News: Pathfinder Bestiary Box

Paizo recently announced a new product which, in keeping with form, I'm a huge fan of. They're calling it the "Pathfinder Bestiary Box," pictured to the right. The box will contain more than 300 cardboard stand-ups with full color art of various creatures and monsters. They also mention that there will be "more than 250 unique creature images," which makes me happy, because it would be ridiculous if a GM only had one goblin token to put on the table. The idea obviously follows on the heels of the Pathfinder Beginner Box, which had similar cardboard standups for both monsters and player characters.

Personally, I've never been a huge fan of miniatures, which is why I like this idea so much. For years I've been using things like pennies and other random items found around my apartment to represent items on the battle mat. It works well enough, but I've never been fully satisfied with it. The cardboard standups provide a good middle ground between having nothing to mark your battlemat, or spending tons of time and money on minis.

Still, I'm not completely sold on the idea. Part of the reason I've never liked minis is because they steal some of the imagination from the game. If I want to throw my players up against 4 goblins and a poisonous plant creature with the head of a monkey and the legs of a spider, I don't want to have markers for the first four, and nothing for the last creature.

Still, for those more interested in using miniatures casually, this sounds like a solid product.

Hook Horrors for Pathfinder

Several months ago, when I posted The Hall of a Dozen Deaths, I mentioned that I had been unable to find the Hook Horror in either one of Paizo's Bestiaries. I found this really disappointing, because the Hook Horror is one of my favorite, classic D&D monsters. As best as I can tell, Wizards of the Coast doesn't actually have any particular ownership on the monster. It originally appeared in a magazine called White Dwarf published by Games Workshop, before appearing in TSR and later WotC products. Though if I am wrong on that, or if my quotations from Monster Manual II are problematic, I imagine I'll receive a cease and desist letter if this blog ever ends up on Wizard's radar.

Below is the classic Hook Horror monster, updated for the Pathfinder role playing game. I based it off of the Hook Horror as it appeared in the Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition Monster Manual II. I realize, of course, that it's no great task to update a monster from D&D 3 to Pathfinder, but I decided to post this for three reasons. First, easy as it is to simply throw a 3.0 monster into a Pathfinder game, few GMs will take the time to notice that the creature should have different skills and more feats, so I took care of that. I also calculated combat maneuver bonus, which is important to the Hook Horror, due to its special grabbing attack. Second, it has been a very long weekend, with lots of computer issues, and I really don't have the energy for a more full bodied post. And my final, very selfish reason, is that people have been getting to my blog by typing "Pathfinder Hook Horror" for months. At least now they won't reach my blog only to realize that what they're looking for isn't here.

So, without further ado:

Hook Horror
The hulking creature has the screeching head of a vulture, with the hard carapace of an insect. It's long limbs end in wicked hooks, which look like they're good for more than just climbing.

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Hook Horror (CR6)(Aberration/Underground/Temperate)

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XP 2,400
N Large Aberration
Init +3; Senses Perception +9, Blindsight 60ft.

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DEFENSE

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AC 22, touch 12, flat-footed 19 (-1 size, +3 Dex, +10 natural)
hp 65 (10d8 + 20)
Fort +5, Ref +6, Wis +8

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OFFENSE

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Speed 20 ft., Climb 20ft.
Melee bite +8 (2d6 + 3); 2 claws +13 (1d8 + 7)
Space 5ft.; Reach 10ft.
Special Attacks: Improved Grab, power sunder, rending bite

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STATISTICS

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Str 24 Dex 17 Con 14 Int 7 Wis 12 Cha 9
Base Atk +6/1 CMB +14; CMD 27
Feats Cleave, Improved Trip (B), Power Attack, Improved Bull Rush, Awesome Blow, Improved Natural Attack (Claw)
Skills Climb +16, Stealth +8, Acrobat +9, Perception +9
Languages Undercommon
SQ light sensitivity

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ECOLOGY

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EnvironmentAny Underground
Organization Solitary, pack (5-20), or clan (21-40)
Treasure Standard

Sly hunters of cavernous subterranean areas, hook horrors are territorial monsters that distrust intruders and fiercely protect their hunting grounds. Underground areas where hook horrors dwell echo with the constant clacking and scraping sounds of their hooks against stone, as they wend their way across cliffsides and cavern walls.

