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REAL LIFE is a brand new, upcoming original animated show from EN World TV! Join five adventurers as they discover an exciting new role-playing game called REAL LIFE! Erric the Noble Knight, Dee the Thief, Malach the Maleficient, and Bilar the Dwarf join Old Duncan in the Perturbed Dragon Tavern for their weekly game session. Also featuring Sheenah the Barmaid!
One of the hallmarks of Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG Hardcover line is that the books are intended to be setting neutral. While there are a few tables where Golarion specific gods are mentioned, for the most part, the hardcover rules are remarkably "Golarion free" in terms of how the rules attempt to be setting neutral.
Instead, Paizo uses two alternating publications to detail the world of Golarion outside of the adventure context. The "Player Companion" line uses a 32 page, stapled-cover format to release game world specific material aimed at players every other month. The format has been threatening to expand into a monthly publication for quite some time now, but the logistics of making sure the production pipeline is full enough to permit a switch to a monthly format keeps delaying that oft-rumoured event.
The other product line, initially branded as “Pathfinder Chronicles” and now renamed to “Pathfinder Campaign Setting” books, are 64 page perfect-bound books which release mostly monthly (there are other components to this line which are not books). The focus of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting books is on providing GMs with all the setting information about Golarion’s regions and its various sects, personalities, and many other topics of special interest to Game Masters.
Whatever your preference in terms of GM or player oriented material, there is no argument that the Campaign Setting books' larger format and perfect binding has a marked advantage. With a spine bearing a title that can be read when stored on the shelf, you can actually find a Campaign Setting book on the shelf when you are looking for one. Easily locating a specific Player Companion on the shelf? Not so much.
While the talk over the past year of moving the Players Companion to a monthly format has intrigued me, to be perfectly honest, I'd rather they increased the page count to 64 pages instead and kept it every other month. There are a lot of Player Companion books which would benefit from a 64 page treatment.
Hello and welcome to the 3 February 2012 installment of Finding the Path, E.N. World's monthly Pathfinder advice column. My name is Viktyr L. Korimir and each month I'll be choosing a handful of your questions about the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and answering them to the best of my ability-- what the rules say, what the rules mean, and how to get the most out of them-- plus a heaping spoonful of my own half-baked ideas, unfounded opinions, and baroque house rules. If you like what you read here, you should check out my House Rules Lab page on d20PFSRD.
This month: More Musings on the Mechanics of the Magus, some Strange Swarm Shenanigans, Double Dipping Dragon Disciple, Conditional Cavalry Combat Calculations, and as an Appendix, an Arrangement of Adventure Paths.
After last month's column, I really caught a lot of flak for my response to the Magus question-- in fact, more than half of the correspondence I received about the column was about the Magus.
#1: Aren't you only allowed to enchant a weapon once with the Magus' Arcane Pool? And doesn't adding flaming and frost cost two points from your Arcane Pool?
You're missing something very important about how Arcane Pool works, and if you're playing this way at the table you're seriously nerfing the Magus:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcane Pool
At 1st level, a magus can expend 1 point from his arcane pool as a swift action to grant any weapon he is holding a +1 enhancement bonus for 1 minute. For every four levels beyond 1st, the weapon gains another +1 enhancement bonus, to a maximum of +5 at 17th level. These bonuses can be added to the weapon, stacking with existing weapon enhancement to a maximum of +5. Multiple uses of this ability do not stack with themselves.
At 5th level, these bonuses can be used to add any of the following weapon properties: dancing, flaming, flaming burst, frost, icy burst, keen, shock, shocking burst, speed, or vorpal.
When I was in college, I belonged to the campus gaming club, as you can well imagine, and every year we put on a gaming convention for the local community. In fact, BASHCON is still going strong at the University of Toledo in Ohio, and is celebrating its 27th year. Back in my college days, I not only participated in the convention, but also helped run it a couple of years, and I have mostly fond memories of a frantic three-day weekend, and trying to organize hundreds of gamers and scores of staffers.
