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12:19 AM
@BESW Good edits, thanks for the compliment.
 
12:30 AM
Just came up with a good short riddle because someone asked how old I was and I didn't want to tell them outright x3
Anyone want to try their hand at solving it? It's not a very hard one, but I thought it was clever :3
 
 
1 hour later…
2:33 AM
that's really cool though
 
It's not too uncommon; a dense sharply-delineated cloud bank at and below the horizon in the right place is probably the cause.
The blue side is a shadow cast across a regular sunset by a cloud at the horizon; we see them all the time and they're called crepuscular rays.
This is just a really really big one positioned just right.
 
very cool.
I've seen similar things at the beach, but nothing that stark I don't think
 
3:00 AM
@JonathanHobbs Saw this tweet, thought of you.
Fridtjof Nansen, the scientist athlete, wears his hair tossed vikingwise, back from his forehead. TX1905
 
3:11 AM
Is a sequel to The Five(ish) Doctors really in production? So says @pauljmcgann: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/SLIDESHOW-Paul-McGann-tells-Cambridge-Union-Society-Doctor-Who-producers-missed-a-trick-by-not-casting-a-woman-as-the-twelfth-Time-Lord-20140619192138.htm#ixzz35788q0pE #DoctorWho
Peter Capaldi & Brad Pitt sign up as (Glasgow) School of Art trustees. Mackintosh Building appeal. http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/u/pitt-and-capaldi-sign-up-as-school-of-art-trustees.1403110971 #DoctorWho
 
3:46 AM
Hello
 
@BESW D'aw. :)
That does seem appropriate though!
 
I'm curious as to why this question was closed.
9
Q: Roguelike Tabletop

StolasI am looking for a Roguelike tabletop RPG to play with some friends. We really love RPG's we love the Concept of D&D (talk-gaming) but we just dwell into a lot of silliness due to not having a good DM (you know Dwarfs getting drunk, Elves stealing flowers from gardens those kinds of things). Wh...

 
@shatterspike1 The asker wasn't very specific about what they wanted, and the criteria they set down (game, miniatures, roguelike) could cover hundreds of RPGs.
24
Q: How to deal with questions that just don't understand the scope of the RPG landscape?

mxyzplkWe've had several questions lately that we've been closing. What point-buy systems of magic (like psionics in 3e D&D) are there? , What are the main Creative Commons powered tabletop RPG out there?, How do the rules that govern a Cleric's Turn Undead ability vary among D&D editions? (before it wa...

 
If you want a more in-depth and considered discussion, or you think it should be re-opened, make a meta post about it?
 
The asker also mentions they're already interested in D&D itself - but they weren't very clear on what it was exactly about D&D that was having them not already play it.
Yeah, that'd be wise.
 
3:51 AM
The random dungeons in roguelike style alone narrows down the list by a massive amount though. I may do just that (make a meta post).
Or ask an alternate question that is somehow better defined.
 
@JonathanHobbs Yes, this.
 
@shatterspike1 You could do both.
A meta question to find out where that question went wrong exactly, so that when you ask your own, you don't do the same things. ;)
 
That sounds like a good plan, I think I'll do just that
 
Unfortunately I'm not sure a new question would be likely to answer the desires of the original querent, as the reason it's closed is probably that we don't actually know what he wants.
The best I can figure is that he wants an RPG that's like D&D except its rules ban "Rule 0" and instead provide the GM with sufficient support to cover all possible scenarios without needing to make ad hoc adjudications.
 
He said he wanted something akin to "Tabletop Nethack", which seems decently clear to me
 
4:02 AM
@shatterspike1 I do strongly advise you to ask on meta. You'll get a pretty thorough and thoughtful answer there, or several.
 
I'll make sure to do the meta question first
 
His comments, however, reveal that he doesn't want to have even the faintest possibility of GM fiat.
 
 
2 hours later…
5:42 AM
@BESW This new question might benefit from your "Disregard plans; acquire fun" approach
 
SE sites can't have non-standard badges, right? Apart from the tag badges.
So, say, RPG.SE could have a Gygax badge for someone with at least 50 upvotes on all editions of D&D, or something like that.
 
