CrosshairCollie

Semi-related ...

I just watched that video and ran over here to post it if nobody else had.  OMFG.  This is just ... this is huge.  If there was ever a way to give a giant Fornicate You to WotC, that was it.  They basically said "Yeah, everything WotC did with their license?  We're doing the opposite."  And the fact that Paizo is willing to go to court to back up their assertions ... the fact that it's being written in such a way that they absolutely cannot go back on it, even if they change management or get greedy ...

I had the same reaction NoNat1s did when he said there was no actual SRD/copyrighted (copywritten?) mechanics in PF2.  I know a lot of people who will be relieved to know there won't be a PF 3 or PF 2.1.

It already kind of felt like D&D was on life support after One D&D and the OGL fiasco, but I think Paizo just pulled the plug on it.  Slaying the Dragon, indeed.

I wish Paizo and its allies the best of luck in this.

5 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

I remember when fire was invented.  Obviously, oxygen had to be invented first.

Elementary logic.

On 12/29/2022 at 6:53 AM, Lord Liaden said:

I fear we're seeing the American education system in action again. 🥴

My Father In Law asked me which was bigger, a quarter or a third pound burger, in a Hardee's once.

It took all my willpower to resist asking him if he ever forgot how to breathe.

2 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

And if they complain about complexity, mention that any math is confined to character creation and that it's still not as complex as multisubclassing while hunting for feats to fit the concept you want.

Already on my standard spiel.  I also mention how HERO works for any genre, as I've seen a number of 'I want to use 5e to play this extremely not 5e game' posts like Sci-Fi or Low/Gritty Fantasy.  Hmm.  Thinking about it a little, I'd say that the rules for HERO enable both players and GMs, where the D&D rules seem more to restrict them.  DnD says you can't do X (say, cast Fireball) until you're 5th level, and know how to cast a bunch of other spells.  Hero? "I know one spell, Fireball."  DnD: "My character can't get superhuman strength without several levels and/or a magic item." Hero: "My demigod started with a 40 Strength.  I can juggle cows." Expensive if you're using NCM, but possible.

I've been more or less evangelizing Hero System over on Reddit since The Obnoxious Gouging License 1.1 came down..  Admittedly, I've no doubt most 5e refugees will flee to Pathfinder 2e, but I like to think I'm doing my part.  I'm specifically drawing attention to things HERO does well that D&D does poorly, especially the 'have you ever had a character concept you can't make work in D&D?  You can do it in HERO' concept.

FINALLY gaming again on a semi-regular basis, so I feel more comfortable taking up space around here.  Okay, yeah, it's Pathfinder 2e, but I'm working on it.

ANYWAYS.

Scene: Someone is stealing baby stegosauruses from a herd.  The PCs have tracked them down.  I go for an Intimidate check, despite having no idea what it is we're facing (yay, blown Recall Knowledge checks).

Miko; "Hey, Creature!  Leave those kids alone!"

All-told, we've been playing about 5 hours leading up to this one.  One member of our party has been throwing sling bullets at things, or moving into melee and swinging a sickle around, all to absolutely no useful effect.  Our fighter takes a MASSIVE crit that nearly takes him down in one shot.  Her turn rolls around ...

That player: "I'll cast Magic Missile."

DM: "You can cast spells?"

Player: "Uh, yeah, I'm a witch."

DM: "You hadn't cast a spell in so long, I totally forgot."

(Casters in PF2 have infinite-use cantrips.  There's no logical reason she shouldn't have been using those.)

"There's an ancient saying passed down through dozens upon dozens of generations, from parent to child in my homeland, a phrase of undeniable wisdom, to be used in a situation such as this.  That saying is KISS MY FURRY BUTT."

There's a bar near my house.  It takes me five minutes to walk there, but an hour to walk back.

The difference is staggering.

Elephants trumpet.

21 hours ago, Logan.1179 said:

Branch Manager and Assistant Branch Manager.

Yeah, clumsy title.  Anyway ... if you've got Absorption usable as a Defense, does it stop functioning as a defense if your Absorption is maxed out?

E.G. Character as 20 base PD and 10 Physical Absorption As Defense.  He's absorbed 20 points of incoming BODY ... is his PD 20 or 30 from here?

20 hours ago, Matt the Bruins said:

Is there such a thing as quality time in Alabama?

Hopefully there's no such thing as quantity time in Alabama.

So, Trump's just had another person come to his defense ... Vladmir Putin.

Does this constitute a 'stop helping me' moment, getting an endorsement from one of the most corrupt dictators on the face of the planet?

Does anybody know where this 'the Democrats provided no evidence' meme came from?  Is this the same as the 'Obama never passed a budget' nonsense from a while back, just some bit of pernicious misinformation that somehow got wedged in people's minds?