One year, the local press showed up to interview the convention coordinator, and unfortunately, I was away dealing with angry wargamers pushing out roleplaying tables to get more space. So one of the freshman on the con staff tried to assist by jumping in and providing the reporter with her version of what was going on that weekend. Aside from a number of painful gaffs about RP gaming in general, the report also learned, and later printed, that the “essence of role-playing” was “finding monsters, killing them, and taking their gold.”
Needless to say, that was not the most auspicious way to sum up so many gamers’ favorite past-time.
But there is something to be said about the fact that one of the main forces which drive a fantasy role-playing campaign is the acquiring and spending of vast sums of wealth by the heroes. Whether from a dragon’s hoard or looted from an ancient tomb full of undead, heroes in fantasy novels, in fantasy role-playing games, and even MMOs, spend a considerable amount of time hovering up piles of coins, gems, and treasure in order to perpetuate their adventuring careers.
But one of the most commonplace elements of treasure in fantasy role-playing games is the coinage, which is treated quite generically. In fantasy novels, the author might have heroes remark about the antiquity or origin of coins, but in role-playing games, coins are generally treated as just a number to be tallied and marked on a character sheet.
But recently, Taurus Twelve has released a supplement to expand the role of coins in role-playing games. In They Shall Be Paid In Coin of the Realm, Taurus Twelve offers a wide range of methods and tables to try and coinage unique and different no matter what fantasy role-playing game you enjoy.
In the wake of a villain's defeat, his accomplices flee into the seedy underbelly of Flint. The party tracks down an arcanoscientist selling illegal arms and magic developed in labs owned by the fallen villain, and discovers a curious collection of ancient artifacts.
These primitive weapons contain powerful spells capable of conjuring alien monsters never seen in modern times. To unearth why shadowy forces are collecting these relics, the partytravels into the High Bayou, lair of the dread fey titan called the Voice of Rot. There, beneath an ancient ziggurat, the party finds the remains of a doomed archaeological expedition, and learns that a powerful alien entity has escaped its ancient prison and entered this world. The party has tugged into view one thread of the conspiracy, but to reach its heart and see how deep the threat goes, they're going to have to dig.
An adventure for enterprising heroes of 5th-7th level.
(If you're viewing this on the news page, in the newsletter, or on a mobile app, click here to download the adventure; otherwise simply scroll down a bit and download it from the link below). The PATHFINDER RPG version of this adventure will be available very soon.
The big thing on the menu this week is the DDXP and what the fans thought of the playtest. The message boards and forums have lit up and everybody is having a great time talking about the next iteration Dungeons & Dragons. I am a fan and have loved what I played so far and although it is rough you can see a promising foundation coming together. We still get some great stuff from WotC for 4th Edition and a couple things that work in any edition.
Sha’ir, a Heroes of Elemental Chaos excerpt by Bart Caroll shows you another glimpse of what you can expect in the upcoming accessory. These options for elemental themed wizards and a new wizard sub-class are perfect for that player in your game who loves his wizard to set the world and themselves ablaze.
The Eye on Eberron by Keith Baker in Dragon 407 focuses on Vadallia and Cardaen, a history piece that gives backgrounds and adventure hooks for those who have an interest in the elves in Eberron. I hope we continue to see more pieces that flesh out the corners of the pre-established settings because you can use them with any edition of D&D.
King Hanaksaman by Rodney Thompson in Eye of Dark Sun details an interesting edition to the world of Athas. Whether you use King Hanaksman and his exiles as a friend or foe for your group is up to you. Like I said previously filling in the corners of these worlds suits me just fine.
Chris Perkins takes care of Unfinished Business in the Dungeon Master Experience. Chris gives a few suggestions on how to scale adventures that your players didn’t bite on when you thought they would. I think some of the points are great, especially the ones concerning not scaling everything up so that the players feel the power that their characters wield in the world.
