d20pfsrd.com up for Ennie for BEST WEBSITE for 2010!

Hey Everyone!

As most of you know, Gencon is in the very near future and voting for the Ennies opens this Friday, July 16th.

For the first time ever, www.d20pfsrd.com (The Pathfinder SRD for those unfamiliar) is nominated for Best Website. The competition is extremely stiff as we are up against some extremely worthy competitors, ESPECIALLY the Pathfinder Wiki!

I will be attending my first Gencon EVER this year and am absolutely DELIGHTED to even be going, let alone be nominated for an award. It would be insanely cool and probably make my head explode if d20pfsrd.com took home an actual award recognizing the hundreds and thousands of man hours put into it thus far.

Anyway, I REALLY want d20pfsrd.com to win! If we were to do that we'd get a ton more collaborators and we could do even more amazing and cool stuff with the site. I have so many ideas but can only tackle so much of what I want to do. If we had some more folks I think some really neat things could start showing up!

Anyway, this is just me trying to drum up support wherever I can think of it!  I hope you think on us fondly when you are casting your vote once voting opens on Friday!

Talk to you later!

--john

d20pfsrd.com Updates and General Pathfinder Ramblings

d20pfsrd.com
The site is up to 71 collaborators plus myself now. A few collaborators are contributing vastly more than others, which I suppose is to be expected.

Of particular note is McCaul Bagget. This guy is a machine. He has probably spent almost as much time on the site now as I have. Everytime I look he's online fixing one thing or another. Great work McCaul.

Other collaborators of note:

Shadow Lord - The General FAQ and APG Playtest FAQ's are getting a ton of hits and Tim is doing a bang-up job compiling the various rulings and decisions made by the Paizo folks. Great work Tim!

Treantmonk's (honkalac) Guides - These are new additions and seem to be very popular on the Paizo boards. Lot's of people like reading about the best way to make the best spellcasters. Great new addition to the site Treantmonk!

Hailey Martin - Haily is methodically working to convert all of the monsters from the various Adventure Path's pre-PFRPG and her work is quite popular. This is a very happening section of the site at least according to Google Analytics. Lot's of people are linking to these pages and using them in their games it looks like. Great work Haily!

rixius - Rixius is a new recruit and one with some developer/programmer background. He's already demonstrating great value by providing me a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that really helps when editing the site. He has a second version of the Greasemonkey script forthcoming that will help even further by automatically highlighting links that need to be changed. Great ideas and great time-savers. Its good to see there are some folks who can think on their feet and be proactive when it comes to these sorts of things :)

General Information regarding the site
We are still actively testing a tool provided by Google to automatically export and import the site so that we can do site-wide link changes via script. So far the tool has been too scary to use on the real site so we've been testing it on a backup/testing version of the site. Its still too buggy to risk on the main site though unfortunately.

Rant Time
So in this thread James Jacobs reveals that a very major change was done to the summon spells via how the celestial and fiendish templates work. At first he stated the change was intentional until various people remarked how much that totally ganked how things work. The next response was "well you should rule however you think makes sense". I had to exercise a great deal of self-control in my response because I really wanted to go off (which I'm still doing here). It's this sort of thing that just shows that certain changes needed to be thought out a bit more (or playtested?) before getting into the big 500+ page book. Just sayin...

There are many examples of this sort of system change that really should have been discussed and/or tested more. However, it is what it is. I'm hoping an errata will clean a bunch of this crap up.

I guess that's all for now.

d20pfsrd.com Update

News of the Week

New Collaborators
We added three new collaborators this week and they each seem to be taking off very well. Welcome Cindy Hawkins, Jonathan Yeung, and Richard Hunt.

Site Updates:

FAQ
Tim Shadow (ShadowChemosh on Paizo) has been diligently updating the FAQ page even though we have to work around the annoying archiving system on the Paizo boards. Paizo automatically archives old posts and threads after 60 days and then just plain deletes threads and posts after a point. We had made a point of citing the original post from Paizo people where they answered an FAQ-type question but these links frequently break. At this point we're probably going to give up on citing the source with a link and just site who said it. This was, afterall, Tim's original plan since he was aware of the archiving problem before I was.

Link Patrol
We have been diligently fixing broken links or links that point to the PRD when they should point internally. All of the Basic Classes and major "portal" pages (combat, spell lists, etc) should be good but please do report on the messageboards if you run into anything that isn't working quite right.

We've also (well mostly Jonathan and Richard) have been adding new links to places where they didn't exist before, such as linking keywords in feats and spells. This is going to be a long process but at least they've gotten started. These things are not linked at all in the official PRD.

Collaborator Notes and Guidelines
I finally created a Collaborator Notes and Guidelines page with some tips and requests for new collaborators. Previously I was basically typing all of that to each new collaborator in an email each time we got a new one. You'd think I would have learned well before we hit 40 collaborators to maybe just make a page and point people to it but no, I'm slow sometimes.

