TRPG General Chat

12:11 AM

@BESW So how does the PFSRD agree with me? I mean, the sources I cited spend some time talking about how violence is not inherently evil and about when and how it's appropriate, but Eric either has not read them or does not care

BESW

First: Good characters and creatures protect innocent life. Evil characters and creatures debase or destroy innocent life. Emphasis on "innocent" both times, which pirates are not.

Second: Good implies [...] a concern for the dignity of sentient beings. Your point about mercy killing hinges on giving them a dignified death.

Lord_Gareth

Ah, danke. I'll edit that into my answer in a moment and then ask for the comment train to be redacted

And hopefully at that point this annoyance will be over

BESW

However, there is a point against your answer.

Lord_Gareth

Do tell

BESW

Evil implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Convenience is definitely the common rationale for killing prisoners in D&D.

Lord_Gareth

12:14 AM

AFK, though, so response may be slo.

BESW

The D&D-style world actively encourages killing enemies with the most brutal and final methods possible, desecrating the corpses and damning the souls to prevent return trips.

Turning over criminals to the law is often a lengthy boring process with far too many opportunities for the criminal to escape and do more damage. Even when it goes off without a problem, it keeps the PCs from XP-gaining activities for a prolonged period.

Lord_Gareth

12:33 AM

The whole "trapped in the lawless wilds" thing helps my case quite a bit.

Magician

The whole Evil thing is there for this reason: it's ok to kill them.

Lord_Gareth

12:58 AM

@BESW Added your content to my post, elaborated on it

BESW

Nice.

The PFSRD also mentioned "fun" as a motive for evil killing, but that's neither here nor there.

Hmm. I gave an answer once that might be relephant.

36

A: How do I play a paladin without being a stick in the mud?

The biggest issue with paladins is when their partners' behavior is judged as if the paladin himself had done the deed. If your DM is willing to avoid that pitfall, may I suggest... A paladin who does not expect non-believers to obey the laws of his faith. He hopes that through his shining examp...

Specifically the bit about D&D values vs modern values.

Lord_Gareth

Flagged the start of the comment chain

I dunno, that whole thing seemed needlessly confrontational.

It's not like I made some kind of freakish statement indicating a deficit of mental health

BESW

Which whole thing?

Lord_Gareth

The whole thing with Eric - well, it seemed like he was trying to start a fight.

BESW

Welcome to Alignment Debate.

It's a very raw subject because it's so easy to turn into Real-Life Philosophy Debate with a patina of The Rules Say I'm Right.

Lord_Gareth

1:06 AM

I know that this may seem hard to believe, but after much struggle and blood, I have actually seen The Land of Rational Alignment Debates, where people can talk about alignment without causing problems.

I know it can be done.

BESW

Because the game's morality is so poorly defined yet depicted as such a concrete Truth, we wind up accidentally defending our own personal ideals rather than the game's mechanics.

Oh, sure. I've moderated one or two of those on this chat.

But it requires starting a looooong way back from where most people begin.

Rational Alignment Discussion requires beginning at the point where we agree that D&D Alignment has no Real-World counterpart and trying to compare IRL morality with D&D morality is at best ineffective.

Unfortunately, making that distinction is hard and requires practiced mental discipline.

And so it's a starting point most people skip, and many don't even know it's a thing.

So we wind up with a debate in which people are taking the ideas personally, and it cuts very close to the bone.

Especially since the majority of people are either trained in philosophical debate (a very specific skill with its own vocabulary and assumptions) or entirely inexperienced in discussing this kind of thing at all and operate on a feels level.

Lord_Gareth

1:55 AM

Aye, I agree

Heya @Jadasc

Jadasc

Hey. :)

Lord_Gareth

Oi, mysterious downvote frustrates me. Cannot improve answer without comments!

Jadasc

@Lord_Gareth Which response?

BESW

I try to consider uncommented downvotes as nothing more than a physical manifestation of universal entropy.

Lord_Gareth

9

A: Rulesets to make magic more unpredictable and dangerous?

