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Poll

What type of caster do you like playing?

One of those funky not-quite-half-casters
Don't you mean "smite slots"?
full caster
ALL THE CASTING (class & racial features)
half caster
just limited to racial abilities or class features
non-caster
I'm undecided

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Author Topic: D&D Pathfinder  (Read 87704 times)

hedgie

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #200 on: 19 Jul 2020, 10:13 »

Essentially, it's a cleaned-up 3.5ed system.  It's more complicated than 5e, but it does have so many options available for players that I think it's worth it.
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Torlek

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #201 on: 19 Jul 2020, 13:23 »

I always say Pathfinder v1 is basically D&D 3.75 (from what I've heard, Pathfinder v2 is basically 5e). The hit dice for the squishier classes are bumped up a tier, some of the mechanics are cleaned up but it also feels like there's more options available and there's feats for EVERYTHING.
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hedgie

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #202 on: 19 Jul 2020, 13:42 »

Absolutely, and you get feats more rapidly than in 3.5e, and monsters are scaled up as well, so it tends to be a pretty high-power game.  A GM can use 3.x modules just fine, but they should adjust the difficulty of encounters to compensate for the higher power-level of PCs.  Overall, it's internally well-balanced, but there are some combinations that are just too obscenely powerful, and may require a GM errata/house rule.  (For example, the spell "Named Bullet" is vague enough that my witch using that in conjunction with the party gunslinger helped lead to an older dragon being dead before half the party could react.  It got nerfed right after).
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #203 on: 26 Jul 2020, 09:31 »

I stil haven't played Pathfinder myself, but I really ought to at some point.

Arkin, my arcana cleric, finally took the arcanist's advice to try to teleport home and rally some assistance in fighting off the end of the world. The 5th layer is quite cold and he was quite ill-prepared for it. We nearly lost one of the party members to some heat sapping starfish things. Arkin successfully teleported back to his hometown and got hit by level 5 exhaustion[1], but passed his con save to not start hallucinating wildly. Unfortunately, it wasn't high enough to not start bleeding internally[2]. The damage was enough to knock him below zero but not kill him outright. Thankfully, I rolled probably the most timely nat20 ever on my first deathsave. After being brought to a healer by an NPC name Susej Shumboddi[3], Arkin was reunited with his fiancee and decided 'screw it, I'm staying here'. He still relayed his story to the city's leaders and appropriate forces were mustered[4].
My replacement character being amongst them. I honestly forgot the whole 'you have to pick a different class' houserule when I started making Rasputin Bluefire. So, he's an oath of glory paladin wthat I originally designed as a death cleric. I still like the idea of a grey-skinned blue flamed fire genasi, so I stuck with it. Arkin handed off all of his artifacts to Rasputin since he opted to retire to teaching and finally got married.[5]

[1] Curse of the Abyss inflicts increasing levels of exhaustion when a creature not born of it ascends 20ft or more while in it.
[2] Apparently, that includes teleporting out of an abyss and jumping up that many layers so quickly prompted the internal bleeding save and damage roll. After the level 5 exhaustion hits and halves his HP, of course. TL;DR custom bullshit homebrew.
[3] A joke because the DM had some random, nameless NPC shout "Jesus! Somebody get him to a healer quick!" I couldn't help myself and asked if their was a townie named 'Jesus'. The DM said his name was 'Susej', and a player chimed in with 'Susej Shumboddi'.
[4] Probably his first truly selfish action, but also pretty understandable all said and told regarding what he's been through. The guy is just tired at this point and needs to take care of himself for a change. Plus it took just over two weeks to fully recover from his ordeal.
[5] A cloak of teleportation, a gravity cannon, and the plot crucial conversation cube.
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #204 on: 06 Oct 2020, 09:40 »

Been awhile. Two updates;

Thank God the Made in Abyss knockoff/homebrew/homage is done and the group voted for Monster Hunter homebrew campaign for that DM's next turn instead of his almost all RP continuation that dives mback into his clusterfuck campaign plot.

Two, The City on the Borderlands game wrapped recently despite flying off the rails. I multiclassed 4 levels into abjuration wizard since Bug needed more spellslots to spelljam pilot. Turns out he's damn good at it, too. I didn't roll anything below an 18 for checks on it over the course of 4 sessions. We successfully evacuted the nearby towns into our city, defeated the dracolitch by effectively bankrupting the bank and becoming the new owners thanks to time travel shenanigans (think Fry becoming rich in Futurama) and buying the bank. Bug also lucked out and successfully obtained a universal translator microfish. And we successfully got 4 spell jamming thrones for the city (on a payment plan), plus recoverying and repairing a small helm from an ithilid ship for a shuttlecraft.

Luxheim (Luxheimez?) Is now a city flying through the asteal sea.