A hook horror stands about 9 feet tall, and weighs approximately 400 pounds. Its long, powerfully built arms and legs end in wickedly curved hooks. Its head resembles a vulture's, with a monstrous beak. Its torso is shaped like a beetle's body and covered with a rough, stonelike exoskeleton, studded with sharp, bony protuberances.

Hook horrors normally live in extended family groups or clans, each of which is ruled by the eldest female. The eldest male usually leads the clan's hunters and warriors. The clan stores its eggs communally, in a central, well-defended area of its home system of caverns or warrens.

Hook horrors are omnivores, consuming lichens, fungi, plants, and any animals they can catch. Meat is their preferred food, and drow is rumored to be one of their favorite meals.

Combat
Hook horrors attack in groups, using their climbing skills to ambush foes from above. They fight cooperatively and work together against the largest and best armed opponents. Hook horrors use their arm hooks to trip foes. If a battle goes poorly, they retreat by scaling walls.
Improved Grab (Ex) If a hook horror hits an opponent that is at least one size category smaller than itself with both claw attacks, it deals normal damage, and rolls a combat maneuver check to begin a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it gets a hold, it automatically hits with its rending bite attack on the same round (this replaces its normal bite attack for that round.) Thereafter, the hook horror has the option to conduct the grapple normally, or simply use its claws to hold the opponent (-20 penalty on combat maneuver checks to grapple, but the hook horror is not considered grappled). In either case, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals damage for both claw attacks and a rending bite.
Power Sunder (Ex) A hook horror attempting to strike a foe's weapon or shield does not incur an attack of opportunity. On a successful power sunder attack, a hook horror deals double damage.
Rending Bite (Ex) A hook horror can automatically bite a grabbed foe for 3d6 + 19 points of damage.
Blindsight (Ex) A hook horror emits high-frequency sounds, inaudible to most other creatures, that bounce off nearby objects and creatures. This ability enables it to discern objects and creatures within 60 feet. The hook horror usually does not need to make perception checks to notice creatures within range of its blindsight. A silence spell negates this ability and forces the hook horror to rely on its weak vision, which has a range of 10 feet.
Light Sensitivity (Ex) Exposure to bright light (such as sunlight or a daylight spell) imposes a -2 penalty on a hook horror's attack rolls.
Skills: A hook horror recieves a +8 racial bonus on stealth checks when in subterranean areas. This is not included in the calculation of Hook Horror's stealth check above.

Proto-Alpha Brainstorming for NPC Interaction Rules

On the off chance that you don't already read -C's awesome OSR blog, Hack & Slash, you may be interested in checking out some of his recent posts on skill deconstruction. Post by post, -C is applying his impressive analytical ability to identifying the benefits and drawbacks for each of Pathfinder's 26 skills in turn. Recently he deconstructed two skills which have been an increasing source of anxiety for me over the years: Bluff, and Diplomacy. These two skills annoy me. Tabletop RPGs are supposed to facilitate social interaction, not just between the people playing them, but between the players, and the non player characters. Skills like diplomacy and bluff replace these entertaining and valuable interactions with dice rolling.

No matter how good or bad the argument/lie a player attempts, the most they can achieve through role play (using Pathfinder's core rules) is a modifier of some kind to their skill roll. Certainly, it can be entertaining when a character with high bluff skills steals something right in front of a guard, then says "You didn't see me steal anything," and rolls a 35 on their bluff check. Truthfully, I've had a lot of fun with those kinds of players in the past. But it's a somewhat less entertaining when the players approach a local regent, present maps and evidence of an incoming attack on the regent's town, but are ignored because they rolled a diplomacy of 8. Even if good role playing & evidence gathering earned those players an unprecedented +10 bonus to their roll, they would still fall short of the DC of 20 required to affect an attitude shift from unfriendly to indifferent.

And none of that even mentions how the current structure of the diplomacy check slows games down. If a player wants to try influencing the attitude of an NPC, the GM needs to pull out the core rulebook, and find the spot in the chapter on skills with the Starting Attitude / Improvement DC chart. I suppose the chart could be memorized, but it seems silly to ask a GM to memorize a chart of arbitrary numbers. Diplomacy also harms gameplay because it turns NPC interaction (which should be part of game play) into a binary proposition based on die rolls. Either you succeed, or you fail. Either way, that NPC can't be influenced again for another 24 hours.

