The Gaming Den

sigma999 wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:The extreme form of the statement is that if I painted an ox turd out of ox poop on a canvas, that would be a unique piece of art that there was onl one of in the whole world - and that therefore people should be willing to trade me for a statue of The Thinker because there are about two dozen of those and only one Ox Poop.

...

..

. what?

Translation: Just because alertness is one of just 7 things of one type you can have, doesn't mean its more valuable than a holy avenger, which you could, in theory, have infinite numbers of. Or at least a dozen.

Relative rarity != value.

sigma999 wrote:

Caedrus wrote: We're talking about PF now? Also, I thought I could use 3.5e supplements with pathfinder, even if we are.

I'll be dissecting it for the choice bits, if any, like any other d20 publication.
Keep what you like, scrap the rest.

As for familiars and actions, I think they would work best almost as an additional limb for the PC. It increases diversity of options but not amount each round.
They increase options but don't bog the character down by dying or whatnot.
As long as the character lives, it can be brought back the next day.
At higher levels it would survive a character's death as a form on Contingent Resurrection... or a pseudo-Magic Jar at best, preventing soul stealing.

hmmm... where have I heard stuff like thiss before?

Prak_Anima wrote:...Couple feats, Acquire Familiar, Sacrificial Mastery(unfinished))
...
and also, if you want it, a refinement of my last post in the feats thread:
Haha, Your Pet DiedThe Joke D&D Tells to People Who Just Lost Their Closest Companion
D&D mandates that if you've lost your familiar you must lose a load of XP and spend a year and a day in mourning. This is a Joke, people, just like material components, and it's not funny. It is a reference to occult stupidity and their obsession with this "magical" length of time. It's also a reference to Wicca. This makes us cry because it is rule enforced RP-ing, and takes away a reasonably beneficial class ability. There's also the xp loss, which is really just wizards kicking you in the balls while you're already rolling around on the ground.
So here's what we're going to do. If your familiar dies, you can go out and get a new one that next instant, in fact, you can go do that while your familiar is still alive, you just can't have more than your normal number of familiars, and your old familiar retains many of it's abilities, enough to probably be very pissed off at you.
If, however, you want to roleplay your character's period of mourning, or whatever else would make them wait, you can choose a [Magic] feat to have in place of a familiar until you obtain a new familiar.
About the XP penalty, forget it, I see no reason to kick a grown man in the balls after he's just lost a very close companion. Unless I'm already trying to stab said man in the face, but then I'll just literally kick him in the balls.

Voss wrote:Translation: Just because alertness is one of just 7 things of one type you can have, doesn't mean its more valuable than a holy avenger, which you could, in theory, have infinite numbers of. Or at least a dozen.

Relative rarity != value.

Thank you.


Prak: I've never read that (or at least, I don't remember it) but I am glad you linked to it. However, my proposal is different; read closely and you'll note the differences even though both are valid:

Prak's - You may acquire a new familiar to replace the dead one at any time, or you may swap out your current familiar for a new one with no delay.

Sig's - You may bring your old familiar back to life after 24 hours. (I didn't consider the option switching animals, but it could be the same as having the old one "die")

Either way, there's no cost to the player, so it's all fine. Comes down to personal choice I suppose.
I do see a connection; it's almost as if the property of being a 'familiar creature' were some sort of possession you pass on to a new host, like some kind of spirit parasite. That transferable essence could be a portion of the spellcaster owner or an entity unto itself but either way it certainly has non-perishable, ephemereal qualities.

I wasn't accusing you of plagarism or anything, I think I was more supporting your suggestion... and yeah, they are compatible.

Voss wrote: The odd thing is, the point he makes that RC quotes isn't as stupid as it could be if you accept his assumptions (that feats are actually good and useful, and stay that way, so at high level you actually care about them). Its the other stuff that he goes on about that really sounds stupid.

Honestly I thought that the one I quoted was the dumbest of his statements, because it's pretty much something that's never going to happen in an RPG and is pure MMORPG thinking. He's saying that you can go farm gold by going to the "weak zone" and fighting crap that's 7 levels below you, so you don't go XP and just grind out extra treasure.

People generally play tabletop RPGs because they don't want to grind, especially given how much longer the battles take.

