonly found on the floor after rolling off the table

d10 One of two dice in a percentile roll; order of which will be determined after the roll

d8 The die that favors a "1" when determining hit points and longsword damage

d6 The die that you can never have enough of

d4 Caltrop

[Conundrum]

> claps vigorously< yay! Show us more mummy-daddy! This is some Pee-rice less shat!

[Malachi Silverclaw]

Wish The most powerful and desired spell/effect in the game. The player casts the spell, uses real words (not verbal components) to describe what he wants, then through the magic of language the DM makes the player wish he'd never thought of it, never got out of bed this morning, never even started playing this stupid game, I HATE YOU!

Verbal Components The 'magic words' which may be needed to cast a spell. What these words actually are is carefully undefined by the game system, to avoid the players from annoying real life God-Botherers. This lack allows players to make up their own. Examples include: 'Thwackoooom!', 'Gercha!', and 'Eat Hot Guano Death You Disgusting Alien Weirdos!'.

Somatic Components The hand movements needed to cast some spells. The exact movements are undefined by the game system, to avoid the players offending old ladies in real life. This lack allows players to make up their own. Despite the infinite possibilities that this creative freedom allows, the number of actual somatic components used by players is one (1). Extend and supinate the left fist. Extend the middle finger to the vertical. Rotate the index finger of the right hand around the extended finger, somatically inviting the opponent to 'swivel'.

Material Component A huge variety of invisible, intangible, quantum objects that appear when a spell component pouch is opened. One economic benefit is the creation of bat guano farms. Some wizards even have a tame guano machine on one shoulder, specially trained to 'produce' on command in a battle situation from an unnatural position of hanging the right way up. One common flaw is the 'I Can't Go When You're Looking At Me!' flaw, resulting in the amusement of a number of people equal to the number of people around the table minus one.

[Spook205]

This is more like the Pathfinder's Devil's Dictionary but...

Encounter Design The scientific method of developing threats for the party to deal with, while relying on unclear science.

WBL Wealth By Level. An illusory construct sought for by many which claims with the surety of a Central Economic Planner, exactly how much you should own.

Portable Ram Item very infrequently purchased off of equipment list, usually replaced by The Barbarian generally has a higher charisma then same.

Water Clock Item from the Equipment List which exists for the sole purpose of representing something of ridiculous opulance based on its infeasibility, immobility, and its cost being roughly equivalent to a small house. Also tells time using water.

[Lincoln Hills]

Alchemist: 1. A practitioner of the pre-scientific form of chemistry. 2. A class distinguished by the extraordinary ability to carry one hundred miniscule, unlabelled bottles and yet never suffer an instant's confusion about which one is which.

Barbarian: 1. A person who gains superpowers from his native culture's habits of infrequent washing and illiteracy. 2. The class which does the most damage per second of all non-spellcasting classes; often cited as proof that all other non-spellcasting classes are irrelevant.

Bard: 1. A musician, wise man and repository of oral culture who enjoys a limited form of diplomatic immunity. 2. The class who inexplicably believes that the correct response to the sudden sight of ravenous bloodthirsty monsters is to burst into spontaneous song.

[Aziza Plumbockett]

Familiar: Putatively an attendant helper spirit of an arcane spellcasting character, often appearing in the form of an animal, usually exploited, ignored or abused by said spellcaster. Also referred to as 'lunch' or 'target practice' by the party's Chaotic neutral (c.f.) members.

[Spook205]

Schroedinger's Wizard Individual whom all wizards aim to exemplify and apparently eternally spends time trying to make more martially minded people feel worse about themselves. Likely mythical as definitive evidence of his identity and capabilities can never quite be determined.

Orc Children Youthful examples of the Orcish Race. It is a little known fact that the Orc-deities created their race's well known fecundity just to give Paladins problems.

[Lincoln Hills]

Cavalier: 1. An adherent to a bigoted and sexist code that condones most forms of violence, as long as one is courteous. 2. One of the three classes which insist on bringing inappropriate animals into the dungeon; an inspiring leader and proponent of teamwork who always seems to end up being used by the spellcasters as a human shield.