And on top of all of that, the skill check is so utterly and completely broken that playing it as written in the core rulebook allows a player to rule the world by level 13.

Of course, any of these issues could be softened with house rules, or simply avoided by throwing the entire diplomacy/bluff check system away. Let the players role play with the NPCs, and let the GM decide how NPCs react based on how well the characters influenced them. This is fine, it's why we have rule zero. It's what I've been doing myself for a number of years now. But that doesn't make Pathfinder's broken rules on this subject okay. Just because the individual gamers can fix the problem doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. That's called the rule zero fallacy, and lets get it out of the way right now. We shouldn't be okay with our favorite games having bad mechanics, we should want those games to improve on those mechanics. Not just for our sake, but for the sake of new players who may not understand that they have the option of throwing rules away.

NPC interactions deserve a better mechanic. Modern video games have managed to turn conversations into a mechanically relevant and interesting feature, so it should be no problem for tabletop RPGs. Such a system must be simpler to use than Pathfinder's current chart-reference method. Yet it must also provide a conversational experience with more depth than simply rolling to determine a binary result. It should also be impossible for the system to completely break the game.

Below, I've pieced together a simple mock-up of where I've started thinking. Bear in mind that this is not intended to be a complete and functional mechanic. It is, as the title of this post suggests, only the very beginnings of the idea. My hope is that we can build a dialogue from this starting point, and eventually produce a usable system. I've chosen to present the initial version of this ideas as one which builds off of Pathfinder's basic structure. I believe that, eventually, a good system for NPC interactions will need to be divorced from any existing system. However, at this early stage, I think there is value in connecting the system to a frame of reference.

Simply stated, my rule is thus:

When attempting to convince, deceive, or intimidate through conversation, the speaker uses their CHA score (not modifier) to oppose their target's WIS score. These scores are modified somewhat by abilities, and heavily by circumstance and role playing. If these scores are relatively close at the end of the speaker's attempt, participants roll 3d6 and add the results to their scores to determine the outcome of the attempt. Otherwise, the higher score wins. At the GM's discretion, characters who make a particularly convincing attempt should automatically succeed, without the need for any number comparison. Succeeding will either achieve the speaker's goal, or allow the speaker to continue attempting to achieve said goal without penalty. Each failure forces the speaker to suffer penalties during future interactions. Particularly egregious failures may result in insurmountable penalties.

I understand that some of this is confusing, and some of it is downright vague. The above is meant to be the distilled essence of the rule. It is the only part of the rule which you will actually need to remember once you understand how the system works. Those points I left vague were left so because I really have no idea what the specific numbers should be. I'm hoping that someone with a better grasp of the mathematics of game systems can offer some insight on that. For now, just to facilitate the discussion, lets say that every +5 to your diplomacy/bluff/intimidate check (not counting Cha bonus) grants a +1 when you attempt any of those tactics in a conversation. For the purposes of the dice rolling, "Relatively close" will be defined as "within 5 points."

Example:
Henar the gnomish rogue would like to convince a guard for the city of Yedge to allow her passage into the city, even though the gates have been closed for the night. Henar's Charisma is 10, and the Guard has a Wisdom of 16. Diplomacy is a class skill for Henar, and she also has 4 ranks in the skill, as well as the Skill Focus: Diplomacy feat. Normally this would give her a total of +10 to Diplomacy rolls. Using this system, that number is divided by five. So Henar now has an effective Charisma of 12 to compare to the Guard's Wisdom of 16. Henar's player speaks to the guard:

"Please, good sir! It is cold and wet out here. I am but a gnome, what harm could I do to your city and its powerful watch!?"

Henar's player doesn't exactly make a good argument, but the GM decides that this guard will react favorably to flattery. The GM grants Henar a +2 for the role playing, bringing her effective Charisma to 14. Since this is only 2 points away from the guard's Wisdom of 16, the GM calls for a roll. Both parties roll 3d6. Henar rolls an 12, bringing her total up to 26. The Guard, however, rolls an 11, bringing his total up to 27. The guard "wins" the encounter, and responds:

"Rules is rules, gnome! I won't let you in for nothing."

