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Messages - Maelphaxerazz

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21
Introduce Yourself / Re: Hello there
« on: May 31, 2018, 04:37:24 PM »
What do you mean by “adding a message to know it”?

22
General D&D Discussion / Re: Pathfinder 2nd Ed Announced
« on: April 04, 2018, 01:28:45 PM »
Waitaminute, they are selling a playtest. They even have a special edition! Of a playtest. If this actually works, it is a revelation about how the RPG market works.  :psyduck

A playtest book is guaranteed to be outdated almost immediately (as the rules are changed according to feedback from the playtesters), and they say right on the page that the rules are going to be available for free online.  Almost all of Paizo's rules are available online, so that is normal. The fact that they sell any books at all means that there are enough people who prefer books over tablets at the game table, plus collectors, to make a profit from print.

Up until this point, I thought the people who prefer books over tablets outnumber the collectors. But this run suggests that Paizo knows otherwise. When the rules are updated, the people who prefer books will still need a tablet (or lots of printouts) to play the game: thus, they have no reason to buy it. Which means that Paizo's real moneymakers are the collectors, for whom a $60 collector's edition of a playtest is fine even if the book is effectively useless. They weren't planning to use it anyway.

23
I would say yes, you can light campfires with a breath weapon. While normal use of breath weapon does not cause things to catch on fire, the rules for forest fires and wildfires (DMG 87 and RC 107) say that sufficiently dry vegetation can be lit on fire by lightning strikes or careless use of fire. If lightning strikes can light dry vegetation, then I think flaming breath weapons should be able to do the same. After all, though the breath weapon does not have "lights things on fire" in its description, neither does Call Lightning or Control Weather.

You won't be able to light wet wood on fire, but it will light the same things a flint and steel can light, and probably more.

24
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: "Feats are nice but should not be necessary."
« on: February 26, 2018, 02:14:32 PM »
Feats should not be needed for basic mechanical function. And for everything above t4, that's true.
Let's reverse this. Tier 3 and up should require feats to function. Tier 4 and below shouldn't. You want more power? Build harder. That's fair.
"Fair" depends on how you measure it, and I do not think feat taxes are the way to go with upper tiers. The imbalance problem isn't about how hard it is to build something: as soon as one person knows how to build it and posts it online, everybody else knows too.

If one's goal is to make things "fair", it makes more sense to nerf the actual spells rather than nerf it through a secondary system such feats. If tier 1-3 classes are tier 1-3 only if you choose certain feats, they are still tier 1-3, and the root problem remains. It would be a net negative for everybody: the high-tier players because they are narrowed into a few builds, and the low-tier players because the imbalance has not meaningfully changed.

25
Min/Max 3.x / Re: Fun Pathfinds
« on: February 15, 2018, 11:32:07 PM »
EDIT: There was an idea in this post until I realized my idea wouldn't work. So have a kitten instead!


26
I prefer Elan, myself. Or gaining the Endless special quality from Dragon 354. All the eternal life with less of the "I'm a walking corpse" factor.

27
Most petitioners lose their skills and feats, which suggests a rather severe form of amnesia. If a smith loses his craft, and a dancer loses his art, and a sage loses his knowledge... are they really themselves, any more? There isn't much promise in becoming a petitioner.

28
That would be fun to watch. Succubus versus Erinyes would be even better.

29
Say a Vile character double-crosses his fiendish patrons, taking both Hellsworn and Abyss-Bound Soul. In the event of that character's death, where does the soul go: the Abyss or the Nine Hells of Baator? Or is there another possibility entirely?

30
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: "Feats are nice but should not be necessary."
« on: November 24, 2017, 03:04:32 PM »
Nah, just forgot about it. Edited it in now. Along with Overrun, while we're at it.

31
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: "Feats are nice but should not be necessary."
« on: November 21, 2017, 03:19:06 PM »
I had a similar conversation with one of my friends several months ago but I was unable to homebrew this mechanic. Can you please show me an example of a "how a feat should be" ??
It isn't so much about how a feat should be as how combat maneuvers should be, or how classes should be. Basically, if the action or class is useless without the feat, then all or some of the benefit of the feat should be a baseline part of the action or class.

For example: nobody ever attempts to Disarm a character unless they have the Improved Disarm feat, because you both lose an attack against the target and give the target an attack against you, all while still having the chance of failure. As such, Improved Disarm is not merely nice to have if you want to disarm someone: it is absolutely necessary if you ever want to even consider trying without shooting yourself in the foot. So, this is how I think the feat should look like:

