The Pink Dice Chronicles

Pathfinder has turned into a mess.  What is worse is that it is becoming harder and harder to sort through this mess and define a character creation ruleset that is reasonable.  Currently I am working through this very problem with a group of GMs and I thought it would be worth a post to address. First let's address the history of Pathfinder and what makes up Pathfinder.  The first thing to note is that Paizo makes Pathfinder so they are the primary publisher.  Third party publishers fall into two categories -- Psionics and non-psionics.  Dreamscarred published books on the psionics extension and they are quite good and relatively balanced.  All of the other 3rd party context not dealing with psionics is of questionable balance and must be judged one piece at a time.  This includes options like Dreamscarred's Path of War that drastically re-balances martial classes. Not even looking at Paizo stuff, there is a lot to cover.  They basically publ...

Some notes from Sunday's Port Wayne game: Thelx got kidnapped by Draven, a local gangster Draven wanted the backups from the space station in exchange for Thelx. Eula made a fake backup drive with "realistic" data Kip rigged the place with explosives in the tool shed and did recon. Once inside for the meeting, Draven showed the crew a video of the station exploding and another station moving into its position. Draven had the right computer for the drive and the test failed. Draven left while his henchman engaged the team. In the ruckus, involving guns and grenades, the team was able to locate Thelx. Everyone escaped relatively unscathed. Spinner confirmed that only WHY knew about the mission, so it is hard to know how Draven found out about it. A bit of a new story started... The party got cryptic texts setting up a meet. The meet was at the dubs camp. There, the party found a large obsolete computer in a truck, running part of the R-AI-L-OR AI. The A...

Articles like this " Clunky Mechanics in 5E ", " Flank You Very Much: Tactical Play in D&D ", and others, start to address tactical, aka simulationist concerns in the new D&D Next / D&D 5e ruleset.  One particular rule, flanking, has been a controversial subject since the beginning.  I'm going to pick on this particular example to explore an important aspect of simulation, namely fidelity.  Simulation is one of the few areas I would consider myself an expert in, so I think this discussion is warranted. Simulation is the representation of a specific system using a series of mathematical relationships.  Simulation allows us to predict the outcome of the system without having to have a real system.  Fidelity is the level of detail that we include in a simulation.  Up to a point, fidelity can decrease the uncertainty in the prediction we make.  At some point, however, too much detail in a simulation simply clouds the uncertainty of the result...

Way back when, I posted a brief article about Pathfinder without ACP .  Now that D&D 5th Edition has come out, I figured it was time to take a detailed look at how they handled ACP and see if my gripe about ACP had been fixed. Wearing armor in 5E basically requires proficiency or you take disadvantage on just about everything and you can't cast spells.  They have scaled the AC from the armor to include DEX for light armors, a limited DEX for medium, and no DEX for heavy armors.  In addition, certain armors (heavy, some medium, one light) give disadvantage on stealth. HOWEVER, there appears to be no more penalties for other skills by wearing armor.  Hurrah!  ACP is gone, except for stealth. These kinds of attention to detail in the mechanics make me think that 5E really has a chance of being the system of choice in the future.

Iron Tavern has some thought provoking articles now and then, and I was inspired by the article I saw today:   The Thing I Hate about Pathfinder .  It turns out the pet peeve in question pointed out by Iron is the rules bloat that comes with feats.  Every feat rewrites the rules slightly. Underlying this problem, I think ultimately in Pathfinder, is a bigger problem that comes with the stack of legacy underneath the Pathfinder rules.  In many cases, folks GMing Pathfinder haven't really played it.  They played D&D 3 or 3.5 and have transplanted themselves into Pathfinder thinking its just the same.  And quite frankly, the problem is that you can't GM Pathfinder well if you haven't played it a lot. Feats are a good example of that.  Certain combinations of feats work really well with classes and other things to basically rewrite the rules for characters.  Knowing the feats, when they are useful, and how they are used is a big challenge for ...

Companions of the Firmament was a kickstarter I backed a while ago.   Today the softcover of the book arrived.  Think of this book as "Flying for Pathfinder".  Original estimated delivery was November 2012.  That being said, all kickstarters are late, and I don't take off points for a good product that doesn't meet schedule.  Late schedules show that real development is going on, which is what kickstarters really should be about. Now I'm not much of a PDF reader, and though I have had the PDF for a while, getting a physical book opened up the content more for me.  So here are my thoughts on the book: I am worried slightly about the softcover binding.  I'm not sure it will hold up.  Time will tell.  Based on the time that was spent getting everything right on the printing, I am probably worried for no good reason. The artwork is not Paizo-level artwork.  Maybe I am spoiled because of all of the Paizo books and modules I have, but t...