Henar has failed, but the failure is not extreme. The GM decides that she will suffer a -2 penalty during the rest of the conversation. Henar decides to try again, picking up on the "won't let you in for nothing." cue. Remember that at this point her effective Charisma is 10 + 2 for her bonuses - 2 for her previous failure. She is again at a disadvantage of 10 to 16.

"Surely an upstanding gentleman such as yourself is due more prestigious duties than guarding a wall! You ought to be spending your evenings in leisure with your fellows. Let me ensure you have the means to truly enjoy yourself next time you are at liberty..."

With this, Henar offers a bag of 25 gold coins - a very generous bribe! The GM decides that the guard is not the type to become offended when offered a bribe, and grants Henar a +4 for this offer. Henar's flattery has also been laid on more thickly this time, and the GM decides to grant a +4 for that as well. All told, this gives Henar an effective charisma of 18 compared to the guard's charisma of 16. This is close enough to call for a roll, but this time, Henar wins. The guard allows her through the gate, and takes her gold.

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I want to reiterate that this isn't a finished product. It's merely the beginnings of an idea. I can already see possible avenues of abuse, and I worry that it may be overly clunky, but it's a place to start. Maybe the end result of this process won't look anything like this. Regardless, I'm eager to hear any feedback. I would encourage people to use the comments on this post (rather than IMing, emailing, or twittering me) because any criticism made in private to me isn't one which is part of the larger discussion.

D&D 3.x Supplements for Pathfinder Players

Most people who play Pathfinder do so because they played Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. They are, after all, the primary demographic which Pathfinder has been geared towards. Paizo created Pathfinder with the intent of carrying on 3.5's legacy by continuing to provide compatible products to the fans of that game after it was discontinued. However, the more I watch Paizo, the clearer it becomes that they are an adaptable and forward thinking company. They understand their customers, and their market, and know how to leverage their resources. An excellent example of this is the Pathfinder Beginner's Box, which has been universally hailed as the best starter box-set since the original red box.

So it strikes me that if Pathfinder has created such an excellent product for getting new people to play their game, then it is reasonable to assume that there are new people playing it. Those new players, by definition, have not played any previous RPGs, such as D&D 3.5. Of course we don't actually know how many new people have been turned on to our hobby through the Pathfinder Beginner Box, but it is safe to assume that there are some, and that there will be more. As these players connect with the hobby, they'll move on to the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and Pathfinder Bestiary for a more complete version of the basic rules. And then they'll want more, and they'll turn to supplements.

Now, Pathfinder has many fine supplements. The Game Mastery Guide is a particular favorite of mine. But one of Pathfinder's great strengths is its ability to draw on any of the supplements of D&D 3.5. I fear that new players and game masters may not be aware of this treasure trove of books just waiting to be used in their games. And so I've compiled a list of Dungeons and Dragons supplements (mostly 3.5 but some are D&D 3.0) which I feel work best with the Pathfinder role playing game. This list is by no means complete. The list details a modest selection of books which I am familiar with from my own collection. I still don't own about 1/4 of the official supplements, and the list below is not complete even for the books I do own. Only the ones which are truly excellent.

Fiendish Codices: I & II
In my most humble opinion, the two Fiendish Codices were the best books released for D&D 3.5. The first codex, Hordes of the Abyss, details demons. In D&D (as well as in Pathfinder,) Demons are being of pure chaos and evil. The second, Tyrants of the Nine Hells, details devils. Again, both D&D and Pathfinder use the word "devils" to describe beings of pure Law and evil. Demons and devils loathe one another, and according to D&D lore, have been engaged in a conflict called "The Blood War" since the dawn of time. Both books begin with a chapter expanding on the 'fluff,' (or 'lore,') of these evil creatures. This is something which I found considerably lacking throughout all of D&D 3.5's run: good sources for information which isn't strictly mechanical. I particularly enjoyed the story of The Pact Primeval which TotNH begins with. The books go on to tour various locals in both the Abyss and the Nine Hells. Both also contain information on the Lords and Ladies of these dark places. Rulers of incalculable power and evil, many of which are so fascinating that I had a dozen campaign ideas for them before I finished reading their descriptions. Aside from the above, each book contains new feats, spells, prestige classes, and monsters. Most of which should be compatible with Pathfinder.