Druid: 1. Member of a pre-medieval European sect with a focus on tree worship, seasonal ritual and forcing lower-ranking adherents to drag stones hundreds of miles so that a ritual circle can be constructed just a short walk from their home. 2. The class most likely to bring an undomesticated animal along, ignoring the considerable dangers this presents to the tastiest-looking halfling and gnome PCs; notable for having alignment restrictions that its players do not constantly rage against.

[Celestial Pegasus]

Still going strong? Sweet. Since we're defining classes...

Sorcerer: A character class that, at early levels, is nearly indistinguishable from a Wand of any given spell. At later levels, the Sorcerer is akin to a Wand of a more powerful spell.

[cnetarian]

Munchkin: A character based upon using corner cases, typos in the rulebooks, out-of-context statements from developers and dubious houserules which is more powerful than all the other characters at the table (including the DM's characters).

not to be confused with the

Min/Maxer: A player who has a good enough grasp of the game that they do not select meta-magic feats for their fighter character. This causes no end of jealousy from players who create their characters based upon RolePlaying.

Attack of Opportunity: A rule created to gives smokers an opportunity to go outside for a cigarette while everyone else paws through rulebooks and character sheets to decide whether or not an attack is triggered.

[Vincent Takeda]

Druid: A character who loves and respects nature and wildlife so much that he will constantly and indiscriminantly bring it forth just long enough to give it first crack at a grizzly untimely death against insurmountable foes while he watches from safety.
Halfling: A frail dwarf who prefers the kitchen to the quarry and grows his beard on his feet.
Chaotic Neutral: the alignment of the player who most often chooses to play Paladins.
Sword and board: A common misspelling of 'Sword and Bored' which is used to describe anyone who is forced into the position of party meat shield because the rest of the party decided they wanted to play something 'fancy!!!'
Performance weapon: A weapon so beloved by its wielder that it has become the wielder's dance partner.
Vancian magic: Chronic short term amnesia... The mechanic by which wizards are allowed to learn an infinite variety of spells by way of forgetting them all on a daily basis.
Montyhaul: A GM who allows one or more players to survive a game day.
Homebrew: The type of alchohol you were forced to start making because you spent so much of your disposable income on gaming materials that you can no longer afford proper booze.
Gazebo: The most deadly entity of any given world. Typically defends itself by

assuming the illusionary form of whatever the party members consider to be the most poweful thing they could easily defeat,

remaining stationary and

being susceptible to fire.

[Lincoln Hills]

Game World: 1. A simulated, imaginary world painstakingly crafted by the GM to be similar to Earth while having its own distinctive geology, ecology, history, cultures, gods, timekeeping system and coinage. 2. The place which the Player Characters depopulate, pillage, and occasionally cause to explode.

Class Benefits: Special, unlockable perks which mass-murderers accumulate by practicing their craft. See also Superpowers.

Superpowers: Impossible things which the Player Characters get to do anyway. Sub-sets include Rage Powers, Spellcasting, Rogue Talents, Psionics and many more: however, these abilities are never actually called Superpowers, because "this isn't the right genre for superpowers."

Mistake: 1. A tactical error the GM made through oversight or fatigue, which may never, ever be taken back and must play as stands. 2. A tactical error the player made through inattention or stubbornness, which he or she may rescind at will. 3. An inconsistency in the Plot, which will generally be overlooked by all parties concerned unless there is Loot or XP involved.

[Fromper]

Half Orc: Descendents of humans and a race of green skinned humanoids who are inexplicably less common than their half orcs descendents.

Bard: People who take out their frustration at the lack of Broadway musicals in Golarion on anything that could be carrying loot.

Cleric: A box of band aids with legs.

Summoner: The player who owns the most non-humanoid minis.

Channel Negative Energy: Magical power used only by clerics with no friends.

Beer: See GM Bribe

Chaotic Neutral: See Neutral Evil

[Ezzran]

Goblin: A race of creatures with heads larger than an adult human, but bodies smaller than a human child's. Created by the gods for the sole purpose of giving low level Adventurers something to slaughter for practice.

Fighter: A class created to make all the other classes look better by comparison. Receives no superpowers.