We were also told to keep our character sheets in case we ever return to this setting and play high level. The DM agreed that Bug would likely become the cityship's intelligence when he died, so here's hoping that doesn't happen in-session.
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de_la_Nae

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #205 on: 14 Oct 2020, 17:33 »

okay, i didn't read this whole thread but just looking at the poll i see someone has to come in here and help you dorks

ahem

*cracks knuckles*

4TH EDITION WAS PRETTY MUCH THE BEST BECAUSE FOR MOST PARTIES COMBAT IS THE MAIN MECHANICAL INTERACTION AND COMBAT IN PRIOR EDITIONS WAS MISERABLE AND THE SPELL SYSTEMS WERE A NIGHTMARE AND HONESTLY MAKING EVERYONE WIZARDS WAS THE RIGHT MOVE

3rd edition was my first, i've played 3, 3.5, 4, 5, and pathfinder 1, and it's not that you can't enjoy all of those, but 4 was the least miserable of the set in a lot of very important ways

de_la_Nae

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #206 on: 14 Oct 2020, 17:37 »

i will allow that if you had an unimaginative GM i can see how 4th might *maybe* make non-combat a little more irritating, but you're already screwed if you have an unimaginative GM anyway

oddtail

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #207 on: 15 Oct 2020, 01:56 »

i will allow that if you had an unimaginative GM i can see how 4th might *maybe* make non-combat a little more irritating, but you're already screwed if you have an unimaginative GM anyway

I strongly disagree with that logic. That's like saying absolute monarchy is good, because if you have a cruel king, you're screwed anyway.

Don't pick apart this analogy too hard. It's imperfect. The point is - RPG are a game. Games have rules, and certain rules incentivise a certain kind of play. Saying that an imaginative GM fixes that is admitting that the rules by themselves do not do the job.

Or to put it another way - why have any rules, including combat rules? An imaginative GM can run a combat scenario without a single rule, surely.

What's that? Players take enjoyment from combat encounters *because* they're a meaningful interaction with the game's rules that the players and their characters' statistics have a measurable impact on, not just a made-up scenario that's meant to be entertaining?

Yes, I agree. Some players look at every game interaction in this way. D&D may be extraordinarily focused on combat, but it's been a game about exploration and discovery literally since its inception. Why apply a different logic to combat rules and non-combat rules? Why not say "eh, if the combat rules are bad, you just have an unimaginative GM"?

I don't even think 4E is *that* bad. But the argument that it's only combat that matters in D&D mechanics is a fallacious one in my book.

I'll admit to being biased. When tabletop RPG became popular in Poland around mid-1980s, a trend slowly emerged over the years of taking GM's impact on the game as all-powerful. Younger generations of players (including myself) snarkily call this "the Polish school of playing RPG", which includes GMs throwing the intended play (as set by the rules, but also by how the game is written) out of the window in the name of their "vision" whenever they deem it better for the "story". This style of play gives players very little impact on anything that happens at the table. I consider rules to be a tool for a player, not the GM, and the approach "why have rules, when the GM is good" to ultimately lead to, at best, an illusion of agency for players. So I fundamentally disagree that saying "rules are poor, but who cares, the GM will patch things up" is *ever* a good defense.

I like 5E *much* better than, say, 3E in part because the game doesn't feel to me as if it was written to have excuse plots from one dungeon to another, or from one combat encounter to another. It's not just the rules, it's also how the game is written, how proposed adventures are structured, and so on. And I feel I'm plenty imaginative as a GM, and I've ran tabletop RPG for more than 20 years. Again - I don't think it's about GM skill whether a game incentivises a certain kind of play or not. If a certain interaction *is* part of the game and there *are* rules for that part, it should work well. The level of skill of a GM is irrelevant, especially since most new people getting into RPG *will* be starting with D&D, so the game should be ESPECIALLY well-equipped to handle novice GMs.

As to combat... as I said, I don't hate 4E, but the D&D players I've known who do not enjoy the edition are often of the opinion that the interaction with rules during combat in 4E is not as interesting as it might be, especially with regard to player character progression. One person put it this way:

Quote
In D&D 4E, every roll in the game, no matter where you are in the campaign, the level of your character and what is happening, is a "you have 55% chance to succeed" roll. It doesn't matter what you do, because the progression of player characters and opposition is linked so tightly together, levelling up your characters becomes meaningless

I think the person was exaggerating for effect, but I do think it's what criticism of 4E often boils down to. I haven't ran any games in this edition, so I don't know how accurate it is. But it seems to be a common complaint. Whether it's accurate I don't know, but saying the game is just about combat anyway is not a convincing defense of the rules anyway, in my opinion.
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de_la_Nae

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #208 on: 15 Oct 2020, 03:06 »

that is maybe the first time i've ever heard that criticism of 4e in your quote, so that's cool

i'm not very smart, and it's been a while since i've actually toyed with 4e so i probably shouldn't have started talking shit anyway (but where's the fun in that?), so i don't remember how the rules truly handle non-combat. what i *do* remember is a truly unfortunate stream of GMs who should have been flying on their own wings by that point and using their heads but instead slavishly holding to what seemed like the most banal interpretation of explicit rules as possible, not only sabotaging 4e games with their lack of gumption but also cutting the legs out of their non-combat encounters in 3.5e/pathfinder1, on top of using clunky and irritating-to-track systems that seemed designed as much to encourage aforementioned banality as much as anything.

