Barwickian

Re: Animal companions - reducing the cost No, there's magic - lots of it. It's the Turakian Age. Gamer-standard high fantasy. But there's a difference between having a Wand of Controlling Bears and having a bear as a companion, both in build and in the concept.

Re: Animal companions - reducing the cost Oh, that's good. Yeah, I can see that working not just for moody animals, but animals that have to be given regular commands - think of a shepherd controlling a sheepdog. An alternative might be Requires Concentration. I'd thought about that for some creatures, but as a limitation rather than a buy the animal as equipment. To control a camel you need a camel stick, etc. But I couldn't think of a (mundane) reason why such is not part of the regular equipment for a regular animal. I mean, you don't take a limitation on a horse of Requires Saddle and Bridle. It's assumed (and you can, if you need to, ride and control one without - I can, or I used to be able to in my riding days). Because it fits the concept, it fits the source material and, with enough of the right limitations, it doesn't overshadow the PC. It becomes part of the PC's schtick.

OK, I have a player who wants a big animal companion. Her first choice was a tiger, but since we're up in the Westerlands she's set her heart on a bear. She thinks wolves and hawks are lame. I am going to offer her a miniature dragon. But it's difficult to pay for the points of a 300-point companion at a standard heroic level. The obvious solution is to reduce the cost with limitations. So what limitations could you apply? I'll give my ideas, but I'm looking for other cool ideas as well. 1) Requires a skill roll: Animal Handling (-1/2; a 300-point animal will take a -6 to the control roll, but you could reduce the cost to -1/4 for a -3 penalty or increase it to -1 for a particularly hard-to-control beast with a -12 penalty, such as a housecat). 2) Gestures (-1/4) and Incantations (-1/4) to tell the beast what you want it to do. 3) Ranged (varies) if you have to be close to the beast to tell it what you want it to do. 4) Expendable focus (varies) if you must give the beast a treat like a bit of food or a medal (Muttley! Do something!) before it'll do what you want. Limitations of the beast itself: 1) Hibernates (-1/4) - hibernation is generally for 3-4 months of the year, but is regular and predictable. Longer hibernation could increase the value of the limitation (-1/2 for 6 months). If the campaign isn't the kind of thing that would run long enough to go into winter, this would be a -0 limitation. 2) Nocturnal (-1/2) or diurnal (-1/2). Predictable, but you can't call on the beast for roughly half of any 24-hour period. 3) Sleeps after eating (varies) - a snake might sleep for days after eating. Other animals might sleep for an hour or more. I'd include killing and eating monsters or bad dudes in this... Complications to add to the animal's template Distinctive Features: Wild beast (-15/-20/-25 depending on how fearsome the beast is). So my player wants a 300-point bear. It would cost her 60 points she doesn't have (having spent her allowance on being hot and being an expert tracker, woodswoman and archer). But if she has to make an Animal Handling roll (at a -3 penalty, -1/4), and make gestures (-1/4) and incantations (-1/4) to control the bear, which has to be close enough to hear and see her (range 300m, -1/4) which hibernates for 4 months in winter (-1/4), the cost is now only 18 points. That she may be able to afford with a bit of point-juggling - or be willing to pay off with XP if I give her a chance to acquire the bear in-game. Anybody have any other cool limitations which could work for animal companions?

Re: I can't decide what to run! Which of these sounds fun?

Not a rules question as such - but a question on the physical rulebooik itself. The cover of one of my copies of 6e Vol 1* has come away from the paper sheet holding it to the book. The stiched page binding itself is strong, but the back cover coming off is also damaging the front cover's attachment. [ATTACH=CONFIG]42691[/ATTACH] Does anyone with PS: Bookbinder 11- (or better) have any advice on repairing it? There are no bookbinders in Dubai that I'm aware of, nor any bookbinder's tape available. The only thing that occurs to me is some kind of tape - packing tape, gaffer tape, even duck tape. Will that be enough to prevent the damage getting worse, or is it likely to rip a page away? * I'm a good little fanboy, with two copies of both the core rules volumes. The other copies are fine. I'm considering investing in a third set as well...