@JonathanHobbs Urgh. They're using roll20, and that makes it a lot harder because it doubles the wasted effort of encounters you don't wind up using.
 
@lisardggY Nope; it'd be neat if they could but badges are all standard
Aha:
1
Q: Are badges specific to the site?

Abe MiesslerBasically, are the badges that a user can be awarded on StackOverflow the same as the badges that can be awarded on any of the StackExchange sites?

There are some rare, special-case exceptions.
 
I'm guessing that exceptions involve work for the devs.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:07 AM
My autocorrect just suggested "murderous kobolds" might better be "murderous hobos."
 
user61230
What's the difference between a murder-kobold and a murder-hobo?
 
Murder-kobolds come in greater numbers.
 
7:22 AM
Murder-hobos have shinier toys.
(Because they beat up the murder-kobolds and took their shinies.)
 
user61230
D&D Design Philosophy #2: Get more shinies. Shinies are good.
3
 
Bleh, an internet friend wants me to run a Pathfinder game and doesn't have access to any online virtual tabletops.
When using a dagger at the end of a sentence to indicate 'read below for details', does the dagger go before or after the punctuation mark?
 
user61230
@Metool My mother has told me it comes before the punctuation mark, but I'm going to double-check with the AP Stylebook
 
user61230
Purdue disagrees, and I'm gonna go with Purdue on this one. (My mother didn't seem too certain.)
 
user61230
> When using either type of footnote, insert a number formatted in superscript following almost any punctuation mark. Footnote numbers should not follow dashes ( — ), and if they appear in a sentence in parentheses, the footnote number should be inserted within the parentheses. (source)
 
7:40 AM
Cheers.
 
...I love this chat.
(If I were at home, I'd be checking if Fowler has anything to say about it.)
@JonathanHobbs Done and done.
No way anyone read my whole post before I got that upvote.
 
I read about half, upvoted and continued reading
 
As a happy side effect, I now have a new one-shot campaign framework!
 
7:59 AM
Oh?
 
Yeah. Unlike most times, the scenario I used in my example isn't one I've actually used in a game (most of the examples I could think of were far too complicated).
 
 
1 hour later…
9:16 AM
@JoshuaAslanSmith Durnit, why'd you have to wind up the scene Uncertain? [grumbles]
 
 
1 hour later…
10:28 AM
[curses desire to adjust Pathfinder to desired heroic fantasy levels while adjusting Pathfinder to desired heroic fantasy levels through piling pages of houserules]
 
10:41 AM
Lessons learned from social media: I need more pictures of me awkwardly partying in nightclubs if I want to fit in online.
Either that or pictures of me standing on mountains or by landmarks or something.
 
11:00 AM
@GustavBertram Hi!
 
Afternoon all.
 
[wave]
I stole Velethriel's ancestor.
 
I saw.
Even though I am pretty sure I had just come back
I guess some residual energies were left behind. Let's not let small details stand in the way of good story :P
brb
 
You had been offered "keep the soul around" herbs.
 
11:17 AM
And I was fed them by Endufal
> Endufal had just finished chewing the strange herb he received from Arasys when Velethriel let loose his spear. He ran forward to his master and assisted him as he fell to his knees, holding him up, and giving him some of the nasty tasting herb as well.
But, as I said:
9 mins ago, by Inbar Rose
I guess some residual energies were left behind. Let's not let small details stand in the way of good story :P
Great picture you found though.
 
12:03 PM
@BESW MWHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA
@InbarRose Looks very romantic style
 
@BESW Oh, uh, hello. awkward
 
Good Morning RPG chat
 
12:44 PM
-cricket cricket-
Starts setting bomb up again
is not caught in time. "Muhahahaha" (used edit comment timer as countdown)
 
1:04 PM
man I really like the evil hat blog
I love that a guy who co-writes Fate analyzing and improving on dungeon world
 
1:19 PM
@InbarRose Thanks. It's apparently called "Fairies Dancing" or something similar, by this guy.
Finding pictures is really satisfying.
 
that right picture, yep
 
1:35 PM
The old D&DTools question popped up on Meta again.
 