Many of the characters and locals in these books are protected intellectual properties of Wizards of the Coast, so Pathfinder is unable to make use of them. Pathfinder's world of Golarion has done a great job making up for the loss of the traditional D&D cosmology and history, but it simply doesn't have the same impact for me. Maybe I'm simply not familiar enough with Paizo's game world, but I can't bring myself to abandon the gods, heroes, and villains which I came to love in my early days of role playing. But even if you're perfectly happy with Golarion's denizens, these two books are worth getting your hands on.


Races of Stone, Destiny, and The Wild
As you can easily infer from these book's titles, they provide more detailed information on the basic races of Dungeons and Dragons. Out of the seven core races, each book provides an entire chapter devoted to two of them (save Destiny, which covers 3). Each book also introduces a new playable race, given a similar amount of detail, which holds to a common theme. Races of Stone details Dwarfs, Gnomes, and a large, hard-skinned race called Goliaths. Races of the Wild covers elves, halflings, and a flighted race called Raptorans. Finally, Races of Destiny goes over Humans, devotes on chapter to both Half-Elves and Half-Orcs, and includes a new race called Illumians, which are the living embodiment of language.

The racial chapters are a good hefty size, between twenty and thirty pages in length. Each race is dissected in detail, from their psychology, to their common grooming practices. Artistry, folklore, religion, the list goes on! These chapters have proven invaluable to me over the years, and to this day I still grab these books for reference if I'm including an important NPC of a race I haven't used in awhile. And on a personal note, I really love Illumians. So much so that I included them prominently in The Girl and the Granite Throne.

Unearthed Arcana
I've mentioned before how great this book is. In fact, I wrote an extensive post detailing my reasons for using one of its alternate rules. That entire post was based on two and a half pages of this 218 page book. I won't say that everything in here is gold, some of the ideas presented in it are actually quite bad. And many of interesting or good ideas presented in this book have actually been updated and reprinted in official Pathfinder supplements. However, there's still a lot in here for Pathfinder players to enjoy. Environmental races such as aquatic dwarves or arctic elves; bloodline templates which allow players to gain minor--or major--abilities due to a special ancestry; paragon classes which allow characters to level up as a model of the traits their race embodies; and that's all in chapter 1!

I can't think of any book which I would recommend to new GMs more highly than Unearthed Arcana, because it does a good job of teaching GMs how to apply rule 0. The core rulebooks of an RPG always throw in a few lines to the effect of "But if you don't like it, change it! It's your game, you can do anything you want!" It characterizes rule 0 as a blunt instrument, requiring no forethought. By presenting balanced alternatives to the official rules, Unearthed Arcana provides a model of what house rules should look like.

Epic Level Handbook
In the first edition Dungeons and Dragons rulebook "Men and Magic," Gary Gygax writes that there is no limit to the number of times a player could theoretically level up. First edition modules were often marked "An Adventure for Characters levels 28-32," or even higher than that! The 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons is a little more reserved regarding levels beyond twentieth. Given the massive scaling differences between the two, I can't blame them. Yet as a player and as a GM, I've always liked the idea of a character being able to scale infinitely. I would love to see my players bite and claw their way through forty or fifty levels, eventually growing powerful enough to replace a god. And once that happened, they could become a permanent part of that game-world's pantheon.

Even if you're less inclined towards allowing deicide, or similarly grandiose feats in your game. the Epic Level Handbook is a severely underrated guide to running games beyond 20th level. It includes a number of tools for GMs to help them create epic level obstacles and epic level monsters which their players must face in order to accomplish the epic level goals the book suggests, in order to win some epic level loot and rewards.

Manual of the Planes
As I mentioned above, I'm not intimately familiar with the world of Golarion. Thus far I have stuck to the classic Dungeons and Dragons flavor whenever I'm not using something from my own campaign settings. So I don't know what offerings Paizo has with regards to planar adventuring, but I have a hard time believing it could be much better than this.

I've honestly read the Manual of the Planes cover to cover a number of times for the sheer pleasure of it. And truth be told, I've never had the opportunity to run a game where my players spent a significant amount of time off of the material plane--but ever since I read this book I've been looking for an excuse to send my players out into the multiverse to explore.