Re: In consideration of partial effect dispel What about basing it off a Drain? You could also build a linked or compound power so that the Drain kicks in if the Dispel fails. It'd be more expensive, but it is doing something Dispel doesn't.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called?

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? That's pretty much what a master mason did.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? Good grief! That was quick. Do you live upstairs from a well-stocked antiquarian bookshop?

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? I get the impression they were suggesting something radical. Victorian and Edwardian historians tended to like classifying and categorising things (witness the number of different names they came up with for types of swords, armour and polearms). But you're right, they are recognising two broad distinctions while suggesting more fluid movement between the two than the conventional wisdom of the day accepted. I have, and it's the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word 'lodge' in a medieval context. All such on-site workshops were temporary to some degree - by which I mean, they'd last as long as the project. The project, if it were a cathedral, could last decades though, which rather stretches the usual definition of temporary. I suspect using 'lodge' to mean guild meeting place (which is what I assume you mean by the 'particular definition - correct me if I'm wrong) derived from the workshop lodges. The Online Etymology Dictionary seems to support that, with 'workshop of masons' recorded from the mid-14th century leading to 'local branch of a society' by 1680. [link] Not a professional historian, certainly. Neither am I. But you're most definitely one of this board's history experts, which is why I give citations when I'm disagreeing with you. And yeah, the only thing you can say for definite about medieval social history is you can't say much definite about it. Very true. Stone was expensive to move, particularly overland, and transporting stone you intended to trim off would be very wasteful (and would leave stone chips all over your worksite). I've heard that etymology for freemason before. I can't say it's wrong, just that I prefer the idea it derives from working 'freestone' - again, my source for the latter is Knoop and Jones. Nice pic. Most of what we're discussing - most of the information we have, in fact - relates to the big building projects whose records have survived. Cathedrals, minster churches, castles and other fortifications. I strongly suspect though can't prove (in other words, I'm falling back on the pseudo-justification of "It stands to reason, dunnit?") that there's another layer of masons beneath this. Local craftsmen who don't travel, but are based in towns and cities, whose work comes from work on domestic buildings (mostly wood-framed but increasingly with stone courses as foundations as time marches on), maintenance work and perhaps building chamber-blocks on manorial sites in the countryside near their homes. Maybe even a church or a church extension if they were lucky. I grew up close to the magnesian limestone belt in Yorkshire, considered good building stone (it's pale, almost white limestone), and there were lots of little quarries dotted about. They're not easily datable, and many if not most of them will be post-medieval, from the Great Rebuilding of the 16th & 17th centuries or later, but they are much what I'd expect local quarries to look like: small, most of them about the size of a three-bedroom house or a little bigger, often U-shaped with the open end of the U close to a track on the same level so it's easy to load and move the stone. Little quarries like this couldn't feed big projects easily. They were for local use. I'm having difficulty uploading a map wehich shows many of the quarries around my village. I'll try again when I'm at home.

Re: Mass Combat System and Archery Units Depending on the scale, it may be that the only advantage of archers (or other missile troops) is to attack first - and possibly from behind defence such as stakes or mantlets, or even from behind another unit. Being generally lightly armed, they'd also tend to have more mobility than other foot troops. IIRC this is how the Wargames Research Group's games De Bellis Antiquitas (DBA) and De Bellis Multitudinis (DBM) handle them.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? I know we tend to think of masons' lodges as the place where a combination of guild administrative duties and union-like meetings took place, but that wasn't their only function. The first edition of Knoop and Jones was published in 1933. The third edition of 1967 is now 45 years old, and it's quite possible that it is out of date. It's the most detailed source on masons I have in my home library, though.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? True for building works. At those, the masons would build a lodge as a place to meet, store tools or work on smaller projects in inclement weather. Size would depend on the number of masons, which depended on the size of the project. It takes many more masons to build a castle or cathedral than a house or parish church. But in towns where there might be a regular source of smaller jobs, I can well see a mason operating a permanent, off-site workshop. All those funerary effigies of knights and noblewomen had to come from somewhere. Smaller decorative touches for a large building (such as ornamental bosses) would likely be made on-site, but could be made off-site if a workshop was available. Then ther emight be stock ornamental or monumental pieces that a mason could keep ready or partially ready for sale: statuetes, sundials, blank headstones. These would be made in a workshop. Even quarrymen would likely have a lodge on-site.