This is not the way to do this Wanting balance between caster and non-caster classes is as noble goal; however, adding mechanics that punish players for choosing to be spellcasters is not how to bring them in line. Random mechanics like Wild Magic just make the game unfun for spellcasters or tho...

That one, @Jadasc

Though the OP did edit the question requesting expansion on additional systems, so I'ma do that

Hey @BESW, would you suggest FATE as a system for a low-magic game modeled after A Song of Ice and Fire and similar fantasy?

BESW

2:05 AM

I'm not familiar with the setting, but FATE can handle any setting at any level of magic. Its constraint is in the kind of play it can handle.

Lord_Gareth

Would you mind writing something up real quick about FATE so I can quote you in my answer?

BESW

@SimonGill might be better equipped to do that. [pokes]

What do you want me to say about FATE?

Lord_Gareth

The reasons you feel it could be used to model such a setting, essentially. This poor man is trying to use 3.PF for it

Jadasc

@BESW nod FATE makes things less "unpredictable and dangerous" in the sense the OP seems to mean. He wants to discourage magic by making players not want to use it; FATE's not geared to that.

Lord_Gareth

Which is a lot like attempting a triple bypass using only a sledgehammer and a glue gun

@Jadasc Not quite. He wants to run a low magic game and thinks he can do so by making magic unpredictable

He's not the first to be wrong about this subject

He will not be the last either.

BESW

2:10 AM

Well, the DFRPG magic system has every spell you cast inflict mental stress. The stronger the spell, the more stress it inflicts.

If you channel more power than you can handle, it either damages you or you hand the power over to the GM to inflict damage on the environment as he sees fit.

Lord_Gareth

Nifty

Jadasc

@BESW True, but that's something the player can expect and plan for, and take Complications and Consequences to mitigate.

Dangerous, perhaps, but not unpredictable.

BESW

@Jadasc Don't look at the question's title. Here's the meat of the OP's issue:

> My ultimate goal is to a: add more balance between caster/non-caster classes, b: add a mechanical component to the flavor that magic is both dangerous and powerful, and c: avoid adding too much unnecessary crunch. I am not sure I want to ban magical classes outright, so the ideally I don't want to completely nerf spellcasting or frustrate players with arbitrary punishment.

Jadasc

@BESW I assure that I did read the meat of it, as well. I think FATE could do a decent job at a and c, and would be miserable at b.

BESW

DFRPG accomplishes all three of those handily.
a: by using Refresh as both character feature currency and narrative control currency, casters and noncasters get roughly equal power levels if they have the same starting Refresh.
b: Spellcasting *always* inflicts mental stress, which can take you out of the conflict if it builds too high. The more powerful the spell, the more stressful it is. If you channel up more power than you can control, you have to choose to let it hurt you or release it into the environment under the GM's control.

Lord_Gareth

2:15 AM

Severely having to avoid downvoting this, "Ask your DM if it was evil," answer on the thing with killing the pirates - to me, that seems like it's not an answer at all, but I think the community's policies disagree

@BESW I'ma quote that for adapting Dresden Files RPG in my answer if you don't mind.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth That's why I typed it out.

The B part isn't perfect; as Jadasc points out, there are ways to control and contain and avoid the worst effects.

But there's really no way to avoid the fact that magic is stressful, and too much of even the most controlled magic will drop a wizard.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Incorporated into my answer

BESW

Yes, and now you're going to fix the formatting.

Lord_Gareth

How?

BESW

I could do it

Lord_Gareth

2:25 AM

Feel free

Danke @BESW

Much cleaner

BESW

My pleasure.

Lord_Gareth

I still feel awkward at being handed all this power I didn't ask for and being told to use it. I keep staring at this, "you can create tag synonyms" power going, "Oh god"

BESW

That's a good sign.

Lord_Gareth

I don't want this stuff! And mods keep telling me to use it! It's unnatural!

BESW

If you get handed power and go "BWAHAHAHAAHAH! A GOD AM I!" then we have a problem.