i might have had a bad stretch of luck that soured me on them.

but when 4e sang, it sang clear and lovely. you knew more or less what you could do at a glance, more or less what was in front of you, and sometimes, *sometimes* it even if everything still tended to boil down to "attack the thing", at least it was quick and interesting since most of the attacks had easy-to-implement frills, like teleports and marks and all that jazz. and the simple joy of the minion system / templating, stepping up the game from 3e to something much cleaner and smoother. combat wasn't taking an hour+ anymore, while also not taking 15 minutes but only one person's turn cuz they had a bunch of weird bullshit in their build that had to be endlessly divined from a chicken's entrails while the rest of the party tunes out on their phones or tv or something.

oddtail

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #209 on: 15 Oct 2020, 03:10 »

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind 4E. It's not for me, but its reputation is *much* worse than it deserves.

I was specifically addressing the "argument from GM", which I think is fallacious.

I personally think 4E is a good enough game, it's just a poor D&D game. If it was published under a different name, people would not mind it as much. I think the backlash to it was a case of the game being too different and not meeting pre-existing expectations.

And I mean, 5E steered HARD back into the franchise's tropes, for good and for ill.
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Torlek

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #210 on: 15 Oct 2020, 09:38 »

I've never played it, but everything I saw about 4e made it seem like a game sequel that took a deep, turn based, isometric CRPG with all kinds of mechanics that could be leveraged in different ways (so Baldur's Gate and its ilk) and turned it into a much more streamlined, real time, third-person action RPG. There's nothing wrong with that and it can be an amazing game, it's just not what the fans playing the previous game were there for.

It sounds like your problems all stem from the eternal question of RPG players, "what do you do with a shitty GM?" I've had some that slavishly adhered to the rules, demanded that every interaction be tied to a skill roll and never had enough story out of combat to make the trips from dungeon to dungeon interesting (though they did still have some extremely interesting combat scenarios, so it wasn't all bad). Thankfully, my current ones have enough backstory going on that there's always something interesting to do out of combat and (most of) the skill rolls feel natural. We've even had a couple of sessions that wouldn't have had any combat if the GM hadn't sprang their surprise encounter (and said encounter actually felt like an imposition). I very much like finding the weird little intricacies in a deep system with complex rules for almost everything, but I can totally see where a bad GM would completely sour you on the labyrinthine mechanics in 3.5/Pathfinder.
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hedgie

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #211 on: 15 Oct 2020, 23:15 »

Hmm.  Given that I don't feel comfortable running in person sessions for, probably a year if we're lucky, and I hate shit like Zoom for something like gaming, I think that instead of sulking, it's time for me to start fleshing out the lore more completely.  When I started, I had rough outlines of various groups in power in various areas, as well as roles in larger plotlines.  While most of the PCs were from fairly close to the city they landed in, or, in case of the Nazi elf,[1] had a professional reason to be in the area.  There's also enough that I can steal from pre-existing fantasy settings to make that job easier.

The harder two areas to work people in from, that have at least some present representation in the current, and likely future parties if I have to do any sort of plot reset with a new group, are the "barbarians" from the known West,[2] and their rather symbiotic relationship with the well, very theocratic human empire that is their only real outside contact aside from what are basically Reavers to their north, and the western desert which is one of those places on a map marked "here be things that eat dragons".

Edit:
Really, I had written about 50 pages of actual lore for the "starting zone", and maybe a few pages each for other regions, and only filling them in more if a PC came from there.  The (obvious) setup is that there are two theocratic empires, one "good", the other "evil" who are both on a serious inquisition of anything diabolic/demonic, and even warned players that if they rolled a summoner or tiefling, at least in the beginning, they'd probably have a short and shitty life.

The barbarians got more interesting when one of the players rolled basically a zen archer from that region, and had to figure out the relationships between orcs and humans, as well as the empire on the other side of the wall.

[1] Okay, maybe that's a little unfair.  The Shadow Elves *are* at least strongly fascistic theocrats, though.

[2] Human, orc, and intermixed.  For basic survival, intermarriage to seal personal and family alliances is common enough, even if not the norm
« Last Edit: 27 Oct 2020, 10:15 by hedgie »
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #212 on: 08 Nov 2020, 04:32 »

i will allow that if you had an unimaginative GM i can see how 4th might *maybe* make non-combat a little more irritating, but you're already screwed if you have an unimaginative GM anyway
I'm watching High Rollers: Aerois and the DM brought back the skill challenges from 4E into his 5E game. Very interesting to see and something I might do.
Like I said in the 1st post (I think), I've never played 4 ed. One of my former coworkerw is a 3.5 snob pretty much made thecWoW comparison and tutted 'When everyone's special no one is.'