Here's the latest update from Ranier: After last week's massacre of goblins, it was time to take a look around.  It turned out the goblins weren't heavily armed -- they had just camping gear.  The paladin was torn up a bit about it, but Jericho reminded him that these were goblins.  I wish I could feel bad about it -- it just doesn't bother me anymore.  Goblin aren't innocent.  Nobody over the age of 10 is innocent anymore.  We pretty much all deserve to bite the dust.  The cruel joke is that once you get to that age, you're probably going to live long enough to regret it. We continued on through the thicket, this time losing Pajar to the old Thassilonian hummingbird (his player was out).  We found a deep hole that reached down to the ocean level with some terrible roaring creature in it.  We went around it.  Maybe we'll check it out on the way back. Axle and I were working together nicely this week, backing each other up on lookin...

A new party has ventured into the swamp to rescue their 3 comrades from certain death.  There, the Dravens have set up a fortified position in some old ruins. So the party consists of: (comment if I get a name wrong) Kaleb the Rogue who rides a Griffon Barbarian named Yuckles Roderick the cleric Paladin named Thantos Ceebs Enchantress The initial approach took them across a bridge that was trapped.  The rogue found the trap and dsiabled it without issue.  Across the bridge there was a building with no roof left and stone walls standing.  The rogue rushed in to find a lion and a druid from the Dravens.  The druidwarned the adventurers to leave.  The barbarian attacked and the druid turned into a triceratops.  Overhead a hippogriff flew with a crossbowman and an alchemist dropping bombs.  The lion got hit and withdrew.  The druid got hammered.  The griffon got hit by a bomb and set on fire.  A cast of hideous laughter sen...

The story starts with the enemy army attacking and everyone in place, having previously set up a strategy with Eliminster and the rest of the army leaders. Galanth is leading the Lord's Alliance Army against the incoming army Malachi, the gnome high sorcerer, lead the gnome army against the incoming army Victaerrus and Roderick with his bear prepare to battle the Nightwatchman, a foe from Innsburck that the party had previously met but were unable to defeat. Corrail and Yuri lined up against the Lich Necromancer Khalil and his godly mac lined up against the dragon Shardosferin Elminster climbed aboard Palarandusk to take out the incoming army from the air. The battle began and Corrail lined up against the Lich.  The lich summoned his undead golem, a hideous creature with four arms and four legs built of undead pieces.  Corrail took out the golem. The Nightwatchman charged at Vic and Roderick.  Vic nailed him with a readied action and Roderick bashed him wit...

The party continued with the battle against the old wizard Pharalyn and the few survivors of his army.  They had surrounded the camp, splitting the party into lone individuals and attack during daylight and the strategy did not pay off.  Felix was killed by five of the enemy forces wielding rapiers. Pharalyn was becoming annoyed by the catfolk wielding a rather unpredictable magic rod.  He target the rod outright and blasted it into oblivion with acid.  Pinnacle got off a spell and then withdrew (his player was absent this week).  The battle raged on with arrows and spells flying. Ali the monk, Corrail the ranger, and Khalil the cleric gathered and prepared for an assault.  Unfortunately a group of four sorcerers sneaked out of the ruins, got line-of-sight, and blasted them with fireballs.  Corrail and Ali dodged out of the blast, but the cleric got his by the brunt of it. The rapier-wielding militia pulled back from attacking Roderick and Victae...

As Stargazer mentions , the PDF vs printed book conversation comes up every now and then, and there is always a split between electronics junkies and tree killers.  I can agree with both sides of the argument. PDFs are cheaper and more accessible.  Stick your PDF in DropBox and you can get to it from anywhere you have a screen.  Forgot your laptop?  Grab it on you smartphone, table, or media player. Paper books, on the other hand, have a feel and access all their own.  Unlike a PDF, where one curses the heavy graphics because of the slow-down, paper books with heavy graphical content are a joy.  I have my big bookshelf of books, old and new.  And there is a special joy when digging through a 20 year old RPG book. In both cases, however, I find myself fundamentally frustrated.  Let me explain. In Pathfinder, I've been running gaming groups for a couple of years.  A lot of my players are young and don't have the resources to buy all the...

Here are a couple of pictures of a project I am building for my next campaign. Can anyone figure out what this piece is?  The one section can swivel inside the other.

The party was facing down one last beholder.  Victaerrus charged and attacked but missed.  Calleel cast a spell and in a moment of great power, killed the beholder outright.  The party went on to loot the beholder caves of many pieces of equipment.  They helped the kobolds and several slaves as they looked for an exit.  Below in the dark throne room they found a quickly fading portal.  It took them back to the surface. Above ground, they landed on the top of the temple.  There was much rejoicing by the gnomes.  Palarandusk and Elminster appeared, commented a bit on the new party, scared the new 16 year old party member, and took the mace.  Word was that they were to return after a week.  In the meantime they had other troubles. In the local tavern, they walked past the hundreds of years old painting of the party that entered the temple.  Few were left.  The toll was high. Ahkra, Corrail's cousin, was there, waiting on the...

