The Gaming Den

Covent wrote:I just took the time to read that and some of the other very early alpha threads and I have no words.

Don't stare into the abyss of stupid, for the abyss of stupid stares back.

Paizombies are a cult rivaled only by Monte Cook's fanboys and RPGnet. If you look in their direction and then get pissed at their idiocy you have only yourself to blame.

At our current game, we just play by dumpster-diving pfsrd.org for whatever suits our characters and ignore the trap options crap... and sure as hell we can care less about "word of God."

Morale: Fanboys ruin everything for everyone. Enjoy the stuff you like and avoid a publisher's forums.

Dogbert wrote:At our current game, we just play by dumpster-diving pfsrd.org for whatever suits our characters and ignore the trap options crap... and sure as hell we can care less about "word of God."

This is basically where we are in the game I'm running, though two of my players are really attached to books and thus are limiting themselves to anything they own (at this point a lot of shit. not my money, i remind myself. not my circus, not my monkeys). I try to give them more options but they're not terribly excited about it for the most part. But the rest of us just go off the d20pfsrd and it's fine. I haven't even had to ban sacred geometry.

momothefiddler wrote:I haven't even had to ban sacred geometry.

I just read Sacred Geometry and... WTF????

Just WHO would come up with such aberration??? And I thought casting magic in the Dresden Files game slowed games to a crawl. Unless you already have an app for calculating it on the fly, it's clearly a troll feat made as a "pushover GM litmus test" (and I'm not even talking about "muchkinist muchkins", I'm talking about common sense... whoever takes this feat is most likely a griefer).

The dice math thing looks kind of fun ... for a one-on-one game, or PbP. Not so much when it's slowing down everybody. I guess it could work if you had a "Roll Sacred Geometry at the end of your turn, spend the time between turns doing the calculation; it doesn't happen if you're not finished by then." rule.

Although at that point it's still free metamagic, and not much risk once Quicken comes online. So whether you'd want to accommodate it is questionable.

Oh, and it lets you qualify for some things eight levels early.
1) Take both the metamagic reducing traits, for the same spell.
2) Feats - Heighten Spell, Sacred Geometry
3) You can now cast a spell two level higher without Sacred Geometry.
4) Use Sacred Geometry to heighten something to that level of virtual slot. Because of the metamagic reducers, this produces a spell four levels higher.

Would be a bigger deal if there were any decent PrCs to qualify for. Can't do it at 1st level unfortunately, because you don't have enough dice in Sacred Geometry to even hypothetically hit the numbers.

I mean, I fucking love Krypto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypto_(game)), but I don't have anyone who'll play it with me, much less as a minigame that disrupts roleplay time.

There is a calculator I saw around somewhere that does the math puzzle for you, but once you have enough dice (and you do) that just goes from "take an awfully long time to get free metamagic" to "get free metamagic" which doesn't even make it better!

It's just a terrible, terrible feat in every way, including the part where it taunts me about the fact that nobody'll play Krypto with me.

EDIT: I am amused by the early entry thing, though! I hadn't considered that. Amazing.

Holy Christ, Sacred Geometry is literally asking you to play Countdown in the middle of a TTRPG session.

Sacred Geometry is like Champions variable power pools - something that is unnecessarily complicated to do at the table, but is genuinely really good at honing arithmetic skills. Players who are between 9 and 13 years old should be allowed and required to take Sacred Geometry. It will make them more functional adults later in life.

-Username17

Sure, and you can give them bonus weapon damage if they do enough push-ups, too. May as well encourage physical fitness along with the mental.

"Did you eat your broccoli? If so, you can have a +4 to fortitude saves."

The Evoker alpha threads are lulzy, I mean, wow.

"Look, dealing that piddly amount of damage just simply does not matter. It has to scale much harder to even barely matter, and even then direct damage is one of the crappiest things to do as a Wizard or Sorcerer. Nobody will ever care about 1d6 plus whatever energy damage that might be totally resisted anyways."

"More base damaj than a bastard sword tho!"

"Really? what about stats, class abilities and enchantment bonuses?"

"math ignorant fapping to a trap-option ability nobody takes Pathfinder games presently"

Pathfinder is riddled with this garbage and they were told it was garbage in 2008.

Shame, shame, shame, shame on you!

Insomniac wrote:The Evoker alpha threads are lulzy, I mean, wow.

"Look, dealing that piddly amount of damage just simply does not matter. It has to scale much harder to even barely matter, and even then direct damage is one of the crappiest things to do as a Wizard or Sorcerer. Nobody will ever care about 1d6 plus whatever energy damage that might be totally resisted anyways."