I don't think I've done any synonyming yet.

I will gleefully retag, though.

Jadasc

2:30 AM

The synonyming thing has always puzzled me, too.

BESW

It's the kind of thing I'd have to spend a lot more time on the meta side before I felt competent to explain.

Jadasc

Fair enough.

BESW

But my limited understanding is that rather than expect everyone to know [dnd-3.5] is the proper tag, we take any tag that's obviously supposed to be [dnd-3.5] and let it be equivalent.

So when someone drops in [3e5] or [d&d3.5] or whatever, it gets automagically filed properly.

Jadasc

Right. I've got that part. However, you can't just arbitrarily do it, apparently. Other people have to vote your suggestion up, or something.

Lord_Gareth

The one that freaks me out every time is when a mod tells me to edit someone else's post.

And I'm like, "Fool, do I look like I signed up to moderate?"

That feels SO. WRONG.

Like being asked to sleep with someone else's wife because they don't feel like they're satisfying her. I mean, yeah, noble intentions, but awkward bro.

BESW

2:34 AM

Definitely a shift from the semi-sacrosanctity of forum posts.

That's... not the metaphor I would've gone with.

And yeah, I'm much more comfortable leaving a comment asking the original author to edit his own post.

Especially if it's a major content change. The more it's about just taking their content and making it clearer, the easier I am about editing.

A couple days ago, for example, I heavily edited an answer so that it precisely reflected the 4e definitions it was dealing with. The end result and conclusion was the same, but I made it tighter and more accurate in getting to the conclusion.

Lord_Gareth

Indeed.

Okay, @BESW, is this Not A Real Answer or am I just suffering from forum bias:

3

A: Is Coup de Grace on sleeping and bound opponents an evil act?

Too bad for us question-answerers, most of the rules of this game (and its D&D relatives) leave it up to the DM to decide whether an act is Evil and if so, whether it influences a character's alignment (in the way it allows the DM to choose to put a group of Kobolds or an Orc in the next room...

BESW

It is an answer. It's not an especially helpful answer, but it's given in good faith and emphasizes an important point about the mutability of alignment.

Lord_Gareth

'Kay, I'll leave it alone then.

BESW

I disagree with the tenet that alignment violations are on par with populating a dungeon, but PF is a lot more explicit about the role of alignment as a guideline rather than a stranglehold.

wax eagle

is a comprehensive "this is how you do average damage" a worthy ask/self answer question?

BESW

2:42 AM

His answer only becomes inoperative if alignment violations have mechanical repercussions, which I don't know enough about PF to say anything about.

@waxeagle Umm. I'm not sure what you mean.

Is that a tutorial on building characters, or on calculating the damage a given character deals?

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Um, that link you gave me on PF alignment has a whole section at the end of, "This is how you use it as a stranglehold, do this in your game all day erryday"

wax eagle

@BESW just damage given character

ie I just built this rogue, what's her DPR?

BESW

@waxeagle It'd have to be system-specific, right?

wax eagle

@BESW would be 4e

BESW

@Lord_Gareth More like a "this is one way of several to do it, but nobody agrees which is preferable."

@waxeagle Umm. I think you'd need to include something about why such a thing is useful, and under what circumstances, or you'll invite yourself a big can of CharOp Debate.

wax eagle

2:47 AM

@BESW I've had pretty good success with questions about average damage in the past

BESW

Then go for it. I think it'll be worthwhile provided it's placed in the context of "I find this useful and this is why."

Lord_Gareth

3:01 AM

So @BESW I got a tag badge for 3.5. I think my specialization is showing >.>

BESW

heheh.

I've got a 4e badge.

Lord_Gareth

No one around here asks WoD, Scion, or Legend questions or I'd be answering those!

I mean, like, I had fun answering the royal protocol question

That was nifty!

BESW

Heh.

I'm sure I'll be populating the board with more FATE questions soon.