Hmm.  Given that I don't feel comfortable running in person sessions for, probably a year if we're lucky, and I hate shit like Zoom for something like gaming, I think that instead of sulking, it's time for me to start fleshing out the lore more completely.  When I started, I had rough outlines of various groups in power in various areas, as well as roles in larger plotlines.  While most of the PCs were from fairly close to the city they landed in, or, in case of the Nazi elf,[1] had a professional reason to be in the area.  There's also enough that I can steal from pre-existing fantasy settings to make that job easier.
[Snip]

Roll20 with Discord hasn't been too bad. Occasionally there's crap reception/connectivity, but that's standard with online play from the streams I watch (vodsquad for life it seems).

This is actually the second time I've encountered the phrase 'Nazi elf' in less than 24 hours. Is that just a thing? My Saturday group  is possibly going to have to do the alternating DMs thing, so we were setting up characters and some world lore for his homebrew dungeon crawl last night, and that's pretty much what he said the elves were like because one of the players picked a half-elf PC. "Dirty elves get kicked out  along with any fullbloods who don't agree with doing so." It's also his reasoning for making the standard elvenkind gear rarer and more expensive.

It was suggested that that could be his world's origin for dark elves. They're less evil and more "evil" from the viewpoint of other elves for not being xenophobic racist dickheads. Knocker said he'd think about it.
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Gnabberwocky

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #213 on: 08 Nov 2020, 14:30 »

In our 5E game, our DM made the mistake of having us encounter a horde of sea hags trying to summon a flesh golem. He was expecting a huge, difficult boss fight, or for us to back off and leave them in peace. Instead, our wizard stepped into the room and immediately cast thunder wave. Only two made their save; he killed the other fifteen. Our rogue picked off the stragglers with throwing knives. The whole fight lasted only a couple seconds.

A few moments later, our chaotic evil gnome paladin (long story) smashed their source of power with a battle axe, got trapped in the shadow realm, and was possessed by a demon before I rescued him. If you're keeping track, that's a chaotic evil Oni gnome paladin with CON 19. Who wouldn't flee?
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #214 on: 14 Nov 2020, 09:43 »

In our 5E game, our DM made the mistake of having us encounter a horde of sea hags trying to summon a flesh golem. He was expecting a huge, difficult boss fight, or for us to back off and leave them in peace. Instead, our wizard stepped into the room and immediately cast thunder wave. Only two made their save; he killed the other fifteen. Our rogue picked off the stragglers with throwing knives. The whole fight lasted only a couple seconds.

A few moments later, our chaotic evil gnome paladin (long story) smashed their source of power with a battle axe, got trapped in the shadow realm, and was possessed by a demon before I rescued him. If you're keeping track, that's a chaotic evil Oni gnome paladin with CON 19. Who wouldn't flee?

Criminy!
One piece of GMing advice I picked up is set boss encounters a level or three higher than the group is rated for. A 'deadly encounter' at minimum. Granted, that also depends on the group and their class composition.

EDIT: derp double posted that backstory. I'll leave the expanded version in the post below.
« Last Edit: 03 Dec 2020, 00:01 by Gyrre »
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hedgie

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #215 on: 14 Nov 2020, 10:25 »


This is actually the second time I've encountered the phrase 'Nazi elf' in less than 24 hours. Is that just a thing?

They're a rigidly militaristic society, routinely occupy other countries that they think are influenced by certain sorts of extra-planar beings, and have an inquisition that is committing genocide against groups that they consider "tainted" by the Shadow Rift (where they got their nickname).  I never liked the drow in D&D, since they're basically just a bunch of dark-skinned sadistic murder-hobos.[1]  The Shadow Elves are more dangerous because they actually have their shit together and a common purpose.  Of course, there are as yet unrevealed lore reasons why their society became that way, and there actually is a method to their madness.

[1]The main distinction between their appearance and that of other elves, is that *their* connection to the Rift is that they are just somewhat desaturated.  Powerful members of their society, especially magic-using classes are flat-out monochromatic
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #216 on: 14 Nov 2020, 12:37 »


This is actually the second time I've encountered the phrase 'Nazi elf' in less than 24 hours. Is that just a thing?

They're a rigidly militaristic society, routinely occupy other countries that they think are influenced by certain sorts of extra-planar beings, and have an inquisition that is committing genocide against groups that they consider "tainted" by the Shadow Rift (where they got their nickname).  I never liked the drow in D&D, since they're basically just a bunch of dark-skinned sadistic murder-hobos.[1]  The Shadow Elves are more dangerous because they actually have their shit together and a common purpose.  Of course, there are as yet unrevealed lore reasons why their society became that way, and there actually is a method to their madness.

[1]The main distinction between their appearance and that of other elves, is that *their* connection to the Rift is that they are just somewhat desaturated.  Powerful members of their society, especially magic-using classes are flat-out monochromatic

*stares blankly and blinks once*

I think the ones in this upcoming campaign are just strictly isolationist, xenophobic, and racist. The Elvenkind gear got bumped up a level in rarity and is thusly more costly.