Check out the D&D XP Seminar Chat Streams to see some excellent feedback to the questions that the fans have about the next edition of the game. There is a lot of great information there for you to absorb and interpret. This really has the fans talking and you can read some of the comments
There's not much published yet, but a few of the returning DDXP attendees have started blogging about the D&D Next (D&D 5th Edition) seminars and the playtests they took part in. Regarding the latter, they're all under NDAs, so there are no details; but they do give general impressions. If you haven't yet, be sure to read the seminar transcripts - there's lots of crunchy info about the new iteration of D&D there. Or see our compiled D&D 5E Info page.
DDXP 2012 Recap (This Is My Game) has some general impressions of the playtest, plus some non-D&D Next content.
My first look at D&D Next (D&D The Fifth Column) - "First, the prototype of D&D Next absolutely captures the feel of classic D&D. Since I started with the Moldvay Basic Set in 1980, to me the game felt very much like Basic D&D–but there were elements which I knew would resonate with someone for whom 1e was the baseline. Talking with one of my traveling companions, who had played mostly 3.x, I found that he had gravitated to parts of the new system that evoked the feel of 3rd edition."
This is the transcript of the final seminar of DDXP 2012: Reimagining Skills and Ability Scores. The role of skills has fluctuated throughout the life of Dungeons & Dragons, and ability scores have been of varying importance in each edition. Find out what the design team has done to reimagine these aspects of the game, and how they arrived at a system to marry the two concepts more closely together. Seminar includes Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Robert Schwalb, and is followed by a Q&A session.
This transcript is paraphrased, with some responses shortened. It is compiled from various tweets (thanks especially to Critical Hits and Rolling20s for their live tweeting - I suggest you check out their Twitter feeds) plus WotC's live chat feed, and other sources.
Greg: You've talked about the importance of ability scores in D&D in the recent past. What kind of things are you planning for ability scores for the next iteration of D&D?
Monte: We wanted to distill down the essence of D&D. We wanted to make sure that the ability scores and their modifiers had a big influence. Looking at all the editions of the game, you can easily see that ability scores are really important. Often times, people will use ability scores to help them define their character, or they'll have an idea for a character and then look at the scores first to make them fit that idea.
A couple of days ago I talked a little bit about how we want the core mechanic of the game to be the interaction between the DM and the player. And one of the great tools for that is the ability score. So what we want is to empower DMs and players so that if you want to attempt to do something "I want to open the door" then the DM doesn't have to even have you roll, he can just look, see you have a 17 strength and says "Yeah, you burst through that door". We want to get past some of the mundane rolls and not tie up a lot of table time with that and move on to the more interesting stuff and the table narrative.
Bruce: An example I saw yesterday was a rogue going into a room and looking for traps. You can describe what you're doing and roleplay what you're doing. If he says I look in the jar and I know there's a gem in the jar, I'm not going to have him roll. However, if something is more hidden, like a secret compartment on the shelf I would look at their intelligence and see if he can just automatically find it or if he's looking in the exact right place. However, if he's doing that check in the middle of some other stressor like fighting, then I'd have him roll.
Rob: Earlier this week I had some players fighting some kobolds in the room. One of the guys wanted to jump over a pit, he had a 15 strength so I let him just do it - it wasn't that...[Click here to read the rest of this article]
Mike Mearls presents upcoming D&D products for 2012, as well as a vision for the future of Dungeons & Dragons. Seminar is followed by a Q&A session. This transcript is paraphrased, with some responses shortened. It is compiled from various tweets (thanks especially to Critical Hits, E. Foley, and Rolling20s for their live tweeting - I suggest you check out their Twitter feeds) plus WotC's live chat feed, and other sources.
Some of these questions were asked in the live chat feed, and didn't make it into the actual seminar, and vice versa. I'm not sure why, and it appeared to be two totally different sets of questions and answers, but I have compiled both into one transcript. So if you were at the seminar, you might see questions here that weren't there, and if you were following along in the live chat you will see questions that weren't there, either. But all of them were at one of the two.