For people who like to interject little bits of historical real-life fluff into their games, neatorama.com/story/Medieval-Manuscript-Peed-on-by-a-Cat

SomeGuy

3:22 AM

@Lord_Gareth Sounds sort of like applying for a job

"I can code in C++, Python, PHP..."
"Can you pick up C# and Asterisk?"
"Uhh, yeah."
"Good! Do that forever!"

Lord_Gareth

4:13 AM

@SomeGuy Umm...what the fruit are you talking about?

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Programming.

Lord_Gareth

Why'd he highlight me? I didn't ask anything about programming or say anything about it.

BESW

"Protocol" may have been the key word.

SomeGuy

4:46 AM

@Lord_Gareth I was referring to how you don't get any questions from half the systems you know

BESW

@SomeGuy You might want to start using the little arrow icon on the right side of peoples' lines, to indicate exactly what you're referring to.

SomeGuy

@BESW ahh

BESW

Prexactly.

BESW

6:27 AM

@SimonGill Anything new on the FATE front that I've missed?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

7:08 AM

@Lord_Gareth ask some :)

@BESW Meh. To a philosopher, D&D alignment is quite quite happily in the realm of "point and laugh." ::points and laughs:: See?

BESW

@BrianBallsun-Stanton Yes, but anyone who has even the slightest bit of training in that area and enters an alignment discussion will throw everything off-kilter with their specialized phrasing, terms, and assumptions that will lack context for everyone else in the conversation.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW Yep! And then there are citations.

BESW

Heck, I've seen you do it with something as simple as character building.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Of course, for citations that even I go "Oh, I say" at... Archaeologists are... um... they... have multiple citations for... a .. potsherd.

Oh hey, I'm the last one at work. Again. I should probably go home.

BESW

Citations are great, but they raise the hackles on people who thought it was a touchy-feely topic.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

7:14 AM

@BESW yep.

And the problem with touchy-feely is: if I don't have your brain in a jar hooked up to a proper query system.... I don't actually know what you mean.

BESW

Yes, but it's hard to blame someone for failing to use the proper style in an accountancy report when they've only ever been trained to write creative fiction.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@BESW Yep!

Eric

10:08 AM

Ahhh, so that happened to my comments. :-)

@Lord_Gareth Sorry if I came over as confrontational. (After I had tucked myself into bed I recalled that the implied meaning of "fabrication" is "lie", but I didn't mean it like that! Non-native speaker, but I still lost some sleep over that.) I just disagreed with your bold-caps this is the answer, which I don't think you can say given the information in the question without incorporating some of your own IRL morality (which we apparently all agree should be avoided on a RPG Q&A website).

@Lord_Gareth Anyway, thanks for resisting your urges to downvote/edit (delete?) my own answer. I still think its the better, but let's just let the community sort it out. :-) offers hand

Gomu

10:32 AM

how to check the state of a GPIO pin in a craneboard, whether it is in 1 or 0? Any ideas?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@Gomu ask the right chat channel

Simon Gill

11:21 AM

@BESW Not that I'm aware of. I'm still waiting on the news that Core has finished layout and editing. Should be Real Soon Now.

BESW

@Eric Thank you for bringing that here instead of continuing it in the comments, and for being mature about it, to boot!

@SimonGill Is that like Blizzard Soon?

Simon Gill

@BESW Don't think so - there is some preview material appearing on Evil Hat's blog (and a dig at KS for a rather silly bulk pre-order restriction) but no news that I can see. Maybe the Yahoo! group has it.

doppelgreener

12:16 PM

> So that means an opponent will have had to swing and miss in order for me to declare a tumble against it and gain the bonus from the feat? Can one not read it as it is intended? I.E. "tumble to avoid PROVOKING an attack of opportunity"? - @Chris_Havoc here

To the first question: No, you don't tumble after someone swings and misses. You tumble before even moving past them, and if you succeed, they never even get the option of swinging in the first place, since no OA is ever provoked.