I mean the grinding thing would be a stupid thing for a regular poster on the forums to say, but coming from a game designer... man... that has to be just about the dumbest thing I've heard in a while.

The rest of what SKR said is riddled with holes, but it's the kind of stuff I expect from a low grade game designer. It's old thinking and flawed logic, but it's pretty expected really. The fact that he's saying gold farming is a legitimate play style just leads me to wonder if the guy has played D&D at all. Because I can't think of a group ever that has had the PCs just run around gold farming weak monsters. You know either the DM or one or more of the PCs are going to say "Fuckballs this is boring!" and go do something more interesting after one or two battles.

My overall impression is he has no idea what the fuck he is talking about. Which explains why Pathfinder feats have actually gotten weaker, while he still claims they're as good as stuff. Because as we all know, nerfing Power Attack, nerfing Improved Trip, and making Dodge require an action to use is totally the way to go. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Prak_Anima wrote:I wasn't accusing you of plagarism or anything, I think I was more supporting your suggestion... and yeah, they are compatible.

I know it's not an accusation, and I'm still glad you brought that up or else I'd have never seen it.

Although, very recently I did have an identical concept for gestalt adaptation that someone else had thought up a while ago. I mean like the same fucking thing.

Roy wrote:Because as we all know, nerfing Power Attack, nerfing Improved Trip, and making Dodge require an action to use is totally the way to go. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Dodge requires an action to use in PF?

Wow... lame.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Roy wrote:Because as we all know, nerfing Power Attack, nerfing Improved Trip, and making Dodge require an action to use is totally the way to go. Yes, that was sarcasm.

Dodge requires an action to use in PF?

Wow... lame.

Granted, it's now 1 AC period (and 2 if you have 10 ranks in Acrobatics) but Swift action to activate. Making it intrude upon the Action Economy automatically makes it held to a much higher standard.

Roy wrote: Granted, it's now 1 AC period (and 2 if you have 10 ranks in Acrobatics) but Swift action to activate. Making it intrude upon the Action Economy automatically makes it held to a much higher standard.

Psssh. Pass. I'd glance at that and never give it a second consideration, unless it had a monstrously good yet speed-based brief feat chain following it.

You might end up taking it for lack of anything better to get, if you end up in a group that decides it would be best to not allow any feats outside of Pathfinder's book.

virgileso wrote:You might end up taking it for lack of anything better to get, if you end up in a group that decides it would be best to not allow any feats outside of Pathfinder's book.

What a grotesque notion! How could you?

I'm in a group right now that goes by such. Except for me, they freakin' love the concept. They love how Improved Trip was nerfed, infact, feeling that it was OP and encouraged too many one-trick pony fighters. They hate grapple specialists for similar reasons, though I haven't looked too hard to see how they fare in PF.

They're... odd. All the combat manuevers got shoved onto the same table, and size modifiers are frankly trivial. It basically boils down to the following rule:
if you specialize in it (drop the feats and whatnot), you can violate people who don't specialize in it on a fairly reliable basis (50-65% odds). So any grab monster or fighter/monk grapple specialist can bend a wizard over a table and pound away.

However, two specialists are going to be rolling for the sky (17+) to do anything to each other. So Beowulf vs. Grendel (or a 10th level fighter vs a fire giant) turns into:
Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Temporary Success!, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail, Fail.
Which is boring as fuck. And anyone with half a brain will know that if you encounter any sort of fighter type as a fighter type, your only option (quite literally) is to stab it in the face. Do something 'interesting' and you'll get your face torn off as the foe fails to play stupid.

The biggest change is the druids are only so-so at it. If you max strength and wildshape large, and take the feats you can compete with a fighter or fire giant, but only barely. And if you use the PF point buy, you just can't do that, since it rapes you for wanting to be competent at even one thing, let alone two.


As for reseting everything to 0 and just using Pathfinder- its pretty much the only way I see it as viable. Its a slightly more functional patch on the 3.5 core material (with some missteps), but if you let everything else in, its going to explode, just like 3.5. Except the explosion will be... more green and slightly oblong. Or some other cosmetic variation.


As for SKR... eh. A lot of stupid shit in there. The crap about whirlwind attack is particularly funny, since it can't actually be done. You can't take spring attack until 4th level, and its still a prereq for whirlwind attack. Plus, of course, anyone who does it is a sucker anyway, since you're setting fire to two different feats and bumping a pair of stats that don't give you much as a fighter.