Re: Where to find: Delta and Navy SEAL templates? You're not cleared for that.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? Yes, masons would travel if they had to - and unless they got hired for a really big project (a castle or cathredral), or in a town large enough to provide a steady source of work, they'd have to travel in search of new projects.

Re: What Fiction Book (other than Science Fiction or Fantasy) have you recently finis Sebastian Faulks, Devil May Care. It's the 2008 Fleming centenary Bond book commissioned by the Fleming estate, and it's the first book by Faulks I've read. I'd avoided it when it was released. I've read most of Fleming's Bond novels, and a collection of his Bond short stories, and thoroughly enjoyed them (naturally, I rate Connery, Dalton and Craig the best of the movie Bonds). I didn't want to see what another writer woukd do with Bond. But a colleague gave me his copy when he left for newer pastures last yearm and I started reading it a few days ago. And I loved it. It's set in the Fleming era - the 1960s - and fits backdrop includes drug running, the Cold War and the Vietnam War. Action switches between Paris, Persia and the Soviet Union. Some of the brutal fight sequences made me recall the fight between Bond and Red Grant in From Russia With Love (the novel, of course). All in all, it's a worthy tribute to Fleming. There's an added delight in reading a thriller set so long ago as well. We know it isn't Fleming, but it reads like him; we know what happens in Persia, and with the Cold and Vietnam Wars. We know what happens as the War on Drugs develops. The characters don't. ll in all, I'd highly recommend it to Bond fans.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster Made me snort with laughter, anyway.

Re: Jokes Police are hunting a man terrorising nudist camps with a bacon slicer. Inspector Jenkins had a tip-off this morning... Courtesy of The Two Ronnies.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? Don't forget that the reason is that the French for day is journee. Journee-men were day labourers.

Re: A Creation Myth I really like this. Not just the set-up, but the framing of the creation as a short story. I've seen that kind of thing done for mood before, but invariably attempts to do it for campaign setting are done badly. This isn't. I enjoyed reading it. Sounds like an interesting premise for a campaign as well.

Re: Make Your Own Motivational Poster These aren't the druids you're looking for.

Re: Triad A high level of Teamwork skill to represent their/her co-ordination if more than one form is in the same combat?

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called? Lodge (admin, meeting or temporary) or workshop (where the craft is performed). A stonemason's yard may include workshop and storage areas.

Re: Human bird wings The Menace From Earth. One of his short stories, and one of my favourites. The flying depended on two factors: the Moon's low gravity, and the fact that there were basically flying in an airwell designed to aid the colony's atmosphere circulation. I also remember that had restricted-movement wings for beginners and more advanced wings for experts. Holly, the heroine, made a brief reappearance at the end of The Number of the Beast - she'd fulfilled her ambitions of becoming a starship designer.

Re: A campaign wishlist From Megara (which is in Attica), with founding dates of 668 or 659BC depending on which ancient Greek historian you believe, says my Oxford Companion to Classical Civilisation, so it's definitely later than our period. It did play a minor part in some of the Greek wars of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, and paid 15 talents in tribute to Athens as a member of the Delian League, the same as Naxos, so I suspect 'town' or 'small city' may be a better description than 'village'. But it certainly wasn't the notable city it became under Constantine.