Welcome to the 2012 D&D Products seminar. This seminar does NOT cover products for the next D&D iteration.
Mike Mearls
First, the Premium 1st Edition Core Rulebooks. All the 1e books based on scans of pristine copies of the original books. Will likely only be in hobby/game stores. A portion of the 1E books goes to the Gygax Memorial fund, so make sure to check that out.After April,, we'll see the theme of Rise of the Underdark. This is the theme for the Summer/Fall Encounters season.
May: Dungeon Survival Handbook: focuses on dungeon campaigns, tips and tricks for DMs as well as ideas for players. Themes with mechanical effects that also tie into the story of the world. The twist is the DM section that shows DMs how to tie the new themes into their adventures.
June: Urban Underdark tile set. D&D Lair Assault: Spiderkiller also in June.
In August we're revisiting the drow city of Menzoberranzan. The twist with this is a different framework for a campaign. Focus is on the possibility of PvP conflic (think how Drow work against each other in the Underdark). The idea with this book if you wanted to adventure down in the underdark you could do that. If you want to play drow or other denizens in the city, working in or for one of the houses, you can have adventure where some of the players are pitted against each other as they vie for their own agenda's or their own houses. Tied...[Click here to read the rest of this article]
Review: GameMastery Pirate Ship Flip-Mat and Mines Map-Pack
From the Page to the Stage
When it comes to FRPG adventures, just about every professional designer will tell you that it all comes down to the map.
That doesn’t mean that a great map necessarily results in a great adventure. There are plenty of great maps in adventure products which still end up as merely fair to good adventures when assessing the adventure for its overall impact and quality. By the same token, there are plenty of otherwise great adventures that can’t grab the gold and achieve excellence because the quality of the map, either in its design or artistic cartography (and often both) just isn’t good enough to permit the adventure to advance to the top of the podium. The map matters; it matters a lot.
A great map won’t make a poor adventure great; but a poor map can certainly render an otherwise great adventure to be merely average. If nothing else, a good map in an otherwise undistinguished adventure is something that a GM can always repurpose and reuse for some other adventure or purpose. After all, most RPG maps are highly convertible game components.
The one aspect which isn’t so easily transportable, however, is getting a map from the page to the tabletop itself. When it comes to that last jump -- from paper to a tangible battlemap on the tabletop -- the last leg of that journey is usually the hardest. A variety of methods have emerged over time in order to allow the GM to make the jump from the page to the tabletop itself. Paizo's principle contributions to that effort, the Flip-Mat and Map-Pack are the subject of this week's Paizo product review.
Paizo’s Flip-Mat line
The original flip-mat was created by a small independent company, SteelSqwire. Originally conceived as a product that would compete with the ubiquitous Battlemat from Chessex, the flip-mat offered a few advantages when first released in 2005.
REAL LIFE is a brand new, upcoming original animated show from EN World TV! Join five adventurers as they discover an exciting new role-playing game called REAL LIFE! Erric the Noble Knight, Dee the Thief, Malach the Maleficient, and Bilar the Dwarf join Old Duncan in the Perturbed Dragon Tavern for their weekly game session. Also featuring Sheenah the Barmaid!
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Pathfinder Review: Inner Sea Magic
When I was in college, I belonged to the campus gaming club, as you can well imagine, and every year we put on a gaming convention for the local community. In fact, 
Here it is! The (4E version of) the third adventure in the 
The big thing on the menu this week is the DDXP and what the fans thought of the playtest. The message boards and forums have lit up and everybody is having a great time talking about the next iteration Dungeons & Dragons. I am a fan and have loved what I played so far and although it is rough you can see a promising foundation coming together. We still get some great stuff from WotC for 4th Edition and a couple things that work in any edition. 
Review: GameMastery Pirate Ship Flip-Mat and Mines Map-Pack
Paizo’s Flip-Mat line