@InbarRose, @JoshuaAslanSmith New Scale Island scene posted.
 
I wonder it would make sense to edit links to D&DTools, when they points to OGL content, to point to d20srd.org instead.
 
@BESW Cool.
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith Please note the number of elven spirit-shapes in the bonfire.
 
@BESW Oooooh, what a clue~
 
1:40 PM
laughinhg at kill to live
 
@BESW Hmmm... here is an interesting question
Can I take the goal "Protect Someone" for Endufal? :P
 
If the story moves that way, sure. I'm giving you Endufal to see how much this kind of thing can break the system.
 
hmm thinking up a move
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith Oh? I expected "Protect Someone" to be the laugh-causer this time around.
 
I liked the image but text always is more evocative for me
your phrasing on kill to live's description is what I enjoyed
 
1:43 PM
Fair enough. "Protect Someone" uses the default Storium text.
 
Just out of curiosity, @BESW, @InbarRose what system are you two using?
 
Storium
They kickstarter backed it and are running games in it
 
@Grubermensch I'm running a couple games in Storium.
 
its sort of if the play by post style and Fate had a love child
one that really liked card games
 
So this is the "Kill the Live" card he's laughing at:
 
1:45 PM
Hah
 
I bring: some abandoned places around the world for scenery. A few of them creepy.
2
 
That church.... woah
 
Okay, sleep nao. G'night!
 
@BESW Goodnight! :D
@Grubermensch The sixth photo? That one's my favourite.
 
just wanna live in the movie theater in the first photo
DECO and Gothic revival
 
1:54 PM
@JonathanHobbs yeah looks like an excellent game set-piece
 
@Grubermensch I have a thing to use it in, too...
@JoshuaAslanSmith it does look marvellous
 
Some of the other things seem like they would be cool reclaimed mansions if I ever became stupidly wealthy.
 
@Grubermensch Like the church in the sixth place and leaving that area perfectly as is.
 
Can anyone give an answer to this with actual rules being quoted? I have not been able to find anything aside from "This is what I think" Answers online.
1
Q: Pathfinder applying Spell perfection to Intensify Spell

AaronThe feat Spell Perfection reads Pick one spell which you have the ability to cast. Whenever you cast that spell you may apply any one metamagic feat you have to that spell without affecting its level or casting time, as long as the total modified level of the spell does not use a spell slot ...

 
@Aaron Specify in your question that you'd like answers to be supported by rules citations.
And leave a comment on the answer requesting they explain their reasoning based on the rules or w/e.
 
2:09 PM
do we still have the RAW tag?
or did that get kersploded
 
@Aaron I'm not too optimistic on finding something for this. Red_Shadow's "this is what words mean" answer seems like the extent to which rules would go.
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith still floating around
 
how are you @wax
 
doing all right, spending my work hours training up on MS Dynamics
 
also I laughed a week or so ago when My wife asked where you lived and I was like on a mountain and then I google maps lookout mountain and I was like, yeah hes on the same moutain as see rock garden
 
2:11 PM
@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, if you can find Cloudland Canyon state park on a map, my house is about 5 miles from there
 
still incredibly on the fence about looking for jobs locally or looking in georgia
 
what kind of work are you looking for?
 
because aside from philly wage and dumb local politics philly basically has everything I want in a city its just my wife does not like her boring well paying job and would like something more in her field which philly doesnt have a lot of
either Systems Security or some kind of Systems design position
I really liked to HCI and User optimization stuff as well but I dont know if the job market in that area is any sort of sizeable outside of academia
Id pretty much cut my throat before going in for a PHD and becoming a researcher, 7 years of studying and working at a university is too much
 
What does your wife do?
 
