Questions regarding The Tome Series

[Blicero]

There are also a number of people who have filled in the missing abilities. And Josh is neglecting to mention he's done a fairly large amount of work on making the Tome Armor system at least semiplayable.

[Libertad]

More Tome questions!

1. If a 12th level Cleric with a +9 BAB casts Divine Power on himself, does he gain the +11 BAB benefits of any Combat Feats he has?

2. Can the +1 BAB ability of Point Blank Shot be applied to splash weapons? How about the +6 BAB ability of Zen Archery? Edit: already answered

[Quantumboost]

More Tome questions!

1. If a 12th level Cleric with a +9 BAB casts Divine Power on himself, does he gain the +11 BAB benefits of any Combat Feats he has?

Yes, for so long as the spell lasts. Divine Power shouldn't exist, but it does, and that's what happens.

[Libertad]

2) You can make sure souls go to the right place. This is why Celestials participate in the soul economy--the souls of saints and heroes who deserve to go to their rest. You can totally be Good (TM) and participate in the soul trade, swapping good soul for magic items and loot of equivalent value.

A pile of tree souls =/= the soul of a legendary paladin or wizard, in the same way that a hill of onions isn't worth your magic sword. You'd have to have a mountain of them to approach the metaphysical mass that one soul gives. No one's going to bother with carting around mountains of gemstones for souls that are of less value, magically speaking, than the stones they're in. Not to mention the time and effort of capturing all those souls (and the gemstone sources).

I'm still not getting that vibe. Trading souls like currency seems akin to slavery, even if you're trading Good heroic souls for Celestial Plate Mail. And the Soul Merchant's class features give him gateways to Finality, a Lower Planes Infernal city, and it mentions under the Finality description (page 379) that the soul-trading practice is undeniably evil.

Not really much of an issue in games I plan to run (soul trading would be Evil); I'm just wondering where you got that from.

[K]

The soul trade can be considered like a prisoner exchange.

That being said, the soul trade itself is evil because it creates a reason for evil people to go around trapping innocent souls for profit.

[Libertad]

Questions regarding the Knight's Code of Conduct:

A Knight must not accept undue assistance from allies even in combat. A Knight must refuse bonuses from
Aid Another actions.

1. Undue assistance sounds broader that aid another. Can a Knight let himself be the target of buff spells from the spellcasters? And what necessarily makes the aid another action qualify as "undue assistance?" The term implies that the Knight accepts only what is strictly necessary; a +2 bonus isn't going to be excessive in many circumstances.

2. Why can't the Knight sell magic items?

3. Are there any PHB feats which are meant to be alongside the scaling feats? Like Natural Spell, for instance?

4. Also, how do characters get proficient in heavier armor and shields? Use the PHB proficiency feats? I'd assume that it would work similar to the Tome weapon proficiency rules.

[K]

1. The first bit is flavor/explanation. Ignore it.

2. It's an arbitrary restriction, like most "honor" restrictions. A knight's magic items are trophies of his victories, and it would be unseemly to sell them.

3. It's assumed you'd use any feats from any source, with Tome feats being much better than regular fighting feats and naturally crowding them out.

4. Considering how easy it is to get armor proficiency and get around the rules, I'd have no problem with people using the Tome Exotic Weapon rules.

[Libertad]

Thanks for the answers!

It's inevitable that I'll get more questions when I run a game.

[Judging__Eagle]

The soul trade can be considered like a prisoner exchange.

Which is how I've treated it with my more morally ambigious, but absolutely not Fiend friendly, characters; at higher/highest levels. I once threw Koumei with a bit of a curve with that, when the employer was Belial, and I asked one of the Lords of the Nine to pay my fiend-slayer in souls of good creatures to be returned/cashed in in the upper planes. Mostly because it was the most moral reward I could think of to get from a Fiend. Finally, helping other creatures regain agency and independence works for a CN rogue/bard/monk/fighter's conscience.

In a game that I ran, the "Evil Bracer" (Stranger w/ the Burning Eyes) in a level 11, or 12, game grew to earn radically massive amounts of "wealth" simply by casting Magic Jar as often as they could; and shoving the souls into sapphires on their golen bracer (also their 'distinctive' item). However the creatures captured were either evil or neutral, and the ridiculous thing is that the player decided he'd rather not spend his earned loot... he just kept banking and banking it.

[Libertad]

There's some Pathfinder fans I know in my area. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

What if I wanted to be really naughty and implement the Tomes in a Pathfinder game?