As for "Can one not read it as it is intended?" - the first issue is that we don't know that's what was intended (we're just making up the closest thing that works that they might have meant - it's possible the writer just didn't know how tumbling worked and intended it exactly as is), the second is covered by KRyan's fourth paragraph (about fixes).

Acrobatic Strike is something you have to re-think in order to get working, basically, because working is something it doesn't do

Taken literally it cancels its own circumstantial bonus out from ever being possible.

BESW

Personally, I always thought having a flat DC for tumbling to avoid OAs was pretty silly. I houseruled that it should be opposed by the enemy's Reflex check.

doppelgreener

That is a pretty good idea actually.

I didn't think about that.

"This person has four arms, and due to time-related magic, is moving at ten times speed."

BESW

As written, someone with a 20 in Dex, Tumble as a class skill, and a racial bonus to Tumble can take a single feat to never provoke OAs at level 1.

doppelgreener

"Make a DC 15 to avoid his opportunity attack, and that of the sloth beside him."

> That is the way it reads to me. I suppose it RAW vs. RAI but it seems to me that if you successfully tumble to avoid provoking an attack of opportunity you gain the bonus.

That is the issue - it is RAW vs rules as interpreted based upon an intelligent guess at what would actually make sense.

As written, the condition is that you successfully tumble to avoid an attack of opportunity. It's very clear on that. It never mentions avoiding provoking one: that's our interpretation to try and extract some meaning from a badly written feat.

> If you do not provoke an attack of opportunity when make a 5-foot move you do not get the bonus.

The thing is that tumbling appears like it's supposed to avoid provoking OAs in the same way that 5-foot steps avoid provoking them. The entire OA thing never occurs. So what's the difference between not provoking one with a 5-foot step, and not provoking one with a tumble? In either case, an OA never occurs.

Chris_Havoc

That is the way it reads to me. I suppose it RAW vs. RAI but it seems to me that if you successfully tumble to avoid provoking an attack of opportunity you gain the bonus. If you do not provoke an attack of opportunity when make a 5-foot move you do not get the bonus. However, I do think this means you can make a Tumble check to move through an opponents' space and get the benefit from the Acrobatic Backstab Skill Trick or other abilities like it using the 5-Foot Step.

doppelgreener

12:29 PM

Welcome to chat!

BESW

For reference, can we get the text of Acrobatic Strike?

Chris_Havoc

Thanks!

doppelgreener

Acrobatic Strike: dndtools.eu/feats/players-handbook-ii--80/acrobatic-strike--27

BESW

@Chris_Havoc Yes, glad to have you.

doppelgreener

Tumble: dndtools.eu/skills/tumble

BESW

12:30 PM

@JonathanHobbs That's not Acrobatic Strike.

doppelgreener

Acrobatic Strike's text:

> If you succeed in using Tumble to avoid an opponent's attack of opportunity, you gain a +4 bonus on the next attack that you make against that foe as long as the attack occurs before the end of your current turn.

@BESW Whoops! Edited.

Tumble at a DC 15 for this effect:

> Tumble at one-half speed as part of normal movement, provoking no attacks of opportunity while doing so. Failure means you provoke attacks of opportunity normally. Check separately for each opponent you move past, in the order in which you pass them (player’s choice of order in case of a tie). Each additional enemy after the first adds +2 to the Tumble DC.

For reference, 5-foot steps from the d20 SRD:

> You can move 5 feet in any round when you don’t perform any other kind of movement. Taking this 5-foot step never provokes an attack of opportunity.

There, I'm done pasting stuff

BESW

Thanks.

doppelgreener

Tumble: provoking no attacks of opportunity. 5-foot step: never provokes an attack of opportunity. Acrobatic Strike: If you (...) avoid (provoking?) an opponent's attack of opportunity

BESW

I think it's pretty clear that five-foot steps are a different kind of move action than the move action which requires training in Tumble and lets you move 1/2 your speed without provoking OAs.

And Acrobatic Strike only procs if Tumble was used to avoid the OA.