This book is a spark to my imagination. What kind of adventures might my players have on the Twin Paradise of Bytopia; a plane with two landmasses facing one another, each serving as the sky of the other. Or what about the supremely lawful Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, where gravity is dependent on which miles-wide cog you happen to be standing on. What about the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, where dead warriors fight on in an unending battle which will last for a hellish eternity? The possibilities seem endless. Such places could be the location of a single whimsical adventure, or an entire deviant campaign.

The Books of Exalted Deeds,
and Vile Darkness
Named for the artifacts of the same name, these opposing tomes describe the absolute pinnacle of all that is good and holy, and the darkest depths of all that is depraved and profane. To my knowledge they are the only books which were sold with stickers bearing warnings of mature content, not for players under 18 years of age.

Both books are excellent examples of what good and evil should be in the game. BoED is essentially a long-form version of my recent post on Paladin Overzealousness. It encourages GMs to provide paladins (or non-paladin characters who wish to hold to an 'exalted' code of ethics) with legitimate moral quandaries. The book also stresses that these moral quandaries should be solvable without forcing a character to betray their ideals, and it provides tools to help GMs do that. The Book of Vile Darkness is, not surprisingly, just the opposite. Aside from terrifying monsters of pure evil, spells which cause unnecessary suffering, and basic rules for torture, the book includes a lot of information to help GMs build better villains. In particular I liked the section near the start which presented a number of simple villain archetypes.

As I mentioned above, this list is not exhaustive. Wizards of the Coast released an immense number of supplements during the run of Dungeons and Dragons 3.x. Books like Exemplars of Evil, or The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook still see use in my games. But in going through my own collection, these are the books which really stood out to me as having the most impact on my play over the years I've had them. I would recommend any, or all of them, to a Pathfinder player looking to expand their collection.

Product Review: Pathfinder GM Screen

Today I got around to doing my budget for the new month, and realized that I could afford a trip to my favorite Friendly Local Game Store; Fantasium. The owner, Paula, was there, so I got a chance to talk to her a little bit about my feelings on Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons. Unfortunately she didn't have Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress in stock, so that one will need to wait a little while. By the time I left, I had spent a great deal more money than I intended to, got a stock date for the Pathfinder Bestiary 3, and purchased the subject of tonight's post: The Pathfinder Game Master Screen.

I know I have a few readers who are unfamiliar with the basics surrounding tabletop RPGs, so let me take this opportunity to explain what GM screens are, and why they're awesome. In pop culture, the screen is possibly even more iconic than funny shaped dice as an indicator of role playing geekery. The benefits of the screen are many fold, but its purpose is actually quite simple: to allow the GM to do things 'out of sight' of the players. Behind the screen are game notes, maps, monster stats and abilities, all the sorts of things which a GM needs to reference, but which must be kept hidden from players. Two of the primary side-benefits are what is printed on each side of the screen. On the player side is normally some a dramatic piece of adventuresome artwork to help get the players into the mood. On the GM side of the screen is printed as many quick-reference game rules and cheat sheets as the printers can manage to fit on there.

And without further ado, here is Pathfinder's game master screen:

Blogger kills the quality of images, but you can click them for a (much) higher resolution.

For the sake of this post, I'll be comparing it with the trusty GM screen I've used for years, published by Wizards of the Coast for the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 game.



I'd like to make a note first regarding how the two screens unfold. It may be difficult to see from the photographs, but both screens are composed of four segments separated by a fold. The D&D screen folds in such a way that the center of the screen is closest to the characters, and the edges of the screen curve back towards the GM, like a U shape. Whereas the Pathfinder screen's segments are angled in-and-out in an M shape. At first this was quite a turnoff for me, but as I played with it a little more, I found that I much prefer the folding style of the Pathfinder screen. It may seem somewhat unimportant, but I think it looks better. And I've always been annoyed by how far back the sides of the D&D screen go, feels like they're crowding me.

Regarding the art, I think Paizo rolled a critical failure. Take a look at the D&D screen I posted, or any number of other screens. They depict dynamic scenes of adventure. The kind of scenes which depict what should be going on at the table, and inspire the players to get into the adventure. Pathfinder, for some reason, chose to instead show static images of the characters who represent their core classes, as well as the Eldritch Knight for no explicable reason. And not only are these images bland and uninteresting, they're re-used. These are the exact same illustrations which accompany each class description in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. Honestly, that makes me a little upset. It's easy enough to make a GM screen by propping up two binders and paper-clipping notes onto the inside of them. The draw to purchasing a professionally produced GM screen is the art. This failure is particularly disappointing because Paizo normally excels in getting fantastic artists for their products.