Anything I should keep in mind?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Well, Pathfinder isn't backwards compatible with D&D, so you'd have to re-write pretty much everything. Other than that, it would probably work OK.

[Judging__Eagle]

Print off the PDF make a 'new' page that has has something such as "The Tomes of the Pathfinders"; and then hand out that as your rulebook; saying how you found some people who did the "Pathfinding" of doing a slightly better D&D kuldge than Paizo did.

or, play something like AWoD. I've been able to compress three individual characters acting independently; meeting some NPCs; then joining up as a team; travelling out of civilized lands and killing three manticores. In the first session, in a bit under 3 hrs of gameplay.

The combat was the shortest part, taking about 20 minutes.

The rest of it was the players deciding on what sort of equipment their characters had crafted before coming into play; and the fact that the arms dealer has a wagon full of military weapons.... in a pseudo-bronze age setting.

The handy thing is that while there may be any sorts of gaps when changing from a modern seting to a chalcolithic setting aren't impossible to fill. In part due to having tables that outline similar or related types of information (only stuff like equipment has this issue; everything else from flying to melee options already are handled), and in part to having the basic mechanic of "roll dice pool; add up hits, all hits compare with this chart; 0 is tie your shoes; 6 is superhuman".

Of course, it's not perfect, but I'm happy so far. I'm also much happier about how easy this system is to teach as well. Clean systems are good to introduce to people new to gaming, and I tend to invite newbies into my games a lot.

[Libertad]

Well, Pathfinder isn't backwards compatible with D&D, so you'd have to re-write pretty much everything. Other than that, it would probably work OK.

Print off the PDF make a 'new' page that has has something such as "The Tomes of the Pathfinders"; and then hand out that as your rulebook; saying how you found some people who did the "Pathfinding" of doing a slightly better D&D kuldge than Paizo did.

You're all just afraid I'm going to combine a ruleset you love with one that you hate.

[RadiantPhoenix]

How about this as a pitch: "I found some cool ideas on the Internet and think we should try them out..."

[Midnight_v]

Well, Pathfinder isn't backwards compatible with D&D, so you'd have to re-write pretty much everything. Other than that, it would probably work OK.

Print off the PDF make a 'new' page that has has something such as "The Tomes of the Pathfinders"; and then hand out that as your rulebook; saying how you found some people who did the "Pathfinding" of doing a slightly better D&D kuldge than Paizo did.

You're all just afraid I'm going to combine a ruleset you love with one that you hate.

I just don't think anyone would play that really. . .
Not if they know whats going on.
Ninja'd by above Radiant advice.

[Libertad]

How about this as a pitch: "I found some cool ideas on the Internet and think we should try them out..."

That's the pitch I was thinking.

Besides, I think that Pathfinder's so full of little rules changes that it would be too hard to keep up with two house-ruled systems.

The Pathfinder question was sort of a joke: not something I'd normally do, but would if it was somehow feasible.

[K]

You could combine Tome with Pathfinder as long as the order of operations is done correctly.

I mean, Pathfinder is a gludge on top of DnD 3.5, but it fails on a number of issues so applying Tome would work in correcting those.

This means you'd have to start with 3.5, then add Pathfinder, and then add Tome.

This means Tome fighting classes would be used instead of the crappy Pathfinder ones, but you could retain several of Pathfinder's spot fixes if you wanted like their answer to polymorphing. I mean, they powered up spellcasters enough that it compensates for any nerfs to a few spells.

Second, why would anything think we hate Pathfinder? I mean, I think people here don't think it's a superior form of 3.5 as it was advertised as, but "hate" is taking it too far.

I hate 4e because reading the rules is boring as shit, but Pathfinder is just a fan-clone of a better system and still gets some of my good will because of that.

[Mask_De_H]

People outside of the Den thinks that Denners hate everything and having anything critical to say is bad.

[erik]

I think some people on here hated Pathfinder (or at least Paizo and their forum members) because the open playtest or whatever they called it was a not legit and instead was just clever marketing.

As an end product however Pathfinder is not terribly different that 3.5. They are both a failed attempt to fix 3e. 3.5 and Pathfinder both are basically just different flavors of 3e, and as such they aren't bad games by any stretch. They just failed to do what they claimed, and are full of tiny changes for the sake of change that make it an aggravating exercise to keep the different rule changes in mind when playing a particular edition. I don't find either of them particularly superior to original 3e, just different enough to be considered a slightly different version.

