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Pathfinder Encounter Calculator

One of my players recently decided to try his hand at DMing. Since designing/balancing encounters can be a bit tricky even for an experienced DM, I figured it might be helpful to create a tool to help handle the grunt work.

Enjoy!

http://home.worldsunknown.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/PfRPG-Encounter-Calculator.xlsx

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By Laithoron – February 23, 2010

The Fencer

So I’ll come right out and say that I’m not thrilled about how finesse fighting in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder is epitomized by the Duelist prestige class. Considering that swordplay was an art in which any self-respecting young nobleman should receive some training, it just strikes me as odd that fencing should require you to be at least 6th level already. To address this while not invalidating the usefulness of the Duelist, I decided to reprise fencing in a new base class…

FENCER

Fighter Base Class Variant

  • Hit Die
    d10
  • Base Attack Bonus
    Good
  • Fort Save
    Poor
  • Reflex Save
    Good
  • Will Save
    Poor
  • Skills
    Acrobatics (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Perception (Wis), Perform (Cha), and Sense Motive (Wis).
  • Skill Ranks per Level
    4 + Int modifier
  • Weapon and Armor Proficiency
    A fencer is proficient with all simple and martial weapons. They are proficient with light armor, but not with shields.

Class Abilities by Level

  1. Weapon Finesse
  2. Two-weapon Fighting, Two-weapon Defense
  3. Canny Defense
  4. Parry, Riposte
  5. Weapon Training: Light Blades, Insightful Strike
  6. For levels 6 thru 20, see below.
Fencers & Fighters
The fencer is a fighter base class variant and receives bonus feats from the fighter list at every even-number level starting at level 6. A character who takes levels in fencer cannot also take levels in fighter. Make the following changes to the fighter’s other class features:
  • Bravery
    +1 bonus on parry attempts.
  • Armor Training
    +1 bonus to canny defense
  • Weapon Training
    +1 bonus to insightful strike
  • Armor Mastery
    Defensive Roll (as per the rogue talent)
  • Weapon Mastery
    Unchanged

Fencers & Duelists
Fencer levels stack with Duelist levels for purposes of canny defense. Any time the duelist class grants a class feature that the fencer already has, improve the benefit of that class feature by +1.

Posted in Pathfinder / D&D, Random Stuff.

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By Laithoron – December 9, 2009

Where are the Half-Dwarves?

Two dragons had just finished their main course and were about to enjoy some jello-tinous cubes for desert.

Asked one dragon of the other, “Beloved, have you any idea what’s worse than a dwarf in your jello-tinous cube?”

“Do tell,” responded his mate.

“A half-dwarf!”

Her brow furrowed, and a hint of soot escaped her upturned nostrils. “Hmmph! If such a creature existed surely it could not be as bitter as a full-blooded dwarf!”

The two ate in silence for a few moments before the she-dragon finally queried, “So, mate of mine… what’s so bad about a half-dwarf?”

The first dragon gave a toothy grin and replied, “Because, my love… it means you’ve already eaten the other half!”

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By Laithoron – August 21, 2009

Versatile Performance Revisited

The newly revised Bard class in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game has some nice new features, however I’m not certain how thoroughly they were all thought out. In particular, I find that the Versatile Performance class ability falls a bit short.

Versatile Performance allows Bards to substitute their Perform skills in place of various skills. Each Perform skill is associate with two of the following skills: Acrobatics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Fly, Handle Animal, Intimidate, and Sense Motive. The ability is gained at 2nd level at which time the Bard selects one Perform skill to stand-in for its two associated skills. Every 4 levels thereafter, the Bard may select another Perform skill.

At first glance, this is a pretty cool ability. It lessens the old “skill tax” on the Bard and rewards them for investing in multiple performance types. Where Versatile Performance disappoints is in how it interacts with skills in which you already have ranks — in short, it doesn’t. Any ranks that you already have in an associated skill are ignored when making a skill check with this ability.

Waiting until 2nd level to use a couple skills isn’t too bad. However, it would be rather odd for a 6th or 10th level Bard to have no ranks in some of the aforementioned skill simply because they quite understandably don’t want to waste precious skill points.

House Rule

IMPROVED VERSATILE PERFORMANCE

The synergy of your past training and current versatility enhance your performances.

Prerequisites: Versatile Performance class ability, and at least one rank in each of your chosen performance types’ associated skills.

Benefit: When using your chosen Perform skills to make skill checks in an associated skill, your effective ranks in the Perform skill are added to by the number of ranks in the associated skill. Additionally, any bonuses in the associated skill are applicable to the Perform check.

Normal: Ranks and bonuses in the associated skill have no bearing on the Perform check.

Restrictions: The total effective number of ranks used in the skill check cannot exceed your current hit dice. Ranks that would be in excess of your current hit dice are ignored. Bonuses in the associated skill overlap with bonuses of the same type in the Perform skill.

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By Laithoron – August 16, 2009

Seasons of Change

A refresh of this website has been long overdue…

When I originally setup WorldsUnknown.com with Simple Machine Forums, the purpose was less for stimulating dialog than it was to serve as a personal tool for organizing information about my campaign setting. At the time, forums were a technology that I was very familiar with, I had never so much as heard of a wiki, and the idea of blogging seemed peculiar at best.

Fast forward about 6 years and things have changed a bit. I’ve found that the freeform nature of a wiki serves my original needs much better than a forum. Indeed, the very act of having to select a category in which to create a stand-alone topic beforehand was rather stiffling. Some topics are simply relevant to many different categories.

As far as “news” updates go, well… I’ll let the scarcity of news updates on the old forums attest to how well that worked.

So what lies ahead?

First off, wordpress will now be the tool used to publish anything you might consider news. The comment facility of this software should work every bit as well (if not better) than the forums ever did. In addition, this looks a lot nicer than the web portal mod I’d slapped on the forums (which actually made applying software updates rather difficult). I’ll most likely still keep the message boards around in some form, but they won’t be the landing page for the site anymore.

The next thing I’d like to do is to replace the photo gallery functionality of the forums with something more robust — perhaps Coppermine. I’m also thinking about making a very simple landing page for WorldsUnknown.com instead of taking users directly into either WordPress or the SMF forums. We’ll see.

Ideally, I’d like to make it so that you only need one login for the site. There seem to be various tools to handle linking WordPress, Coppermine, SMF, and MediaWiki together in various combinations so I’ll just have to experiment and see what works. Whatever the solution, my hope is that all of the existing forum memberships can be retained.

As for MediaWiki, that’s been up and running for sometime at wiki.worldsunknown.com. Right now, it should be visible to anyone, but since I intend to keep myself as the only author (excepting comments), I’m in no hurry to go modifying it just yet.

So there you have it. As time permits, there will be some changes happening around here but I’ll try to provide links if I completely sever access to something.

Take care,

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By Laithoron – August 13, 2009