At a guess, these might be more akin to Sword aworld elves (Record of the Lodoss War, Rune Soldier, etc).
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #217 on: 14 Nov 2020, 14:10 »

The short version: a couple of thousands of years ago, they were a rather remote and mostly alpine group of regular elves.  Then the rift happened, and their leaders made a deal with an evil goddess for the power to resist (most) of the rift's corruption, so that they could draw on it and use it to destroy the *things* that came out due to it being a tear in reality.  Those in power at the time basically decided to have their people be living sacrifices to fight a great evil.  Now, they are still on the same mission, but the best amongst them are much like the Operative in Serenity.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #218 on: 17 Nov 2020, 05:43 »

Ah. Ok.

Apparently the ones in this game world are like English nobility minus the megalomania. Which has bumped up the rarity and price of the Elvenkind gear. They also take issue with and banish Half-elves[1].

Here's my characters backstory [2]: The Blackbriar are a disgraced noble family that were exiled to the Green Gloam[3] for accusations by Lord Octivian Briarbrush and his sister Sexta Bushbramble that the Lord Septimus Blackbriar sacrificed and consumed Lady Bushbramble's late husband, Nonus Bushbramble.[4]

Lord Septimus and his family maintained his innocence in the death of Lord Bushbramble, and the only thing that kept him from being executed despite the damning evidence (most notably Sexta's shriek of terror and fainting when Septimus entered the courtroom) was the well known and long-standing feud  Blackbriars and the Briarbrushes. Hence his family's exile and tasking with keeping the 'demon beasts' of the Green Gloam within its boarders.

Lord and Lady Blackbriar were moved to the Green Gloam with their then 5 children, and despite the remoteness, had 5 more. I'll be playing the 7th child of the Blackbriars and the 2nd born in the Green Gloam; Cadimus Erick Blackbriar. The family's only means of incoming was selling the meats and pelts of the various beasts with the nearby town and villages. Many of whom believed the rumors about his family being cannibals, hence him presenting himself as one of the family's servants doomed to the forest with the rest of them on his few trips to town.[5]

Erick is super bitter about the whole being disgraced thing along with the grisly deaths of his two favorite siblings while the trio was hunting a giraffe-sized elk. His contract with the mysterious stranger states that his family will be reinstated to their land and title with his father's name cleared, along with his dead brother and sister being resurrected if he successfully completely clears the dungeon to the letter stipulated.

[1]Along with any elves that go against said banishment. May or may not be explaination for this world's origin of dark elves.
[2] Yes, this was built entirely around making that punny joke in an obfuscated manner. It took that game's DM a bit to clock. He sent me a pic of his middle finger along with 'lol'.
[3] A massive primeval forest with large and huge versions of beasts. 'Grand-dire' as it were, bigger than the regular dire versions but not necessarily the next size-class up. Think the really big versions of each of the animals from Princess Mononoke.
[4] The three families were minor nobles all living at different parts around a massive briar formed from briar beries, raspberries, stinging nettles, roses, and a few other thorny plants all growing together for some reason.
[5] While he loves his family dearly, he absolutely loathes his first name. So it suits him just fine to present himself as 'Erick Black', as he will be to the rest of the party.
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Thrillho

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #219 on: 30 Nov 2020, 10:33 »

My D&D playing friends,

My household has recently got into D&D.

For Christmas, I would like to purchase each of us a number of customised dice (preferably a D6, D8 and D20). Ideally I would be able to choose the colour and material but the main thing is I would like to be able to put up to six letters onto the natural 20 side.

I've found with a brief Googling a surprisingly huge number of choices but am mostly coming up empty with anything that lets me have that many letters on the side.

Am I on the hunt for something that simply doesn't exist from any reputable retailers? If I need to just think smaller about how many letters I put on there that's a whole other thing which I am willing to settle with, but I am seeing a huge variation in price, quality of website, and location (I'd rather they be UK-based just for time and... Brexit). If I have to settle with no more than three letters, I'm pretty sure I can find someone just by sticking to Etsy.

Can anybody give me any recommendations?
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TheEvilDog

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #220 on: 01 Dec 2020, 11:47 »

You might be able to find something on Etsy.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #221 on: 01 Dec 2020, 12:09 »

So six letters per face of a d20? Yeah, that's going to be a special order thing.
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Thrillho

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #222 on: 01 Dec 2020, 14:34 »

Not six letters per side.

Six letters, only on the 20th side. The natural 20? Is my lingo wrong here? That's a natural 20?

And I have looked on Etsy and found up to three letters.

I shall ask elsewhere.
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Pilchard123

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #223 on: 02 Dec 2020, 02:45 »

Close enough that you'd be understood. It's not the natural 20 side (or at least I've not heard it called that), but if you roll and the side with 20 comes up then you've rolled a natural 20. I'd probably say "the 20 side" or "the side with 20 on it".