[Libertad]

Second, why would anything think we hate Pathfinder? I mean, I think people here don't think it's a superior form of 3.5 as it was advertised as, but "hate" is taking it too far.

Many Gaming Denizens were angry at the Paizo designers for not getting rid of Linear Warriors/Quadratic Wizards among other rules changes, and eventually got into arguments with other posters. It wasn't long before flame wars started. It was like, 3-4 years ago, so I don't think that many casual posters here were personally involved. I do recall that Frank was very bitter towards the Paizo designers around this time.

So it's more the designers' decisions than the game itself, but the two do seem to cross-over.

[Kaelik]

Second, why would anything think we hate Pathfinder? I mean, I think people here don't think it's a superior form of 3.5 as it was advertised as, but "hate" is taking it too far.

Many Gaming Denizens were angry at the Paizo designers for not getting rid of Linear Warriors/Quadratic Wizards among other rules changes, and eventually got into arguments with other posters. It wasn't long before flame wars started. It was like, 3-4 years ago, so I don't think that many casual posters here were personally involved. I do recall that Frank was very bitter towards the Paizo designers around this time.

So it's more the designers' decisions than the game itself, but the two do seem to cross-over.

Libertard... K knows about the events you speak of, since he's one of the main players in said events.

K doesn't need you to explain why Pathfinder playtest was stupid, he was there.

What he wants to know is why anyone would think we find Pathfinder to be a shitty game, when our entire point has basically always been that it's nearly the same game as 3e, the best edition of D&D.

[Libertad]

What he wants to know is why anyone would think we find Pathfinder to be a shitty game, when our entire point has basically always been that it's nearly the same game as 3e, the best edition of D&D.

Because it failed in the Den's eyes to fix the most common problems of D&D, something it promised to do.

But the major reason is because there also was a significant level of Gaming Den/Paizo boards flaming by posters on both sides.

This second thing made the whole endeavor personal. There's not so much problems with saying "This game's not my thing, and here's why." It's quite another when people start accusing each other of engaging in intellectual dishonesty, resort to personal attacks, and people start getting banned from Paizo.

This is why people think that the Gaming Den hates Pathfinder. Internet drama.

[Kaelik]

What he wants to know is why anyone would think we find Pathfinder to be a shitty game, when our entire point has basically always been that it's nearly the same game as 3e, the best edition of D&D.

Because it failed in the Den's eyes to fix the most common problems of D&D, something it promised to do.

But the major reason is because there also was a significant level of Gaming Den/Paizo boards flaming by posters on both sides.

This second thing made the whole endeavor personal. There's not so much problems with saying "This game's not my thing, and here's why." It's quite another when people start accusing each other of engaging in intellectual dishonesty, resort to personal attacks, and people start getting banned from Paizo.

This is why people think that the Gaming Den hates Pathfinder. Internet drama.

Right, but see, here's the thing.

If I said, "Libertard thinks X."

And then you ask why I would think that you think X. There is no reason for me to inform you of the content of one of your posts.

K is one of the main players in said internet drama, possibly even more than Frank. So there is no reason for you to talk about the factual situation of the events, because K fucking knows that. So if he asks why, you should instead provide a reasoning from the background facts.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Right, but see, here's the thing.

If I said, "Libertard thinks X."

And then you ask why I would think that you think X. There is no reason for me to inform you of the content of one of your posts.

I would actually consider, "because you said Y," to be a potentially valid answer -- you're trying to explain why you believe someone believes something, and you probably think that because of something they said (or didn't say, but...).

[Libertad]

Right, but see, here's the thing.

If I said, "Libertard thinks X."

And then you ask why I would think that you think X. There is no reason for me to inform you of the content of one of your posts.

K is one of the main players in said internet drama, possibly even more than Frank. So there is no reason for you to talk about the factual situation of the events, because K fucking knows that. So if he asks why, you should instead provide a reasoning from the background facts.

The debacle at Paizo is the reason why people think that the Gaming Den hates Pathfinder. The old posts are gone, so people only have memories and others' words to go by. And Paizo says that the Gaming Den was full of elitist jerks who badmouthed the designers, while folks at the Gaming Den criticized designers and Paizo fans for not seeing things their way. Outsiders view the message board arguments as being full of bad blood, like the current Edition War.

I don't know if this is an adequate answer, but it's the best one I've got.