Misc. Cleanup
I've been cleaning up pages as I come across them. For example, previously we used embedded google spreadsheets for various tabular data but now I am moving away from those towards just standard html tables. This was discussed a lot early on and I wanted to take advantage of some of the cool features of the embedded google spreadsheets but its just turning into more of a pain than its worth. I'll revisit the idea sometime in the future.

There's a ton more little updates but nothing substantially interesting so I'll leave it there!

Orlandian Multiclassing Rules

So I'd like to try go get some feedback on the following two potential multiclass rules methods. The first is much less interesting mechanically to me. It is sort of the same thing as has ever been done before. However, the second method, the "hybrid" method reminds me of 4E's joke of a multiclassing system, but without the joke part, meaning, it seems interesting and possibly usable to me. It seems like it has the potential to generate an incredible array of different characters by allowing a picking and choosing of class abilities.

Note, in order to fully understand this you need to see what I've done with Class Abilities in Castles & Crusades. You can see that here, and then come back and read these two methods, particularly the second one. I'd like any and all comments on either method (or even on the new Class Abilities ideas). I'm specifically looking for input like "that is way too strong and here is why..." or "that is incredibly weak. I would never use that method and here is why..."

So check them out :) http://sites.google.com/site/ccorlandia/class-rewrites/common-abilities

Classic Multiclassing Rules

At 1st level you can choose to have your character advance in two (or three) classes at once, instead of just one. Choose two (or three) classes. Once selected they can not be changed or dropped. When you use this method you are limited by the more strict of the two classes for armor. You may use any weapon that either class allows, unless one class explicitly forbids that weapon. For example, if one class allows you to only use common, simple weapons, and the other allows ALL weapons, you may use all weapons. If one of your two classes specifically said that (for example) swords are forbidden, they would remain banned. Your BtH advances at the rate of the better class. You roll hit points based on the class with the lowest HD but you add +1 to each roll for each size difference in the HD for the class with highest HD. For example, if you were playing a Wizard/Fighter, you would roll 1d4+3 at each level (1d10 for fighters is 3 steps above the 1d4 for wizards). You must have at least a 12 in the Prime Attribute for each class.
You divide all experience earned between each class evenly.

Hybrid Multiclassing Rules

Starting at 3rd level a player can choose to diversify his character a bit. Instead of gaining a new class ability of his Core Class (the class he began play as) he can choose a class ability of any other class that he could ordinarily qualify for (meaning, if a class has alignment requirements which he does not possess he could not choose an ability from that class).
When choosing an ability from another class the character may choose any ability from that class as if he were two levels lower. He must meet any prerequisites or requirements of the ability (lower number N abilities are always prerequisites for their higher numbered versions).
For example, a 3rd level barbarian normally gets Primal Force 2 at 3rd level. He could choose any 1st level ability from basically any other class by not choosing Primal Force 2. He now may not take Primal Force 2 until he would normally gain Primal Force 3, etc. If the barbarian wanted to be more stealthy he could choose Hide from the Archer class. If he wanted to know some things he could choose Legend Lore from the bard list. Perhaps he would like to be able to cast clerical spells. He could choose Spells 1 from the cleric class. If the character was 8th level, becoming 9th level, he could forgo Magic Strike 2 and take Nock Arrow from Archer, or even Spells 4 (assuming he has already made sure to take Spells 1-3, which he could only have gained by giving up Primal Force 2-4). Maybe he wants the Friars Fast Healing ability.

Orlandia Samples

More samples from Orlandia.. 

Here is a list of actions you can perform in combat and what sort of action it is to perform.

List of Combat Actions

In any combat round a character can perform the following special maneuvers or combat options.

ACTIVATE OR USE A MAGIC ITEM

A character may use or activate a magic item that is carried and in-hand. If he has to fetch the item from his pack or other location the act of fetching is his action.

CALLED SHOT

Action: Extended.
Reduce your attack roll by a number not to exceed your BtH modifier and add two times that number to your damage roll. Anyone can attempt a called shot.

CAST/MAINTAIN A SPELL

Action: Usually Extended. Specific spells may state otherwise. Both casting and maintaining a spell require the use of Extended Actions.

CHARGE

Action: Extended.
You must move a distance at least equal to your normal movement (but not more than 2x normal movement) in a straight line. If you do, you may also make an attack. If you hit you deal +2 damage. You also suffer a -4 penalty to your armor class until your next turn. If a you are struck prior to attacking (due to a readied action or an opponent wielding a reach weapon), your movement ends at the point you are struck and you may not make an attack. You can not charge in any sort of difficult terrain or if your visibility is limited for any reason.

COUP DE GRACE

Action: Extended.
You attempt to kill a helpless opponent. An opponent is helpless if it is sleeping, tightly bound, pinned in a grapple or otherwise at your mercy. You automatically hit a helpless opponent and deal maximum damage, add all modifiers for Strength and magic, and  then multiply it by 2. This may be enough to kill a weaker creature outright but stronger creatures may still survive.