Generally, to say one has "rolled [a/an] X" means that you add the number on the die to any modifiers you have and the result is X. If you "roll 15", then you might have got a 10 on the die and have +5 from other sources (maybe your character or equipment stats, maybe assistance from other characters, or a useful environmental) or you might have rolled 17 and have to subtract 2 (again from character or equipment stats or hindrance from other characters to the environment). Your modified result might end up above or below 20, but that doesn't really matter. I've heard this called "modified X", but I don't think that's a common name.

To say you "rolled a natural X" or "nat-X" means that you rolled a die and X was the number that the die showed, ignoring any positive or negative modifiers.

Some games treat nat-1 or nat-20 different to any other rolls. For example, D&D 5e only bothers with natural 1 or 20 if you're attacking (where you always hit and double your damage on a natural 20 and always miss on a natural 1) or rolling to see if you die at 0HP (you have to roll above modified 10 in a best-of-five to survive; nat-20 gets you back on your feet straight away, but rolling nat-1 counts as two losses). If you're trying to do anything else - searching for the entrance to the dragon's cave, sneaking past the dragon, seducing the dragon - a natural 20 just means your modified result is one more than if you'd rolled a natural 19 and represents the best result you could achieve in that moment, even if you don't succeed.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #224 on: 12 Dec 2020, 03:09 »

So......our PCs in the Saturday game just learned that the gods are actually A.I.s and that something's corrupting some of them.
[Also, apparently what's now known as Infernal was once a language called "English". :laugh:]
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"Broken swords and dragon bones scattered on the way back home."

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #225 on: 12 Dec 2020, 22:53 »

In our 5E game, our DM made the mistake of having us encounter a horde of sea hags trying to summon a flesh golem. He was expecting a huge, difficult boss fight, or for us to back off and leave them in peace. Instead, our wizard stepped into the room and immediately cast thunder wave. Only two made their save; he killed the other fifteen. Our rogue picked off the stragglers with throwing knives. The whole fight lasted only a couple seconds.

A few moments later, our chaotic evil gnome paladin (long story) smashed their source of power with a battle axe, got trapped in the shadow realm, and was possessed by a demon before I rescued him. If you're keeping track, that's a chaotic evil Oni gnome paladin with CON 19. Who wouldn't flee?

It happened again. We started a new campaign, and two sessions in, our druid killed nine grimlocks with one thunder wave (no chaotic evil Oni gnome paladin this time, unfortunately).
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #226 on: 13 Dec 2020, 22:44 »

In our 5E game, our DM made the mistake of having us encounter a horde of sea hags trying to summon a flesh golem. He was expecting a huge, difficult boss fight, or for us to back off and leave them in peace. Instead, our wizard stepped into the room and immediately cast thunder wave. Only two made their save; he killed the other fifteen. Our rogue picked off the stragglers with throwing knives. The whole fight lasted only a couple seconds.

A few moments later, our chaotic evil gnome paladin (long story) smashed their source of power with a battle axe, got trapped in the shadow realm, and was possessed by a demon before I rescued him. If you're keeping track, that's a chaotic evil Oni gnome paladin with CON 19. Who wouldn't flee?

It happened again. We started a new campaign, and two sessions in, our druid killed nine grimlocks with one thunder wave (no chaotic evil Oni gnome paladin this time, unfortunately).

Sounds like my Sunday Call of the Deep campaign.
Two party members: "We really need a ship. "
PM1: "Maybe we could take over this one?" (The one ehose crew has been helping us.)
PM2: "Mutiny could be fun, but we're outnumbered. We should buy one."
DM: "I gave you guys two opportunities to commandeer pirate ships and you sank BOTH of them!"
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #227 on: 15 Dec 2020, 12:13 »

Don't you just hate it when they won't follow the script?  :-D Take the party in my current Pathfinder campaign. I was running them through a murder-mystery scenario, and they decided that rather waste time investigating the crime, they are simply going to break the falsely-accused NPC bard out of jail. Never mind that the bard may not really like the idea of spending her life on the run - she's going to be more interested in proving her innocence in court. Also this is a very lawful society they're in and this action will make them outlaws for the rest of their days, potentially derailing all my future plans for this campaign.

Hopefully I've figured out how to head this off at the pass - last session ended just before they were going to execute their jailbreak plan.

This is what happens when there's not a single lawful PC in the game - two NG, two CG, two CN.  :roll:
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hedgie

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #228 on: 15 Dec 2020, 13:25 »

CN is usually just “chaotic stupid”. 

A short mystery that my players got involved in early on came to a quick end shortly after the Battle of the Feral Cat.
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Thrillho

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #229 on: 15 Dec 2020, 13:40 »

We're playing our rookie campaign with a very patient DM, and he had created a scenario where we were meant to fight a giant crab, but two of our party are pacifists in reality and in the game, and could speak to sea creatures, so we just made friends with a crab. Then we were possibly meant to steal a ship, but I instead blew the first mate in exchange for... passage.