Chris_Havoc

Yeah so you'd have to provoke an attack of opportunity to benefit from tumbling through combat to gain the benefit of Acrobatic Strike. As far as I can tell.

doppelgreener

12:33 PM

@BESW The OA was never avoided because it never occurred.

@Chris_Havoc Right, but tumbling means you never provoke one! :(

Simon Gill

@JonathanHobbs But you can avoid OAs in general by successfully tumbling.

Chris_Havoc

No it means you avoid provoking one if you're successful. So there is still the possibility of failure.

BESW

Hm. To the best of my knowledge there's no non-exception-based way to use Tumble to "interrupt" an OA, only to make people unable to take them in the first place.

@Chris_Havoc yes, and that's the basic DC 15 Tumble ability.

> Tumble at one-half speed as part of normal movement, provoking no attacks of opportunity while doing so. Failure means you provoke attacks of opportunity normally.

Simon Gill

It's dodgy wording - but to me it reads "After successfully tumbling to provoke no OAs during a movement, you may attack one of the targets of your tumble action with a +4 bonus up to the end of the current turn."

doppelgreener

@Chris_Havoc Yes, but we're talking about the circumstance relevant to Acrobatic Strike. If you fail at tumbling, no acrobatic strike because you failed your tumble. If you succeed, no acrobatic strike because you succeeded but never avoided an OA because it never reached that step, though it would be different if it was about avoiding provoking one.

@SimonGill Yes, that's probably the most sensible way to deal with it too.

Chris_Havoc

12:36 PM

Ah OK. I'm just assuming that's how it was intended because otherwise it is never triggered.

doppelgreener

I don't know what their intention was (anything we could say here would just be assumptions) but that's probably the best way to salvage it!

Really, it is a real possibility the authors actually thought tumbling works completely differently to the way it does, like you make your tumble after provoking the OA, and stuff.

BESW

Yeah, I think the best reading is that Acrobatic Strike is poorly referencing the very clear mechanics of the basic Tumble feature.

Simon Gill

@JonathanHobbs I can't think of any other way to use it that works under a plain english reading - and the technical english reading is quite broken.

Chris_Havoc

Agreed.

So if we've come to the conclusion that you can tumble as part of a 5-Foot Step. Am I right in saying you can tumble through an opponents space? Failure meaning you just don't move rather than that and provoking an attack of opportunity.

BESW

I don't think you can use that application of tumble as part of a 5-foot step.

That application of Tumble is a move action, as is the five-foot step. They don't stack.

doppelgreener

12:41 PM

D&D 3.5e rounds down as a rule, right?

BESW

Yup!

doppelgreener

Half of 1 square of speed is no squares.

So you can tumble as part of a 5-foot step, as long as you go absolutely nowhere.

BESW

@JonathanHobbs This. Also, "as part of normal movement" kinda precludes exception-based moves like five-foot steps.

Chris_Havoc

@JonathanHobbs Yeah OK I was just going to say that was also possibly what's wrong with that.

doppelgreener

@Chris_Havoc Yes... the fact you don't go anywhere makes the whole tumbling and 5-foot stepping a bit redundant. :)

BESW

12:45 PM

In conclusion, five-foot step doesn't mesh with Tumble well, and thus doesn't have much to do with Acrobatic Strike, which is poorly worded anyway.

Chris_Havoc

Otherwise I think those feats in conjunction with the Swashbucklers ability to Take 10 on Tumble checks in combat would become abused if you could also perform a full attack against an opponent. :P

Simon Gill

Is this just so you can Acrobatic Strike on a Full Attack @Chris_Havoc?

BESW

Anything having to do with an unhouseruled Tumble check easily becomes abusive.

Simon Gill

@Chris_Havoc Not really - if you need the +4 to stand a chance of hitting something with the first attack - any other attacks in the sequence are probably going to miss. If you don't need it to hit with your secondary attacks, you don't need it on your primary.

Chris_Havoc

Well when I was reading it I was unaware of the 5-Foot Step when I first read it so I just wanted clarity on how Tumble and 5-Foot Step work together.