[Lincoln Hills]

Lawful Evil: An alignment or mindset which combines tradition, respect for precedent and authority, and attention to honor with a certain willingness to use Grandma as a human shield if necessary. Generally found only among monsters and non-player characters, because players prefer not to be lawful and GMs prefer for players not to be evil.

Teamwork: A semi-mythical concept, supposedly quite powerful. Many adventurers claim to possess it, but most are merely questing to attain it. The quest for Teamwork tends to take a back seat to Character Concept, Optimization, Free Will and Area of Effect spells.

Hit Points: A variety of excuses as to why that last attack did not kill you. When you run out of Hit Points, the excuses stop working.

[Vincent Takeda]

TPK: An experience award players earn by participating in a playtest of your homebrew rules on your homebrew world.

[sowhereaminow]

Lawful Stupid: An alignment which combines tradition, respect for authority, and attention to honor with the desire to murder anything without a "G" in it's alignment without provocation or reason.

[Vincent Takeda]

Adventure path: The things that are happening 'off stage' in the world while your party is busy wenching, looting, stabbing and burning it.
Critical confirmation roll:Death magic which bypasses saving throws and spell resistance. Can only be cast by non casters. An unconvincing, failed attempt to make them seem 'balanced' with casters.
4e: Magic the Gathering: Faerun edition!
Versilimitude: Abjuration magic which samurai and ninja use to ensure they are never encountered outside of an asian setting
Fiat: Origninally known as 'Improved versilimitude', this is more powerful abjuration magic which GMs use to ensure every other thing they dont like is never encountered in their setting.
15 minute workday: Used to describe the maximum amount of time it should take for a gm to drain your entire party of all its resources.
PVP: The method by which a party informs their gm that the game world is boring without having to get 'out of character'

[Lincoln Hills]

Scavenger: Any of a selection of generally low-powered monsters, many of them vectors for disease. Notable as the only monsters to rejoice when player characters enter the dungeon, since these occasions almost always result in an all-you-can-eat buffet from a scavenger's point of view. As a poor source of XP and loot and a good source of rumors, scavengers are occasionally allowed to live by PCs, which can unfortunately leave Ernie the Otyugh as the campaign's only recurring NPC.

Insanity: A mental condition which causes NPCs to build enormous multi-level subterranean death-traps in the middle of nowhere, and causes PCs to argue that they are free of the constraints of alignment, good taste, common sense, and/or gravity.

Recurring NPC: A character who was either invulnerable enough or insignificant enough to survive his or her first meeting with the PCs. The GM loves recurring NPCs because they give the game world a sense of internal consistency, while PCs - despite their homicidal efforts to ensure that there are very few recurring NPCs - appreciate recurring NPCs because they have a chance to take loot from these characters twice.

Proof: An effort to solve a rules dispute by re-expressing one's original opinion more loudly and rudely.

Real Life: A condition sometimes suffered by PCs, which is generally considered to be the only condition worse than dominated.

[The Artaxerxes]

XP: The mystical force permeating all creatures which, when extracted from the corpse of a creature in sufficient amounts, grants superpowers.

[Celestial Pegasus]

Would that make adventurers the Highlander?

[Vincent Takeda]

Post Apocalyptic Campaign: A campaign world that starts out as if your party had been there all along. A world that starts out in the condition your party would have left it.
Authority: Mind Affecting Illusion and Enchantment magic used by players in an attempt to convince other players that their playstyle is cooler/better/more fun/more appropriate than the alternatives.
Encumbrance: The maximum amount that your character can carry before the gm looks at you sideways, asks for your character sheet, and starts planning nightly encounters with the theive's guild.
Vancian magic: Magic is to air as wizard brain is to bagpipe.

[Vincent Takeda]

Role Playing Game System: The component pouch for your creativity spells.

[Lincoln Hills]

Cleric: 1. A professional member of a religious order, esp. one who has taken vows for a lifelong commitment. 2. A class designed to frustrate its player by combining armored combat ability with miraculous powers granted by the gods themselves, and then partner them up with a bunch of imbeciles whose idea of tactics is to leap head-first into a hamburger grinder with a cheery cry of "Heal us, cleric!"