As for the gold farming... this is a bit more old school, but going for coins isn't exactly unheard of. 'Greyhawking' really is an accurate term for loot based adventuring. And even in 3rd edition, some groups will want to do that. They just won't go after plothooks until they have the cash to upgrade a couple weapons to <Big Bad's Type> Bane weapons. And it isn't even an invalid playstyle no matter how much 4e says so. Or how often True Gamers of whatever type scream BadWrongFun!

Psychic Robot wrote:Heh heh heh.

How is it that you can ask a question about the price of the books used to stat out a 3e character, and have people assume that you're attacking 4e for being too expensive and not having druids yet?

virgileso wrote:I'm in a group right now that goes by such. Except for me, they freakin' love the concept. They love how Improved Trip was nerfed, infact, feeling that it was OP and encouraged too many one-trick pony fighters. They hate grapple specialists for similar reasons, though I haven't looked too hard to see how they fare in PF.

Because Fighters totally have a long list of options.

What amuses me most about it is they went and gave everyone more feats, but made feats either the same or suck more, so really it's the same or even worse. But those that don't know any better will think they're getting a good deal.

Roy wrote:

virgileso wrote:I'm in a group right now that goes by such. Except for me, they freakin' love the concept. They love how Improved Trip was nerfed, infact, feeling that it was OP and encouraged too many one-trick pony fighters. They hate grapple specialists for similar reasons, though I haven't looked too hard to see how they fare in PF.

Because Fighters totally have a long list of options.

What amuses me most about it is they went and gave everyone more feats, but made feats either the same or suck more, so really it's the same or even worse. But those that don't know any better will think they're getting a good deal.

Man, I got bored with lack of combat action and non-combat choices in my games and simply have doubled the amount of feats a character gets every time that they would get a feat (yes, it means that fighters know everything about fighting, but so fucking what? It's not like the Barb is crying about being able to tunnel through granite with his pinky fingers or that the rogue is Snake Eyes).

Of course, this is for a game with 3 PCs running in 'standard' adventures (or w/e), and stats start with elite array.

On the other hand... they're very atypical characters: a stripped down illithid grapple wizard, a were-Dire Bat catfolk (no class yet, just HD), a modified nymph wizard, an aasimar child necro cleric, a half-orc barb and a human.... rogue 1/bard 1/fighter 1 >_>).

Judging__Eagle wrote: .... rogue 1/bard 1/fighter 1 >_>).

I just laughed, cried, or bothed.

Then there's the happy player in my group who chose to be a were-eagle, sacrificing DR and the ability to have ANY gear shift with him when he turns into an eagle (all gear falls to the ground) to reduce the LA by 1.

virgileso wrote:Then there's the happy player in my group who chose to be a were-eagle, sacrificing DR and the ability to have ANY gear shift with him when he turns into an eagle (all gear falls to the ground) to reduce the LA by 1.

0_o. You have got to toss him out of a balloon or something. :-D Kidding.

Judging__Eagle wrote:a were-Dire Bat catfolk (no class yet, just HD)

I'm sure he or she is a fantastic warrior.

I played a L2 Succubus once (actually Incubus, little difference) out of Savage Species. No change to the racial class properties, although the CHA bonus was nerfed a bit by delaying it.

To put it simple, it sucked. No casting. No combat tactics. Pretty much a tough scout with resistances (and immune to poison) thanks to the racial bonuses to Spot and Listen and generous Outsider HD.

If we had the Tome fiends, I would have never given SS a second chance.

MartinHarper wrote:

Psychic Robot wrote:Heh heh heh.

How is it that you can ask a question about the price of the books used to stat out a 3e character, and have people assume that you're attacking 4e for being too expensive and not having druids yet?

WTF? I, at least, am seeing exactly an attack on 4E (e.g. "Martial Power") ...

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... pic=2125.0
I hope somebody gets a kick out of that.

Added a story of my own.

ubernoob wrote:http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards ... pic=2125.0
I hope somebody gets a kick out of that.

Fucking +10 INTERNETS FOR YOU

That's like Kids In The Hall quality right there.

Pics?