She went to school for interior design, but specifically she wants to do hospitality design in the commercial sector
she hates doing residential interiors
 
2:18 PM
@JoshuaAslanSmith depends on what you're after. The UX division in my own company is expanding a lot.
 
interesting, not something I'm familiar with at all
 
Human computer interaction as an area of study is, naturally, mainly academia, but user experience design has a presence in business.
 
yeah, basically my undergrad degree was screenwritinig and I have an art background so Id like to think I have pretty solid aesthetics combined with my graduate degree in Information Systems it would be a sensible career path
but at this point in life I also just wanna chase dollars
but without losing my mind
so no databases
 
Delightful new spam:
> All new men E book Shares The Way You Can Rule The men Arena
 
user experience design & HCI go way, way beyond aesthetics and making things look nice
 
2:21 PM
@JonathanHobbs which I understand Im simply compressing it for public consumption
 
okay :)
 
I understand that user experience involves a lot of testing and research to create systems that users are truly comfortable with and intuitive
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith have you poked SO's job listings?
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith It's actually not as crazy as people think it is. You can get good data off of testing two or three people for 15 mins each.
 
@waxeagle I have not, but I have no idea where they are based, I fear it is the west/left coast
 
2:30 PM
@JoshuaAslanSmith Oh I was referring to Careers, but they do have openings all the time too. NYC, but most positions can work from the moon if they want to
 
I guess the biggest thing Ive noticed with regards to Systems is that as much as I think the improvement of the field via rigorous standards is a good thing, it could still use a little more design influence from other fields
 
ooh bilingual CM role...hmmm
 
ah gotcha ill have to check out careers
haha I speak neither japanese nor spanish
also Im not a programmer/developer so the web developer position is out of reach
 
you might not, I do though :)
 
2:33 PM
hah
 
@JoshuaAslanSmith You have an InfoSys degree but not programming experience?
 
keep debating every time a position I feel like I'd like comes up. I like it here, but can't help but wonder if I should apply
 
basically some javascript and website related stuff, not enough to accurately put it on a resume as a language
the Information Systems degree is not a comp sci degree
 
Right, but I expected some light programming involved. I suppose that's probably not enough for qualifications.
 
I spent a lot of time on systems design/optimization and project management skills
 
2:36 PM
and their web devs are full stack which means DB programming too
 
Obsession with full-stack developers is a blight on the industry.
 
I mean I dont wanna be a programmer truthfully, its not something I particularly like doing when I had to do it for class or when Ive experimented on my own. I enjoyed the project management finance class I took more than the programming I did in javascript.
I think what Id really like to get into is security stuff though I may need to beef up my skills to do so
was frustrated as I graduated that the college basically created a Security Systems program
 
 
5 hours later…
7:45 PM
Anyone want to talk about Pathfinder?
 
What's up, @hoth?
[is writing up Pathfinder houserules]
 
Hi. I want to start designing a West Marches - style campaign using Pathfinder rules and am looking for some pointers on where to get startef
started *
 
7:59 PM
If that, what are you trying to use from it?
 
That's the peanut.
 
I must go, but I hope you figure something out.
 
8:59 PM
Thanks for the words of wisdom @Grubermensch
 
@hot I mention a few discussion forums in an answer to this question on meta.RPG.SE, but I don't know of any chat sites specifically. RPG discussion culture is generally forum-centric.
 
As I said above, looking for some ideas on starting a West Marches - style campaign if anyone wants to chat
 
I know nothing about Pathfinder and so can't help you directly, but I will say that the first page of Google results for "Pathfinder chat room" does turn up several options which might serve you.
 
Forget Pathfinder for now, that's a separate issue.
 
And I'll second SSD in saying that most discussion is on forums, not chat rooms.
 
9:02 PM
Except that SE doesn't really allow for discussion :)
 
I mean on the Internet generally. Most RPG discussion on the Internet is in forums.
 
What's the best way to let a party explore a geographic area?
 
(Important to note that SE isn't a forum, but a Q&A site. It's a fine distinction, but makes a big difference in how the posts are moderated.)
@hoth How do you mean? What's tripping you up about that?
 
If you want general campaign advice, I can contribute, but I'll warn you that I have a low regard for the modern DnD-styled systems, and so might suggest things that run counter to what you want in a Pathfinder game.
 
@Grubermensch A lot of those are necessary to run a West Marches style, though, so maybe not. :)
 
9:06 PM
That's OK, I'm not tied to any particular system yet. But I have the Pathfinder PDFs on my laptop so it seemed like as good a place to start as any. I know that a new edition of AD&D is coming later in the year but have no idea what the differences will be.
But imagine my party leave the town by the front gate and set off into the wild.
 