He eventually threw us a grumpy crab that wouldn't take no for an answer, and we rolled so badly that our crab friend had to come save us from it.
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hedgie

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #230 on: 15 Dec 2020, 14:45 »

My first session as GM (in a long time) had a lot of first-time players, like 5 out of 7, and one of the two with any experience had only been doing it for a few months, and was a ship thing as well.  Somehow, putting them on a boat with a limited number of people to talk to for several weeks (they were making coastal port stops) seemed less contrived than the whole “you all meet in a tavern” sort of start.  Of course, they get attacked by pirates, with some human overseers and goblins (who were enslaved themselves), basically forcing hobbits to do all the grunt work.  Obviously, the party wanted to rescue the halflings, but I was surprised that they decided to free the goblins as well, and only turn the humans in to the authorities.  The party even declined the goblins’ idea of taking the humans with them, so that they wouldn’t need any other provisions. 

The point of this exercise wasn’t really a “test” in terms of pass/fail, but rather, trying to figure out where the party would sit morally.  Their arguments (especially those of the hobbit PC) were pretty impressive.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #231 on: 15 Dec 2020, 21:28 »

CN is usually just “chaotic stupid”. 

Common mistake by players that think chaotic only means "compelled to do the exact opposite of the law". I tend to find that such players also think all chaotic good characters have to be the Punisher and all their chaotic evil characters become the Joker (which is a valid interpretation at least).
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #232 on: 17 Dec 2020, 01:56 »

CN is usually just “chaotic stupid”. 

A short mystery that my players got involved in early on came to a quick end shortly after the Battle of the Feral Cat.
'Congratulations, you've pissed off the shopkeep. He's a level 20 abjuration wizard.'
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #233 on: 17 Dec 2020, 10:27 »

(click to show/hide)

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #234 on: 17 Dec 2020, 13:47 »

'Congratulations, you've pissed off the shopkeep. He's a level 20 abjuration wizard.'

In this case, I rewarded them, even though they did solve the mystery by cutting the knot instead of untying it.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #235 on: 18 Dec 2020, 08:10 »

A friend of mine wants to stretch his GM-ing muscles, so he's been running online one-shot adventures for LVL 5 characters.

I forgot how *fun* it is when your character dies, especially when what happened was just. Enough. To. Kill. Them.

I lost my Bard/Ranger multiclass due to carelessness, when one of the enemy scorpions burrowed into sand after we gave it a beating. Instead of, y'know, casting a Cure Wounds on my 7-HP character or something, I went to dig the beast up to finish it off.

One natural 1 on an Investigation roll later (which the GM ruled gave the scorpion a chance for a full round of attack, a ruling I was 100% fine with, especially since we were still technically in combat) and three-successful-attacks-and-poison-damage later, my character was instakilled.

Bit of a bummer, but also a bit funny, because the character had 7 HP and the first attack dealt exactly 7 damage. If one of the attacks missed, or if the first attack did just one point of damage less, my character would lay there dying, and there'd be enough time for him to be healed back to above 0 HP. But, no such luck.

I'm unironically enjoying how I lost my character. Flukes and weird series of rolls or very bad rolls are the kind of emergent mechanics-as-story that I play tabletop games for.

Sadly, my replacement character rolled like the worst attributes EVER and also terrible HP (19 HP for a 5-level Monk with unspectacular AC? Ouch). So there's a good chance I'll lose two characters in a row in two consecutive gaming sessions. I don't foresee such a weakling lasting very long. Plus, the only healing capability in the party is a Paladin with Lay on Hands, not exactly a medical powerhouse.

Granted, from the pure mechanics perspective I will *not* be missing the new character if they die. Other than DEX 20 and WIS 12 (and that's after bonuses from race and level), *all* the character's attributes are average or worse. It made building a competent character of ANY class basically impossible. And I didn't want to play a straight-up fighting type (plus, the two other characters in the party are already straightforwardly melee combat oriented), so I didn't go for a safe Barbarian with a large cushion of HP.
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #236 on: 19 Dec 2020, 05:49 »

You could go Divine Soul sorcerer or a warlock with a Celestial patron to get half a healer
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #237 on: 19 Dec 2020, 06:21 »

You could go Divine Soul sorcerer or a warlock with a Celestial patron to get half a healer

There's already a Fighter/Warlock, and I don't want to steal his spotlight.

But there's a good chance my next character (if this one dies) will be a Sorcerer of some kind, and it's not impossible they'll be a Divine Soul.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #238 on: 19 Dec 2020, 10:08 »

I've only ever been in one campaign (well, and half a one-shot), which is the one I'm in currently, so I don't have a ton of experience with things like "strategy," but anyway, last night we were fighting enemies that seemed a lot tougher than any we had faced so far (I think the DM at one point started dialing it back a bit to avoid a TPK), and at one point I rolled two nat 20s in consecutive turns to take one of them out. Which was exciting and quite possibly is what kept my character in the battle.
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #239 on: 19 Dec 2020, 12:43 »

You could go Divine Soul sorcerer or a warlock with a Celestial patron to get half a healer

There's already a Fighter/Warlock, and I don't want to steal his spotlight.