Fighter: 1. One who engages in physical conflict, esp. one whose temperament and training incline them to physical conflict. 2. A tough class of dedicated professional warriors noted for skill in all sorts of armor, training in dozens of weapons, and a tendency to be upstaged and mocked by the spellcasters... though the spellcasters almost always do so from a position that causes the fighter to give them cover and prevent charges from the monsters.

[ParagonDireRaccoon]

Gods: Consists of a tagline, favored weapon, list of domains/subdomains, and avatar image. There are two varieties, Forgotten Realms gods are modeled after 'real-world'(see above definition) gods and have extensive backstories which cause them to fight/not get along with each other, and non-Forgotten Realms gods which have at most a few paragraphs explaining what role they play in the behind-the-scenes-stuff that matters to GMs (see Campaign World definition above).

[Celestial Pegasus]

I would like to request a definition for Reach Weapon (alternatively, just Reach).

[r-Kelleg]

Scroll piece of paper holding an useless spell until the day after you used it to light a fire or ... you know ... wipe your...

[Talonhawke]

Reach Weapon a weapon allowing MurderHobos to kill things from farther away than normal. Most are enchanted with special magic that makes attacking things right next to you impossible.

[Uncle Teddy]

Elf: 1. A tall thin human with long pointy ears that lives in trees and kills things with bows and arrows and thinks they make the best wizards. 2. A short thin human with long pointy ears that lives in trees and kills things with bows and arrows and thinks they make the best wizards.

Dwarf: a short, stocky, bearded human that lives underground, loves to mine for ore, make weapons and armor, and kill things with axes and hammers. Dwarves have a racial hatred for orcs, even though the orcs live on the surface and are more inclined to run into Elves.

[Conundrum]

Lois! Tell me more about these "muurder hobos!" Stewie likes!

[Malachi Silverclaw]

Reach Weapon A quantum device which may or may not be used to attack a charging foe, depending on whether or not the foe charges diagonally or orthogonally on a square grid that doesn't exist in the game world. Similarly, it may be used to attack a foe at a distance of 10-feet in a 5-foot wide corridor, unless that corridor is set diagonally to a grid which doesn't exist, which somehow makes it impossible to be 10-feet away from your foe.

[Uncle Teddy]

Human: The most common race despite having several disadvantages over the other races. Humans dominate only because of their race's fecundity, which also extends to other races (see Half-Elf and Half-Orc).

Half-Elf: The result of a tryst between a drunken Elf and a Human.

Half-Orc: The result of a tryst between a drunken Human and an Orc.

[Lincoln Hills]

Gunslinger: 1. A person specializing in the use of handguns, esp. against other people; often associated with a lazy drawl and repeated references to others as "pilgrim" or "partner". 2. A class of ranged weapon user that yells "Blam! Blam!" rather than "Thunk! Thunk!" upon confirming a critical hit.

Oracle: 1. One who foretells the future; a person with the gift or burden of foresight. 2. A spellcaster class that employs spontaneous divine magic while striking a blow for equality for "handi-capable" adventurers everywhere.

[Malachi Silverclaw]

Murderhobos (pl.) A group of highly-skilled homeless people, frequently with either no family or a quantum family which only exist when the DM needs to kill them just to see a player's face (cf. familiar), who spend their days seeking out creatures to kill so they can take their stuff, followed by a brief period of explaining why someone of their alignment would have done just that. See adventurer.

Adventurer The official name for a murderhobo. One curious feature of these creatures is that, no matter what they look like, no matter their attempts at disguise, no matter what professions or jobs or qualifications or honours or titles or reputations they may have earned through their own actions over the years, as soon as they walk into a new place they are greeted with the cry, 'Ah! Adventurers!'. Nobody knows exactly how they are always recognised as such, but the same phenomenon is encountered by wizards who, even if described as wearing normal clothes or armour or whatever, are always perceived by enemies as wearing a dress and a pointy hat decorated with stars, thus attracting enemy fire. This instant recognition extends to their familiar which, even though it may look like a completely normal rat or raven and be one of a thousand rats or ravens, is immediately targeted for death by any nearby baddy, although blind baddies have a 50% chance of suffering a 50% miss chance.

Miss Chance Another quantum effect among many in the game, a miss chance has the peculiar property of 50% = 100% for NPCs and 50% = 0% for PCs.