New edition of AD&D, you say?
 
Hmm, don't quote me on that. Hold on.
 
@Metool (A)D&D, you might say. Hoth means D&D Next, due in July/August/etc. in a staggered release schedule.
 
(I've been watching the posts roll into chat and am aware, just thought it funny that it's being referred to as AD&D.)
 
9:08 PM
That's what I meant.
 
(Whatever its non-codename name will actually be among gamers. Probably 5e.)
 
Yeah, 5e. Releasing in July and August
In terms of exploration - is it a good idea to ask the party how long they want to explore for and insist they take enough food and water
Or just say "ok, you explored this part of the map and you uncovered x, y and z"
 
@hoth Nah, getting yourself killed by poor logistics planning is a rite of passage in that type of game. Just warn them up-front that food, water, etc. will matter, and they live and die by their own choices and wits.
 
I thought so too.
What about dice rolls for exploration?
Some stuff will remain hidden until the party get better at exploring?
 
Generally there is some system-defined way to do passive observation, that seems appropriate for exploration. And presumably it scales up as the characters grow.
 
9:14 PM
@hoth There are lots of different philosophies about how to handle that, about as many as there are DMs.
One of the ways is to not reveal anything in a hex other than obvious landmarks, and let the hidden stuff stay hidden unless they go searching for it (therefore spending time, committing their provisions and exposing them to possible random encounters).
Another way is to always reveal the "main" point of interest in a hex whether it should be obvious or not, just by travelling through it.
 
Yet another is to always make sure there are lots of non-hostile sentient encounters they can have, so that they can ask for local rumours and knowledge. That gives them more agency to decide what challenges to investigate and the opportunity to plan their excursions more.
 
Thanks for the links and input guys
@SevenSidedDie I think that the world outside the town gates is going to be totally hostile
So each hex has a main point of interest that's accessible very easily, but other things are secreted away too... I like that idea
The next problem, then, is scale. If each hex is 100 miles square then it's going to be impossible to explore all of it but there's a much better chance of it containing a few interesting locations.
Realistically, a smaller hex means a smaller area for things to be in
 
@hoth That's easy to overdo though. In a sandbox like the West Marches, the option to tackle sentient obstacles without violence can make a big difference in how creative your players become.
 
That's a very good point
 
9:21 PM
@hoth Standard hexcrawl scale is 5 or 6 mile hexes.
 
And is there any hard or fast rule that says a 6 mile square hex must contain no more than x temples to the local deity or y tribes of Kobolds?
 
Some go down to 3 mile hexes, but that means more of your map gets chewed up (and bypassed) with each day of travel. At 6 mile size, you travel about 4 hexes a day (if your overland is 24 m/day).
 
Yeah, so how far can the party travel in a day? If an area is 6 mile square and they can travel 6 miles per day on foot then it will take about a week to explore it all
 
@hoth No, but lots of DMs do their preparation that way simply for convenience, because a sheet of 24x40 hexes is alread 700+ hexes, which is hard enough to fill with even a single location each.
It's helpful to have some "random" lairs prepared independent of the map key, that might be encountered in empty hexes.
@hoth Not 6 miles square, 6 miles edge to edge. The hexes are just a way of breaking down the space into manageable partitions, and for tracking overland movement.
 
Hmmm... ok
 
9:25 PM
Generally in my "sandbox" games, I prefer to gloss over the hardships and tedium of travel because even when it's dangerous it's usually still kinda boring. I give 'em landmarks and events to head toward, and usually they get there with a montage scene.
 
Most humanoids can do 24 miles per day in D&D-derived games (including Pathfinder).
 
A group of fit and strong adventuring types should chew that up
 
An alternative to hexcrawls is a pointcrawl, which is more like what @BESW's describing.
 
One of my most successful conceits was an "Adventurer's Guild" that all the PCs belonged to, which posted WANTED and REWARD notices (plot hooks). The party would choose a poster, do research/interviews to find out more about the job if they wanted to, then head out to be awesome and make money.
 