Well yeah that is a good point. It's still perfectly useful for how I had initially planned to use it. Basically tumble in and through an opponent to strike one-handed with my Rapier and be able to use my Combat Expertise without much detriment to my strike. Then be in a position to make a full attack with Two-Weapon Fighting.

BESW

1:08 PM

Hmm. I think there's a DFRPG plot I can dig out of The Cat Piano.

doppelgreener

On that topic, y'all should see this excellent student film

vimeo.com/58179094

And now I'm off to bed, night night :D

BESW

1:24 PM

I can't help but think that something in the Dresdenverse would find the Katzenklavier absolutely charming.

Simon Gill

@Chris_Havoc Yeah, that works out quite well :)

@BESW If you can't... then you need an infusion of story-stuff, stat.

Chris_Havoc

1:42 PM

@SimonGill Yay! Thanks.

I wanted to ask advice on the Swashbuckler. Is this the appropriate place to do so?

Simon Gill

Chat's a good place to do it - but not all of us are currently playing 3.5 so we might not be able to give you everything.

Chris_Havoc

2:13 PM

Cool. All I wanted to know if the general direction I want to take with my lvl 3 one is a sensible one. Got the appropriate ability distribution I think. I've also got Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (Rapier), and Combat Expert. From there I want to get Weapon Focus (Short-Sword) then at lvl 8 I plan to go the route of a Battle Trickster to get the extra feat (Specifically Improved Critical (Rapier)), and Skill Tricks (specifically Acrobatic Backstab).

Then with my natural feats I want to get Improved Critical (Short Sword), Two-Weapon Defense, Acrobatic Strike, and finally Two-Weapon Rend.

KRyan

2:27 PM

@SimonGill the Tumble action does not have targets though

that's the problem

you can Tumble so that your movement does not provoke from anyone

you don't even have to be aware that they were there and eligible to take an AoO

Simon Gill

@KRyan Tumble does refer to increasing the DC for each enemy - and you make one check per relevant opponent.

KRyan

@BESW no, it is not.

but you have a good point about the incompatibility between 5-ft. Step and half movement

but then you can take a -10 penalty to move your full movement

@SimonGill good point: then Tumble itself does not make any kind of sense

I suppose the DM can secretly increase the DC

but that secret is ruined if you hit it anyway, and then he has to tell you that you get +4 on your attack

Simon Gill

@KRyan Well - we already know that it's a bit wonky.

KRyan

frankly, I don't really have a problem with the flat DC

3.x has too many skills (even Pathfinder) and most of them are too weak

Simon Gill

@KRyan Where does it say this, anyway?

KRyan

2:32 PM

@SimonGill "DC 15: Tumble at one-half speed as part of normal movement, provoking no attacks of opportunity while doing so."

no reference to needing to know of any threat

you just tumble, and any threats that you might have provoked from, you don't

provided you hit the DC

Simon Gill

@KRyan That's just selective quoting.

d20srd.org/srd/skills/tumble.htm

> Tumble at one-half speed as part of normal movement, provoking no attacks of opportunity while doing so. Failure means you provoke attacks of opportunity normally. Check separately for each opponent you move past, in the order in which you pass them (player’s choice of order in case of a tie). Each additional enemy after the first adds +2 to the Tumble DC.

KRyan

frankly, the wording is just very poor

yes, there's an implication that you have to know about threats by the need to do it per enemy

but that's not actually stated

at all

and the first statement is quite absolute

hit the DC, don't provoke

if you had absurd Tumble checks, you could simply make 8 checks per square you move through to be absolutely sure there was no one to provoke from I suppose

but overall this rule strikes me as really poorly designed

Simon Gill

@KRyan That's a reduction to absurdity.

The only time it matters is when you have Invisible opponents - and knowing there is something in a square isn't all that hard anyway.

