The Gaming Den

Axebird wrote:One of the bullet points on the back of the box is that 2nd Edition is supposed to simplify and condense the game.

That shit definitely isn't happening. The core rulebook is apparently going to be 640 pages.

560 pages for the PF1 equivalent. It's not a lot more but yeah, certainly not less.

I start smaller. The immediate neighbours, maybe include notes that your Mayan-expies exist to the East or across the sea, but mapping the world can wait. Partly to give me room to adjust, partly because when I'm starting a game it's usually in a hurry because someone else's game has crashed for one...

Eberron is lousy with deceased empires. Their ruined fortresses / temples / banks make for dungeons. Also useful manifest zones are one more reason to keep building on the same site, I forget how many layers Sharn was supposed to have. There's any number of urban fantasies where the 'dungeons' are j...

No sources sorry, but I remember reading that she was a volcano goddess and, in her original conception, Evil. I'd bet that Gygax was drawing on half-remembered stuff about Pele.

The earliest you can reasonably say New Zealand became independent was 1856. Again, but that is a continuance of its democratic tradition. Speaking as a Kiwi who studied a bit of our history - before 1840 there wasn't an NZ, there were various Maori tribes. From 1840-1860s it was being colonised by...

The mismatch between what the readers and developers liked is easiest to explain if they just weren't the same people. Communication failure is common and different likes is normal, especially if the readers weren't going to have to develop it. And if the writeup included some image - maybe the half...

Suppose conflict breaks out over the moon, or minable asteroids or whatever. A bit on from today - you'll need the excuse to beef up the amount anyone can send into high orbit. Still, sending 50+ tonne tanks or space fighters there isn't an option, it's not just unimaginably expensive it's actually ...

There's reward abilities which can give something out at levels lower than the PCs can do the same. Not actually unavailable to the PCs but possibly unavailable at this level. Healing (including condition removal like stone to flesh), wishes (I know the Denners tend to think that calling an efreet a...

The ruby knight vindicator gets the ability at 7th to trade a turn/rebuke undead attempt for a swift action. Apparently at no action cost. That's good just as written and there are character builds which abuse it to do weird and sometimes impressive things. If Wee Jas was anything like popular or ev...

When it was first being put together I remember thinking the character creation was about torturing the players in the same way a lot of Worm was about torturing the characters. It still looks that way. Success rolls use 1d6 vs. target number 4, with a + (stat-3) applied and some skills adding 1 or ...

So we can compute: every level, a character gains +1/2 +1.5/10 +1/5 +1/10 = +0.95 to hit (or AC or defense or whatever). This is not equal to +1. At level 20, you're 1 point behind. So: You fall behind the monsters. I don't know how they can have missed this, this is really simple math. I think whe...

Maybe a halfling patroller (yellow) is a level 2 creature in your monster list but it's easy in your system to add a level or two, or similarly you have a junior/lesser/basic template and a advanced/major/greater template to vary its stats from level 3 with. It hardly makes sense that every patrolle...

Is that a bulette with rabbit ears or what?

The warblade getting to swap their focus/spec feats to a new weapon is an obvious workaround to the 'This greataxe we took off the undead antipaladin would be cool, but my feats are for a greatsword ' annoyance that D&D players have run into many times. The name crusader having unfortunate conno...

So someone who has a noble warrior with holy magic in adventuring tier, a Paladin advances to the next tier and has the options of becoming a Warrior Mage, an Adept (whatever that is) or a Warden. Is that how this works?

A few specific feats given by a class seems to me to be better than requiring every class feature to be its own unique thing. If you had free range to choose feats then combat casting isn't one you're going to take, but it makes sense for the duskblade to get it or something like it. Similarly for a...

FWIW, PF2 also fails in every way at allowing to people to ride dragons. There's no option to do so, the riding rules are crippling even if you had such an option, and monsters are built differently from anything on the PC side to the point where you are advised to ... somehow ... rebuild a monster ...

erik wrote:Also I think it is a mistake to go rainbow rather than using the more evocative white and black colors.

Yup. Snip out brown and cyan, replace with black and white respectively and you have a more memorable list IMO.

There should be some online dice rollers which can handle their fancy dice. I know there are a couple which can do the warhammer 3 dice; I don't know whether these are the same as the Genesys dice.

Having said that, obviously I haven't played Genesys or the related Star Wars game.

So Democracy is not a synonym for rule of the majority. Simple majority rule is mob rule and doesn't form a functional or lasting government. Democracy requires some level of delineated rights for all citizens and protections for minorities from the tyranny of the majority. Sounds like an oversimpl...

The hit points look like they'll be a bit variable. Is it expected to start with a couple of families of peasants under its belt, or as given? What if the party arrives 10 minutes too late to save the village? Or even a day too late, 24 off a couple hundred bonus Con is still a big bonus. Edit: it m...

Your basic adventurer whose family are all dead and who has no other connections to any living being outside their adventuring party isn't going to set down roots that the GM can use to affect them. It's a sort of paranoia.

A shame too since including were-great cats almost requires non caucasians; there were wild lions in Europe but that was a long time ago. A clan of African were-lions and one of Asiatic were-tigers, and maybe some Aztec were-jaguars would have gone a long way to expanding the possible PC origins. I'...

So they've got a new game boost at least, but it mightn't be wise for them to do an extended playtest of PF2 relying on Starfinder cashflow. Thanks.

Does anyone know if Starfinder is at all popular? On the shelves in places where local game stores still exist &/or played at RPG conventions are measures which occur to me, but I'll take anything.