If you want to be historical about it, generally medieval technology supports no more than 70 persons per square mile, a 6 mile diameter hexagon is ~ 25 sq mi. So that comes to a max under 2000 humanoid per hex.
 
9:27 PM
@BESW If the "wilderness" is a little bit more well-known than in a standard West Marches, that works well. You can pull that off if the wilderness was only recently abandoned by the local civilisation, say, within the last generation or two. Lots of living knowledge of locations in the "wilderness" then, and knowledge of what of value might be there.
 
I usually supplement this kind of game with a rough not-quite-to-scale map that shows major landmarks and dangers, but is probably a little out of date.
 
Good reason for it to be full of ruins, too.
 
As the party explores, they often fill in details and corrections.
 
Those numbers assume some stability and the presence of agriculture, so I would go with less than that population given your setting.
 
Adventurers Guild sounds good
 
9:29 PM
@Grubermensch Even less if the humanoids are nomadic tribes, e.g. non-farming goblins and orcs. Hobgoblins are more organised though, so settlements of them could be a thing. Suspicious, well-armed settlements.
 
@SevenSidedDie The fall of a civilisation is a trope with strong history and tradition in these kinds of games. I like having an old, fallen civilisation that's now home to nomadic tribes and wild animals, with a new society re-discovering the area.
 
@hoth Incidentally, if you want some mapping ideas or a full-blown random map, check out the Wizardawn World Map generator.
@BESW That's about how I do it too. Preserved knowledge of temporally-distant falls just stretch my disbelief a bit much.
 
(My go-to Old Civilisation aesthetics are Ancient Egypt and Mayincatec.)
 
In our own history, we've often forget what a heap of masonry was after a mere 100 years, let alone the more fantasy-staple 1000.
 
(Heck, my Storium campaigns are currently each running one of those.)
 
9:35 PM
@BESW (Heh, I've been developing a hankering for some Bronze Age-feeling roleplaying lately, coincidentally. Reading RQ6 will do that, I guess.)
 
@SevenSidedDie My Scale Island campaign in Storium is working with a civilisation that only fell 60 years ago, but the survivors have life spans of 25/30 years and they're eager to forget about the previous society.
(Or at least, they don't like to talk about it to outsiders.)
@SevenSidedDie I think one of my specific and enduring inspirations, for underlying themes, is The Chronicles of Prydain.
 
@BESW I like the recolonisation-from-within idea. And then these outsiders start invading... Makes for more complicated social interactions, I bet.
 
@SevenSidedDie Oh, yes. The survivors of the old society were the slaves.
 
@BESW I need to read that someday. This is the second mention of it I've seen recently, and pre-and-post-Roman Britain is fascinating.
 
Any of you guys run Pathfinder games?
 
9:41 PM
Right now the party is confronting a group of the survivors who were forced out of their homes by the outsiders into a taboo area, where they seem to have acquired some of the Old Magic of their former masters and are using it to strike back. But the other survivors think it's an awful idea to use the Old Magic.
@hoth I ran D&D 3.5 for six or seven years, so close enough.
 
Started reading the combat rules tonight, they seem... complicated
A lot of things to remember
 
@BESW (In my current Crusader Kings II savegame, my Welsh ruler just managed to form the Empire of Prydain in the 1200-ish AD.)
 
@SevenSidedDie not too long before the Longshanks comes and tears his kingdom apart
 
@hoth I wasn't going to say anything, but if you're new to Pathfinder, it might not be the game to start GMing with. It's pretty top-heavy.
@hoth She's long since subdued the Anglo-Saxons and united the Isles and is working on Iberia. :)
 
All the stuff with minatures and line of sight and flanking... bleugh. I can see myself spending the first couple of sessions rapidly flicking through the rulebook trying to clarify a point
 
9:45 PM
Definitely doable --I started GMing cold with 3.5-- but it can be a little frustrating at first unless you and your group are okay with fudging things in the middle of the session and then looking them up later.
 