Improved Style [General]
You fight with your own unique flair.
Benefit: Choose two of the following special attacks: bull rush, disarm, grapple, overrun, sunder, or trip. You gain a +4 bonus on checks made to use these special attacks. That is a +4 to the opposed Strength check to bull rush, a +4 to the opposed attack roll to disarm, a +4 on all Grapple checks regardless of whether you started the grapple, a +4 bonus on your Strength check to knock down your opponent, a +4 bonus on any attack roll made to attack an object held or carried by another character, or a +4 bonus on your Strength check to trip your opponent.
If you choose to improve Overrun, the target may not choose to avoid you. If you choose to improve Trip, when you trip an opponent in melee combat, you immediately get a melee attack against that opponent as if you hadn’t used your attack for the trip attempt.
Special: You may take this feat up to three times. Its effects do not stack. You choose a different pair of special attacks each time.
Note: This feat replaces Improved Bull Rush, Improved Disarm, Improved Grapple, Improved Overrun, Improved Sunder, and Improved Trip. Whether or not you have this feat, attempts to bull rush, disarm, grapple, sunder or trip do not provoke attacks of opportunity.

32
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: "Feats are nice but should not be necessary."
« on: November 21, 2017, 02:50:24 PM »
No feats = crafting would be viciously effected by this.
See, I think that's more a problem with 3.5's crafting system. Should it require feats? I don't think it should.

Crafting is highly dependent on the campaign's timescale, since it requires downtime to do. Further, the character that takes the crafting feat isn't necessarily the one who will benefit from it, as the magic items will be used by the party as a whole. In addition, crafting causes headaches for the DM in terms of wealth per level: in the current system, crafting makes you wealthier (you gain magic items for less gold), but also lower level (you pay XP, delaying advancement). As such, the current system of item creation feats isn't good for how D&D is played.

Rather than having crafting depend on a character's feat choices, I think it could be better to make it campaign-dependent: anyone can make magic items, if they have access to the correct components and special laboratories. This makes it an alternative way for the DM to reward PCs with magic items: the items are either found as loot, or, if the challenges overcome do not make much sense to have a bunch of magic loot, the DM (through an NPC or location) gives the party access to magic items by other means.

33
I have no problem with players characters dying, but I think it should require more than one die-roll to kill off a player or major enemy. That's my main problem with SoDs as they stand.
Just how many die rolls is sufficient, then?

An orc attacks you with a greataxe, rolls 20, critical hit! Roll to confirm, hit on the critical. Roll for damage, (12+5)x3=51. If that does not kill you outright, you now must save vs Massive Damage or die.

On one hand, that is multiple rolls (attack roll, confirmation roll, damage roll, and maybe a Fortitude saving throw). On the other hand, from the player's perspective, it is still all one attack, and thus faces the same consequence as the save-or-die: the player has no time to react. And while individual attacks have less %chance of death than individual spells, there are many more of them, and thus any time combat starts you know that this turn may be your character's last. Sudden death is part of the game, not just in spells but in every part: you can suddenly die to a trap, to an attack, and even to natural forces. D&D is the story of an entire adventuring group and its adventures, not of an individual and his adventures. The characters' surprise deaths add another layer to the game, where you can never know if your strategically-put-together dungeon delving warband will actually make it in its original form to its stated enemy, and must recruit warriors along the way.

34
Further, my equation earlier didn't take into account that while two sparrows are one as, you can get five for two (buy four sparrows, get one free!). At that price, one gold coin would get you one thousand sparrows.

35
:??? ... so
2 sparrows = 1 donkey
aDMg, I know you are just being yourself right now, but the "as" was a copper coin, not an animal.  ;)

36
during the era where Jesus ran around a gold coin could only buy thirty-two dead sparrows
While I appreciate the detailed answer, this part of it is not correct. Two sparrows could be purchased for an as, with 16 asses in a denarius, which was a silver coin. The gold coin (aureus) was worth twenty-five denarii, and thus could purchase 800 sparrows.

37
There's a lot of things D&D players choose to suspend their disbelief over. One of those things is the game's oddball pricing for various items, and strangely low value of gold. People have sliced and diced almost all the subsystems of the game, but has there ever been an attempt to overhaul the D&D economy?

38
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: Good Flaws for a Noncombatant?
« on: April 02, 2017, 10:46:21 PM »
While those aren't from Unearthed Arcana, they are official flaws. Dragon Magazine is 100% Official D&D 3.5 Content, it says so on the cover  :tongue

But yes, out of Unearthed Arcana ones, a noncombatant is best simply taking Noncombatant and Murky-Eyed. I do not recommend Unreactive, because if you do get into a fight and you're not specced for combat, going first can let you run away before the enemy has their turn.

Why Murky-Eyed instead of Shaky? There are plenty of uses for ranged attacks that don't need you to be a combatant. Dart games in taverns, passing your friend an item, or slinging rocks from behind cover if you are put into a situation where your combatant friends are busy and you need to pass the time. Not all enemies will have Concealment.

39
The Craft Alchemical Item feat is only usable if the DM is using a particular Unearthed Arcana variant. Even if he is using it, it isn't really important: all Craft Points do is let you craft without spending time to do so. Good in a breakneck campaign with no downtime, but if you do get downtime, it is not necessary.

40
Aww.

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