Getting into SR4 after being away from Shadowrun has brought me a whole new influx of suppositions about game systems.  One thing I have noticed with Shadowrun in contrast to Pathfinder is the lower level of definition.  Definition, as I use it here, refers to game mechanics.  A game system with high definition defines game mechanics with completeness when referring to "if you want to do this, this is how it works, and this is how it resolves".  A game system with lower definition will not define all of the scenario rules, and in some cases will openly state that it is not defined or it is left up to the GM/players to figure out.  Shadowrun clearly has lower definition that Pathfinder, as the "left up to the GM" idea is all throughout the rule system. At first, I chalked this up to heritage.  Pathfinder, after all, is based on D&D 3.5 that goes back several decades.  Shadowrun is newer and less developed through play than D&D, simply because ...

Aboard the dead ship, the druid, Sheena, and Victaerus watched, backed by the rest of the boarding party.  The Sandman warned the oncoming group not to proceed, holding a torch over the hold.  Sheena went invisible and rushed up to him.  He dropped the torch and Sheena caught it.  The sandman dropped through the floor as sand running between the planks.  The Druid turned ethereal and dropped below, just in time to see the Sandman grab another torch from the wall and toss it into a pile of scrolls and black powder.  A blast erupted, magical burst followed by the explosion. --- The party of Corrail, Felix, the tiger, Yuri the winter wolf, Kiva, Chum the golem, and the rest defeated the two Dark Nagas.  The creatures nearby in the shadows skittered off into cracks and crevices into parts unknown.  Kiva suggested the party rest here.  Chum reinforced the door.  Felix searched the room and found nothing of value, not even food. Felix pu...

I've been looking at movement speeds across RPGs and noticed some huge differences.  How can something so well-known vary so much across representations?  Here some quick stats (cursory pull from core rules for first level characters, but representative). Shadowrun Round: 3 seconds Walk: 8 to 15 m Run: 20 to 35 m DCC Round: 10 seconds Single Move: 20 to 40 feet Double Move: 30 to 60 feet Pathfinder Round: 6 seconds Walk: 20 to 30 feet Run: 100 to 150 feet AD&D Segment: 6 seconds Movement: 120 to 150 feet Summary               MIN                       MAX Shadowrun            6.0 mph                   26.0 mph DCC                     1.4 mph                       4.0 mph Pathfinder ...

So here is our new Thursday night home at Power Nine Gaming . Yeah, those crazy people are 3 of my daughterlings.

So we've lost a few players along the way, so now I am strongly considering combining the Pathfinder campaigns.  The Monday Night Pathfinder Pirates campaign has been taking place in the same world as the Friday Night Pathfinder campaign.  So how could this combination of campaigns possible happen?  First lets start with the current state of things in both: On Monday Nights, the crew of the Celestial Kyte is being followed by the massive Zelbinion as they make their way to the Cimarine Isles.  When last we left the crew, they had boarded a derelict ship out of Candlekeep that seems to have one sandman creature aboard that they've seen thus far.  He became very agitated about some scrolls and was threatening to drop a torch into the hold.  This is particularly frightening since the black powder wasn't anywhere else on the ship and yet there are numerous destroyed cannons strewn about. On Friday Night, the group has descended into a 10...

The party had defeated the two guardians last session and was now standing in a room of alcoves, each a grave.  Three doorways exited the room besides the direction they entered.  To the south, there was a small room with a single large sarcophagus, so covered in dust that Felix could not make out what it was made of. Felix entered, sure that there were no traps (and he would know!).  Unfortunately, 4 wraiths came out of the walls and surrounded him. Felix turned into a bat and flew away.  The rest of the party prepared for attack.  Corrail fired shots with his bow.  Chum swung wildly at the wraiths who pawed at him.  Elliot, the Cavalier, moved up to attack with his sword.  The bard played loudly  greatly inspiring the party.  Sandra, the summoner, buffed herself with magic spells, in prep for a lengthy battle.  Niva blasted the wraiths with magical lightning.  The monk, downtrodden and drunk after lamenting his answer ...

The Celestial Kyte, having successfully navigated through the Whalebones, took off from the Zelbinion to get back to piracy.  They easily overtook a cargo vessel their first day out, gather more plunder to move aboard the Zelbinion for safe keeping. The second day out the Celestial Kyte came across a dead ship, burnt sails with a large hole in the main deck and side.  No cannons were visible on the gunnery deck.  No people were visible on the main deck. Captain Taerl brought the Kyte around slowly into 100 foot range of the dead ship.  From this view, the crew was able to discern that despite being dead, the ship was loaded down with cargo of some sort.  While Kyte readied the boarding party (with all the PCs included), the Druid dove overboard, morphed into his shark form and headed for the dead ship. He was able to circle the ship and asses that there was no damage below the waterline. The ship was a well-known ship gifted by the Waterdeep lead...