5 hours ago, Tywyll said:

 

What else would it be good for?

Some magic items or other magical stuff like portals might need the skill check to activate?

On 12/8/2019 at 9:46 PM, Twilight said:

So Luke Harper and Sin Cara have been let go by WWE today.  Folks are already wondering if there's more to come.

We can only hope.  WWE's roster is so insanely bloated, so much of them never get any screen or PPV time.

Something I'm working on for an Eberron HERO game; trying to come up with unique combinations of modifiers to differentiate the various sorts of powers/magic/psionics/etc. in the setting.  I'm not overly worried about cleaving to a D&D mechanical feel (I'll be using the standard FH grimoires for spells rather than doing the Vancian stuff).

So far, my thoughts are:

Standard wizardry draws on Mana (a new stat the 4e Fantasy Hero Companion 2 created).  5e used Endurance Reserves for this purpose.  Typically require Gestures, Incantations, Focus, Skill Roll (Magic skill based on INT)

Psionics draws on personal Endurance.  Typically require Concentration and Extra Time.  LOS Mental Powers will get limited range.

Dragonmarks (a unique Eberron thing) use Charges.

This leaves me with divine magic, and sorcery (defined D&D style as 'innate magical power' rather than learned wizardry).  Outside of the skill roll based on EGO, and a limitation about the religious restrictions in using it, I can't think of anything else.  Part of me wants to make it a VPP, the effect becoming more going 'hey, god help me out here' and then *something* happens, but my players are not familiar enough with the system to manage a VPP.

Sorcery, I think, I will make more like free-form 'super-powers' instead of instinctive knowledge of spellcasting.  I don't think any common limitations really work here ... I may use Endurance Reserves here?  In D&D/Pathfinder, sorcerer powers are based on bloodlines, usually a bit of unusual ancestry, or exposure to magical energies altering the character (or character's ancestors ... I don't think the Fire Elemental bloodline occurred in a traditional genetic manner).  Based on this, I think requiring a theme (as opposed to D&D/PF, where they have free rein of the wizard spell list).  ... this really is just an arcane fantasy superhero, isn't it?

I'm quite certain I've put on my overthinking cap here, but anybody else have any thoughts on this sort of thing?

P.S. In 4e and 5e, power frameworks were strongly un-recommended.  I don't have 6e FH (just FH Complete), is this no longer a thing?  FH Complete seems to imply that frameworks are now kosher.

I generally use the Eberron approach ... the gods might or might not exist, there's no way to prove it one way or another.  There's simply no evidence.  Faith is what powers divine magic, and it doesn't have to be faith in a god, one can have faith in justice or worship the sun directly instead of a sun god and get just as much divine power as an adherent to an established religion (in the words of Eberron's creator, Keith Baker, if you believe strongly enough in your left shoe, your left shoe will grant you divine powers).  This also means that so long as you *think* what you're doing supports your god's agenda, your abilities will function perfectly.

If I don't do that, I just go with 'there are no gods', and religion operates the same in the game world as it does in the real world.  Since I don't need to worry about D&D's divine/arcane magic identity issues (there's no bloody reason wizards can't cast healing spells), it's not anything I have to account for.

To my reckoning, even if Trump isn't impeached, we need enough solid, foolproof evidence of Trump's ... indiscretions that even if he's not impeached or convicted, it's painfully obvious to the American voting public that the Republicans who vote against impeaching/convicting are complicit with his crimes and won't get re-elected.  That would at least be something of a victory.

Unfortunately, nobody ever lost money betting on the stupidity of the average American voter.

47 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Maybe Nixon had one thing over Trump... a sense of shame.

And considering how small Nixon's sense of shame was ...

Trump's ego won't let him resign, even if the polls to impeach hit 99% ...he'll just decry them as 'fake news' as he does to anything that doesn't support him.

So, one of the things that put off us buying and moving into the house was that it needed some foundation work, because the basement leaked.  This was put off for three months, the walls have these weird anchor things in them now which will probably stop us from truly finishing the basement like we want to.  But, this was supposed to prevent leaking and risking damaging anything in the basement.

It's.  Still. F***ing. Leaking.  Even a moderate rain has water coming in through the walls they specifically worked on, with those big anchor things, and I just completely lost my s**t, screaming at the top of my lungs, using every swear word I know, and kicking an empty cardboard box around.

This was a mistake.  THIS WAS ALL A HUGE MISTAKE.  A F***ING $150,000 MISTAKE.  A mistake I'm going to be paying for for the next 30 years.  What was I thinking?  I knew, deep down, this wasn't going to work, because I'm not allowed to have anything good happen to me.  I'm just life's f***ing punching bag.