Well, the group I'm thinking of probably won't mind too much. And I guess once you have most of it memorised it becomes like anything else that's a habit
 
@hoth The advantage to Pathfinder and similar games is robust heroes, a tactical sub-game that lots of people enjoy, and a character-building minigame that people similarly enjoy. The trade-off is a complicated set of interlocking rules, and longish combats.
If those three pros aren't interesting, they're not really worth the cons.
@hoth Yeah, familiarity makes a huge difference.
 
It'd been a year since I ran 3.5 when I joined this site, and a sizeable chunk of my rep is still from that system because it's ingrained on my brain.
[scrubs vigorously]
 
They do interest me and some of the group already have a Pathfinder game going, or at least have rolled characters. I don't think they have played a session yet.
 
@BESW Had you not played 3.5 before? That's quite the accomplishment then.
 
9:47 PM
@SevenSidedDie I had not played any tabletop RPG before.
 
@BESW Well done then!
 
Here's a question... when rolling your character in Pathfinder / 3.5 how do you know how many HP they have?
 
@SevenSidedDie [bow and a flourish] You've seen the story of my first character death, right?
 
@hoth If your group likes Pathfinder, then no harm going with that. Running a different system would involve teaching them anyway, which is no mean feat. There are less mini-centric D&Ds or clones out there, but it can be hard to teach an old player new tricks.
@BESW Haven't, *clicks*
 
9
A: Is the hit die supposed to be rolled?

Southpaw HareFor player characters, hit die are rolled once for each hit die achieved. Every time a PC acquires a new hit die (which is generally exactly once per level at the time of level-up), they roll the hit die and add the number rolled to their hit points (plus additional modifiers). For example, whe...

 
9:50 PM
@hoth That's from your class-assigned Hit Die and your Con bonus. For sturdier starting PCs, some GMs will tell players to just take the maximum possible roll at 1st level instead of rolling for random hit points.
 
@Hoth: You might also want to ask your GM. There's a very common house rule that says that you take the average number of hit points per hit die, rather than rolling.
 
@SevenSidedDie Pretty sure that's default practice in 3.5.
 
@BESW Is it now? I can never remember, and I spent way more years rolling for it than not.
 
Yeah, max at 1st is standard in 3.5 and pathfinder.
 
There's nothing quite like a 1hp D&D B/X wizard striving toward 2nd level. Makes for a very different balance of exploration and combat.
 
9:52 PM
@hoth As you can see, house rules are very common, to the point that as one player teaches another, which rules are universal and which are local can get blurred and confused.
 
OK, so on P31 of the Pathfinder manual, a Barbarian class has a D12 hit die
So when rolling the character they roll a D12 to decide how many Hp they start with?
 
So a 1st level Barbarian would have 12 + con mod HP.
And 1d12 + con mod HP at every level up.
You don't roll for hit points at level 1, you automatically start with the max for your hit die.
 
But 1st level always gets maximum, so if they applied 12 points to their CON they would start with 13 HP?
 
Correct.
 
Right... need to write that down
Sorcerer I rolled yesterday as a practice with CON = 15 starts with 8 HP (1d6 +2 modifier)
 
9:56 PM
Yup.
 
Do having miniatures and floor plans etc. help the game playing process?
 
@BESW Oh wow, that dwarf player. Why do some players insist on things like chugging two "full healing" potions when one will do, I'll never understand.
@hoth Yes. And no.
 
Explique
 
@SevenSidedDie It's the guy from this answer, so... maybe that explains it a little.
 
@hoth They make precisely determining things like area effects and who can stab who when possible.
 
9:58 PM
@Hoth: It depends a lot on the group. If you like playing the tactical combat part of the game, then minis are very helpful. If you're less interested in precise tactical movement, then they aren't necessary.
 
They make sure everyone is on the same page about where everyone is.
They also slow down the fights considerably. But as it's Pathfinder, it's a lot of work to not use minis, too.
 
Games like Pathfinder assume that minis-on-a-grid is the default play style and design their mechanics accordingly.
 
We have some nice Q&A about handling position, line of sight, and other things like that (which PF's rules really care about) without minis. But it's a learned skill the book won't help you with, while using minis is something the book will teach you.
 
Yeah, and as the combat part of the rules gives you four diagrams that use minis and fps then it does seem quite essential
 
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