"More base damaj than a bastard sword tho!"

"Really? what about stats, class abilities and enchantment bonuses?"

"math ignorant fapping to a trap-option ability nobody takes Pathfinder games presently"

Pathfinder is riddled with this garbage and they were told it was garbage in 2008.

Shame, shame, shame, shame on you!

You know, if they kept piddly-shit damage in the 2008 design process, that would be one thing. But they are still making classes that pew-pew for 1d6 +½ level.

I really enjoyed that people just ignore the Senior Developer's last post, presumably because McCreary, who by his job should've been the word of god, is instead the village idiot of that thread, being arguably the least informed and most dishonest participant to the discussion.

If I had a Paizo ID I'd totally favorite his posts in that thread so that they show up on his profile. Sadly it is oldest posts last, but hey, they'd still be on there.

Slade wrote:

Orca wrote:If you were playing in an all-vigilante campaign well away from the commoner PF gaming styles I could see the 5-minute delay just being something you'd all work around. If not, it's suicide. Given they're apparently trying to model comic-book superhero secret identities the 5 minutes to get into battle costume seems rather high, too.

On the why did they do that stakes:

Silent Dispatch (Ex): If the stalker vigilante knocks an opponent unconscious, kills the opponent, or otherwise renders the opponent unable to act before the opponent’s first action in a combat, the stalker can roll a Stealth check with a –5 penalty. The result indicates the Perception DC to hear the stalker’s attack (rather than the normal DC of –10 to hear pitched combat).

Prior to this talent being in the game almost all GMs would just let you do something like this IMO. Now a significant number will think that you need to be a member of one class, one subclass of that class, and have a specific talent available only to that subclass (but not one which all stalker vigilantes will have). Including this talent in the game reduces options.

Actually, in Pathfinder (and 3.5 D&D) it is actually a DC -10 to hear combat.
This 1/2's it, but also lets you stealth while in melee attacking.

You can't normally do that. (Sniping is ranged attacking).

So this should just be a basic feat, but it has value.

Now GMs might let you magical tea party (a logical hand wave though), but RAW you need that ability.

In Pathfinder / 3.x its a DC -10 to hear the sound of battle, not combat. The situation referred to in the vigilante writeup is in no way a battle.

@Roog. Don't do that. Equivocation. It's bad for you.

dictionary.com Battle:Noun.

3. a fight between two persons or animals:
ordering a trial by battle to settle the dispute.

You can argue DMs were totally going to let you silent-kill people with house rules before that, and not afterward, but you can't argue the rules forgot to give a DC to combat noise and it should secretly be quieter than a whisper because they called it battle in this one case. It's just bad for you.

Knifing someone is always as loud as shouting? I don't think so. "Battle" is not a rules term anyway, so it's a judgment call either way whether it applies to a surprise assassination.

Particularly if the target takes no action in return (as a result of being dead, perhaps). Picking up and moving someone is technically some kind of grapple check, but you wouldn't call it a "battle" (and therefore super easy to hear) if one thief gave another thief a boost to reach a high window.

How are you supposed to assassinate somebody in the system at comparable level? Let's say, a 5th level rogue sneaks up and stabs another 5th level Rogue. Vintage one shot backstab death potential, right? Well, a rogue who put its favored class bonus into HP starts at 5d8+5. A guy getting walloped over the head with a 2d6 greatsword and 3d6 sneak attack plus 4 from strength and maybe enchantment is taking 5d6+4 damage. He could take a sneak attack great sword to the throat and still be what, 7 to 10 hp up? It gets worse if the Rogue in question has 12 to 14 constitution, not at all unreasonable.

Insomniac wrote:How are you supposed to assassinate somebody in the system at comparable level? Let's say, a 5th level rogue sneaks up and stabs another 5th level Rogue. Vintage one shot backstab death potential, right? Well, a rogue who put its favored class bonus into HP starts at 5d8+5. A guy getting walloped over the head with a 2d6 greatsword and 3d6 sneak attack plus 4 from strength and maybe enchantment is taking 5d6+4 damage. He could take a sneak attack great sword to the throat and still be what, 7 to 10 hp up? It gets worse if the Rogue in question has 12 to 14 constitution, not at all unreasonable.

Like all questions in Pathfinder, the answer is "be a spellcaster." But the general issue is that in D&D you are not supposed to be taken out with a dagger to the back from equal level characters. You one-shot backstab characters who are considerably lower level than you are.

-Username17

tussock wrote:dictionary.com Battle:Noun.

3. a fight between two persons or animals:
ordering a trial by battle to settle the dispute.