KRyan

@SimonGill no, but you still might not

also, the flip-side (you're blind rather than they're invisible) means there may be quite a lot of opponents you don't know the position of

as-written, it seems that either you are quite allowed to guess how often to make Tumble checks, or worse the DM is supposed to tell you how many to make

he certainly has to keep track of how many actual opponents there are for the purposes of the DC

since it's not +2 per check but +2 per enemy

which is just stupid

the rule is badly-written

but I'm not convinced that the easy fix (tumbler must be aware of opponents) is a good solution, because dammit Tumble was one of the few good skills

Simon Gill

@KRyan The way I read it, he is supposed to tell you as you go through the move. It's not all that hard to increase the DC by 2 for each check.

KRyan

2:43 PM

@SimonGill so Tumbling gives you limited omniscience in the matter of how many foes are capable of taking an Attack of Opportunity from you?

Simon Gill

@KRyan Very limited, yes. It only tells you who is next to you at each point you move out of a square.

It doesn't simulate fighting while blind at all well without extra circumstance penalties.

And Invisible creatures are wonky anyway. I seem to remember you can take an AoO against them when they move past you.

KRyan

@SimonGill tells you they have reach, tells you they have Combat Reflexes if they've already made an AoO that round, tells you about enemies you were unaware of

for that matter it could potentially tell you that some guy was planning on betraying you and screwing you up right then

@SimonGill they provoke, but you're not entitled to automatic knowledge of their provoking action

Simon Gill

@KRyan Ah, Combat Reflexes I wouldn't let them know. If they want to keep tumbling they still have to make the check when they provoke from movement, regardless of what the enemy can do. Reach is usually obvious so that's not a problem. If an enemy a player is unaware is going to want to take an AoO, then they get to make the extra tumble check because the enemy is about to use up his advantage.

@KRyan Same deal as unawareness.

KRyan

just seems to me that calling for x Tumble checks gives the player information the character could not in that situation have

but then, I suppose, metagame information is a common problem anyway

Simon Gill

@KRyan And? Players have plenty of information that character's don't have. Exact hit point totals and concrete knowledge of their skills for a start.

KRyan

2:56 PM

@SimonGill it's true, but knowing things about their own character, even if they know it with far more certainty than a real person could, seems less-bad to me

still, you have a fair point

Simon Gill

It's just another one of those 3.5isms where it's trying to be all things to all people and not doing anything quite right.

KRyan

I suppose that also sort of makes Acrobatic Strike functional again

except of course that the rules don't actually detail any of this

@SimonGill yuuup

I'm fairly annoyed by 3.5's "lip service" to simulationism

it's not really a simulationist system

but it pretends to be

and makes people expect that it will be

and then they start making particularly ill-advised houserules in the name of improving the not-really-there simulation

Simon Gill

And it doesn't really play entirely as a game either. Things that could make an entertaining subsystem without simulating "real life" are dropped because they are too gamey.

Lord_Gareth

@Eric YOU DARE TO BE MATURE AND CONCILIATORY TO ME? Alright, we coo', water under the bridge man.

Mornin' @Kryan

KRyan

@SimonGill I think there's less of that, but yeah, that's a fair point too

@Lord_Gareth hi, actually about to leave

test in an hour

reasonably well prepared considering last night's status

Lord_Gareth

3:05 PM

@Eric Part of my ongoing problem is that I come from an extensive forum background and remain unfamiliar with parts of Stachexchange's etiquette; I'm used to answers like, "Ask your DM" being treated as cop-outs that are not, you know, actually answers. This community's different, of course, and I'm still adjusting to that.

@KRyan Best of luck. Beast that test so hard they hire you to teach the class.

KRyan

@Lord_Gareth ...I did that last year, actually

well, actually, I hadn't even gotten to the first test

the professor had already been convinced I knew everything in the course

and he hired me to cover for the professor for the other section, who disappeared for like a month

reviews were generally better for me than the other guy

Lord_Gareth

@Chris_Havoc Welcome to the chat, by the by

Heh, hilarious man.

KRyan

I'd go to class in the afternoon, and then teach the same lesson in the evening