It's not so much that I'm angry, Paizo. Just...disappointed.

The major selling point, for me, was the construction of this GM screen. This thing is as sturdy as a dwarven barstool.* My D&D screen is a very basic cardboard. It's not quite paper, but it's really only sturdy enough so it doesn't flop over. The Pathfinder screen, however, is thicker than the covers of most hardback books. The Pathfinder screen also has a glossy coating which, I think, is somewhat water resistant. I'm not eager to try, but it's certainly more durable than the D&D screen. This may seem like a minor thing, but I've often worried about damage to my GM screen during travel, or when a drink is spilled at the table. The higher quality of the construction for the Pathfinder screen is a big plus for me.



There's not a whole lot to say about the differing sizes of the two screens. The D&D screen is longer, whilst the Pathfinder screen is higher. This really comes down to a matter of preference. Personally, I like the height of the Pathfinder screen, and I've never liked how wide the D&D screen is. My only concern is that I'll be spending more of my game time standing. I already sometimes have trouble seeing things over the screen.

The final element to the screens is the GM side, with the quick-reference guide for the rules. First, the new Pathfinder screen...



...and then the old D&D screen.



Now, truth be told, I've never actually used the quick reference rules on the GM screen. I have a lot of respect for the utility of printing them there, but as a GM I prefer to simply make a ruling on the spot based on whatever seems most logical. That said, I think the D&D screen actually has much more useful information printed on it.

Here are some of the items on the D&D sheet which I think would be more useful than much of the information on the Pathfinder sheet.

• DCs to break or burst an item.
• Information & stats for common types of walls.
• Information & stats for common types of doors.
• Increasing weapon damage by size
• Decreasing weapon damage by size
• Graphic demonstrating what to do when a thrown weapon misses
• Common types of actions (drink potion, prepare oil for throwing, drawing a weapon) and what type of action time they require, and whether they provoke an attack of opportunity.
• Information on movement and distance both in tactical, and overland
• Light sources and illumination

But at least the Pathfinder GM screen has information on how to calculate the DC for a longjump check. It's difficult to remember that +1ft = +1DC.

I think it's somewhat obvious that I'm disappointed in Paizo's Pathfinder GM Screen. Aside from the construction, it really feels as though no work went into this. I'll certainly use it, because I do like the construction so much. And bland as the art is, I'm sure my players have grown tired of looking at the same dragon for so many years.

Still, Paizo, come on. I'm deep in your camp, I am a believer, and I don't like being in a position to speak ill of you, but this is not a good product. Step it up with the next GM screen.

*Yes, that was ridiculous. I decided to go with it, so you can just stfu Mr. or Ms. Critic! >.>

Pathfinder: Percentage of a Living Body Comprised of Liquid

Click the comic to go to Penny-Arcade.com's high res version.

Penny Arcade continues to showcase Pathfinder!

It's really good to see Pathfinder getting the attention it deserves from webcomics. Wizards of the Coast seems to be working out a lot of product placement deals lately. Not that product placement is necessarily bad. In fact it's all been classy and entertianing. Nothing wrong with a nerd comic taking money from a nerd company to showcase a nerdy product which fits within the comic's nerdy theme, and which the comic's nerd audience will enjoy. But considering that Pathfinder is currently a more popular game than D&D fourth edition, It's good to see Gabe & Tycho paying attention to it.

I must confess, I would love to have Tycho as a GM. He's beyond insidious, he's positively evil. That kind of harsh game environment holds a certain appeal. Plus, the man has a way with words that I could never hope to match in a hundred years of studying the craft of writing.

Pathfinder: Pillars of Motherfucking Salt

Click the comic to go to Penny-Arcade.com's high res version.

Pathfinder made an appearance in today's Penny Arcade! You may want to click back a few comics to read the rest of the storyline. Essentially, Gabe (the fellow in yellow) is GMing a 4th edition game, but he's lost control of it. He's allowed his players to become overpowered, and is no longer capable of challenging them. Tycho (the fellow in blue) is a much more experienced GM, and has resolved to help his friend teach his players a harsh lesson.

Because GMs are all about the harsh lessons.

Regular Wednesday post will come this evening.