You can argue DMs were totally going to let you silent-kill people with house rules before that, and not afterward, but you can't argue the rules forgot to give a DC to combat noise and it should secretly be quieter than a whisper because they called it battle in this one case. It's just bad for you.

I wouldn't call a surprise kill-shot a fight either.

Insomniac wrote:How are you supposed to assassinate somebody in the system at comparable level? Let's say, a 5th level rogue sneaks up and stabs another 5th level Rogue. Vintage one shot backstab death potential, right? Well, a rogue who put its favored class bonus into HP starts at 5d8+5. A guy getting walloped over the head with a 2d6 greatsword and 3d6 sneak attack plus 4 from strength and maybe enchantment is taking 5d6+4 damage. He could take a sneak attack great sword to the throat and still be what, 7 to 10 hp up? It gets worse if the Rogue in question has 12 to 14 constitution, not at all unreasonable.

Yeah. There are some assumptions that D&D (and, I think, other level-based games) don't really handle well. It was, I think, my second or third D&D game that the party stumbled upon a... cultist, probably, I don't recall, and needed to take him out before he could alert his friends.

...Which, I rapidly determined, was literally impossible. If we ignored his ability to shout outside his turn (i.e. as soon as an attack hit him or he otherwise noticed us), it was merely practically impossible.

(It doesn't help that it was 4e and none of us knew how to optimize damage so the whole game was major padded sumo).

Point is, creeping up in the dark and cutting a sentry's throat without alerting anyone else is really cool sounding, but unless you have a bunch of levels on them (unlikely, because then why are you bothering with stealth) or you have magic keep-quiet-ness (which drastically changes the imagery to... something that is admittedly also cool), it's just not happening.

In 3.5, you cast Silence on a pebble your fighter or rogue keeps in his pocket. Unresistable 20ft emanation of silence around him for 1 minute/level.

Doesn't do anything to knock him down and silence him to death unless you grapple him for several rounds with a huge grapple mod so you continuously do unarmed damage to him, but hey, at least it's sorta doable. Just not with stabbing without optimization.

RelentlessImp wrote:In 3.5, you cast Silence on a pebble your fighter or rogue keeps in his pocket. Unresistable 20ft emanation of silence around him for 1 minute/level.

Doesn't do anything to knock him down and silence him to death unless you grapple him for several rounds with a huge grapple mod so you continuously do unarmed damage to him, but hey, at least it's sorta doable. Just not with stabbing without optimization.

That works, but how do you discuss plans if you have that pebble? Works for a Gish (mage-fighter) though.

You can talk through telepathy: 3.5 a Society Mind grants to all in collective. In PF, you need a Vitalist or something.

Slade wrote:That works, but how do you discuss plans if you have that pebble? Works for a Gish (mage-fighter) though.

You can talk through telepathy: 3.5 a Society Mind grants to all in collective. In PF, you need a Vitalist or something.

Speak Language (Sign Language). Just have the entire group take it at some point if you agree to be sneaky.

RelentlessImp wrote:

Slade wrote:That works, but how do you discuss plans if you have that pebble? Works for a Gish (mage-fighter) though.

You can talk through telepathy: 3.5 a Society Mind grants to all in collective. In PF, you need a Vitalist or something.

Speak Language (Sign Language). Just have the entire group take it at some point if you agree to be sneaky.

"You have no idea what that means, do you?"

Slade wrote:That works, but how do you discuss plans if you have that pebble?

Precisely how elaborate do you think the plans for Quiety McFighty are?

He still can't fight melee threat monsters.

He still sucks vs casters with their buffs and summons already up.

He only gains anything from it by standing on top of an enemy (verbal) caster who hasn't already got stuff cast. So he tries to do that.

The whole "fight without being detected" angle is... questionable at best.

And none of the real party members want him standing on top of them. So he tries to not to do that.

"Stand near enemy casters+Don't stand near allied ones+hope that actually is possible and works". Planning script written, Quiety McFighty's player might as well go home and let the remaining players make REAL decisions like "what spell to cast".

Complex interactions with Quiety McFighty are minimal at best, and in the event that some player needs to REMIND the dumb ass player playing Quiety McFighty that he should stop standing on top of the party wizard then nothing he does "plan" wise isn't entirely justifiably excused as the usual metagaming everyone pretends is "advance instructions" and "Quiety McFighty should have some common fucking sense".

momothefiddler wrote:...the party stumbled upon a... cultist, probably, I don't recall, and needed to take him out before he could alert his friends.

...it was 4e...

Shouldn't he have been a minion?