But there's a good chance my next character (if this one dies) will be a Sorcerer of some kind, and it's not impossible they'll be a Divine Soul.
Apparently there's a variety of sorcerer 'builds' based around the metamagic options you take[1]. I've never really tried any of them on purpose[2], but the two I know the names of are 'sniper' and 'nuker'.  I'm just going to assume that one's called 'utility caster' since that's a term I've heard tossed around in discussions about well balanced big parties.

[1]I vaguely remember some requiring/suggesting feats]
[2] I've accidentally built the sniper before
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Gyrre

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #240 on: 19 Dec 2020, 13:20 »

Not sure how one changes their vote, but I actually selected the option to allow it for the new poll.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #241 on: 19 Dec 2020, 21:24 »

Heh.  As the last game I was in as a player progressed, my witch went from being a fair all-around caster with a few off-heals and a bit of CC, to almost entirely CC/healing, with the occasional big nuke thrown in.  It happened soon enough (within the first 5 levels played at), that I was freely able to reroll some feats and spells known to accomodate that.  Sadly, it looks like that campaign is a covid casualty.  And of course, that’s right after hitting lvl 18 and getting my free combat-res.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #242 on: 19 Dec 2020, 23:58 »

Heh.  As the last game I was in as a player progressed, my witch went from being a fair all-around caster with a few off-heals and a bit of CC, to almost entirely CC/healing, with the occasional big nuke thrown in.  It happened soon enough (within the first 5 levels played at), that I was freely able to reroll some feats and spells known to accomodate that.  Sadly, it looks like that campaign is a covid casualty.  And of course, that’s right after hitting lvl 18 and getting my free combat-res.
As long you had fun, right?

At least Roll20 and D&D Beyond are things and can be combined with Discord.
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"Broken swords and dragon bones scattered on the way back home."

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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #243 on: 21 Dec 2020, 13:44 »

Update on my earlier post: I was able to convince the players to avoid busting the bard out of jail, and with a bit more investigation they managed to stumble on to the right culprit, thus solving the crime and avoiding becoming outlaws themselves.

In fact, in the next town they went to they quickly became heroes by driving off the air elementals that had been attacking people at random. However, they have drawn the wrong conclusion about who was summoning the air elementals, so they are heading off to fight some evil dwarves, leaving the air cultists to continue to terrorize the town. Yeah, it’s messy. :D
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #244 on: 24 Dec 2020, 01:11 »

.......Okay, so I've stumbled across some pretty amazing Minecraft remixes over the last couple of hours and soem of them are definitely going to be used for BGM for games I DM.

Might use this 'Shuniji' remix for a character death or something.
(click to show/hide)

BTW, there's also some pretty dang good synthwave remixes of MineCraft music.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #245 on: 22 May 2021, 12:34 »

This is embarrassing... but I've only NOW realised that flanking is an optional rule in 5E. There's nothing in base rules that grants automatic advantage of positioning.

Don't get me wrong, I always *ran* 5E like that, because automatic advantage is a bit much (and as I've seen pointed out when looking this up, in 5E moving around the zone an enemy threatens doesn't provoke AoO, so it's trivial compared to previous editions).

But I didn't know I was actually running RAW, not house ruling.

I think it's a combination of being used to previous editions and Pathfinder 1E, and conflating the two ALTERNATE requirements for Rogue's Sneak Attack in 5E (one being "a friend is also near your target" and the other being "you have Advantage").

But seriously, it's embarrassing that I never noticed something like this. I've been running various TTRPG for like two decades now, and I still apparently sometimes assume I know the rules without actually reading them to make sure?

I seriously was so surprised by this that I kept both looking it up and Googling it. The old way it used to work was so strongly embedded in my brain.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #246 on: 27 Jun 2021, 19:49 »

Our current Saturday campaign DM only allows flanking for rogues and creatures with pack tactics.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #247 on: 28 Jun 2021, 06:56 »

Our current Saturday campaign DM only allows flanking for rogues and creatures with pack tactics.

Technically, rogues don't need flanking for Sneak Attack (but the requirement is similar to flanking in 3E), and pack tactics is not technically flanking. So I'm assuming y'all are playing RAW?
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #248 on: 30 Jun 2021, 11:56 »

At a guess, rogues get their usual bag of tricks, but they - and only they - also get advantage for flanking. Fighters, druids, wizards, the rest, they can't get advantage for flanking.

That said, I have heard of far to many DMs who say "look, it's called Sneak Attack! Ya gotta be sneaky!" when really it should be called something like Cheap Shot or Stick-em-where-it-hurts or something. It would stop a lot of so-called balance arguments.
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Re: D&D Pathfinder
« Reply #249 on: 02 Jul 2021, 07:20 »

Yeah, by now it's pretty much a legacy name. It's a "kick'em in the nuts" or "stab'em in the pancreas" kind of attack, it's not explicitly about attacking from the dark like in 1E or AD&D.
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