DELAY

Action: None but you cannot interrupt another person or creatures initiative. If you wait until another character or creatures turn you take your action after theirs completes.
You choose not to take your action on your initiative. You may take your initiative at any point later in the round. If you delay into the next round you begin your initiative at 10. If you wish to interrupt an enemy you must win a base d10 roll (as if you tied the creature on its initiative roll normally).

DISARM

Action: Extended.
Any class can attempt to disarm an opponent but it is easier for the more combat-oriented classes.
If your BtH is equal to your level -1 (or greater) do the following:
Make an attack against AC 18 + the HD or level of the defender + the defenders dexterity modifier.

For example, a ranger (with a +1 strength modifier and a +1 magic modifier) would need to hit an armor class of 23 to disarm a 5 hit dice creature or 5th level opponent. He has a +4 BtH bonus, +1 for strength, +1 for magic, meaning, he has an overall +6 on his attack roll vs. an armor class of 23. He needs a 17+ to succeed.

If not, then do the following:

Make an attack against armor class 20 + the HD or level of the defender + the defenders dexterity modifier.

For example, a 5th level wizard (with no strength or magic modifiers) would need to hit an armor class of 25 to disarm a 5 hit dice creature or 5th level opponent. He has a +1 BtH bonus so he basically needs a natural 20 to succeed.

DISENGAGE

Action: Extended. You do nothing else in a round besides disengaging from an opponent.

Fighting
Move up to 1/2 your normal movement.
Hasty
Move up to 4x your normal movement, but take a -2 penalty to armor class for the round and any opponents you were engaged with get a free attack against you as you run away.

DROP PRONE

Action: Free.

EVADE

Action: Extended.
Choose an opponent. You gain a +4 AC bonus against attacks from that opponent until your next turn.

FLANK ATTACK

Action: None, used in conjunction with an attack.
You gain a +1 bonus to hit an opponent that you flank.

GRAPPLE

Action: Extended.
Make a normal attack against armor class 15. The armor class of the defender is modified by its strength and dexterity, as well as any size differences between the attacker and defender. For each size category the defender is larger than the attacker, the defender adds +2 to its armor class. For each size category the defender is smaller than the attacker, the defenders armor class is reduced by 2.
The basic to hit bonus may or may not apply, depending on the circumstances.
You can attempt a few special maneuvers when you are grappling an opponent.

PIN/BREAK PIN

If you are grappling an opponent at the beginning of your turn, you can now attempt to pin him. You and the opponent make Strength checks. If your roll is 10 or more greater than his, you pin him. If the attack is successful, the defender is held and cannot use any actions that require freedom of movement except to attempt to break the hold on his next action. Until then he is considered prone and defenseless. The defender can break the hold by making his own successful grappling attack following the same process on his turn. Attempting to pin an opponent is an Extended Action.

MAINTAIN PIN

If you have an opponent pinned at the beginning of your turn, you do not have to make a check to maintain the pin, it is automatic until broken by the opponent. Maintaining a pin is a Normal Action.

INJURE

If you have an opponent pinned at the beginning of your turn, you can automatically deal damage to him. You do not have to make a grapple check to maintain the pin, you simply deal damage. The amount is your normal natural weapon damage modified by your Strength. Injuring a pinned opponent is a Simple Action.

THROW

If you are grappling an opponent at the beginning of your turn, you can attempt to throw the opponent anywhere within your natural reach (the area in which you could make an unarmed melee attack), where the opponent will land prone. The opponent must weigh less than your Strength score x 10. You and the opponent make Strength checks (1d20 + Str modifier). If your roll is greater than the opponents, you throw the opponent. If the opponent rolls higher he is not thrown but remains grappled. Attempting to throw an opponent is an Extended Action.

LOAD/RELOAD BOW/CROSSBOW

Action: Free for all but Heavy Crossbow which is Simple.

MOUNTED COMBAT MANEUVER

Action: Varies.
Anyone can attempt any of the following maneuvers by making a horsemanship check.

MOVE

- UP TO 1/2 NORMAL MOVEMENT

Action: Simple. Moving even 5' counts as a Simple Action.

- UP TO NORMAL MOVEMENT

Action: Normal.

- UP TO 2x NORMAL MOVEMENT

Action: Extended.

You suffer a -2 penalty to your AC vs. melee attacks. You can not move more than your normal movement in any sort of difficult or hampered terrain, or if your visibility is limited for any reason.

- UP TO 4x NORMAL MOVEMENT

Action: Extended.

You suffer a -4 penalty to your AC vs. melee attacks but gain a +2 bonus vs. ranged attacks.You can not move more than your normal movement in any sort of difficult or hampered terrain, or if your visibility is limited for any reason.

OPEN/CLOSE A DOOR

Action: Usually Free, unless stuck or locked.

OVERBEAR

Action: Normal.
Your AC is reduced by 2 until your next action. Make a normal attack against armor class 15 (the basic to hit bonus may or may not apply, depending on the circumstances). For each size category the defender is larger than the attacker, add +2 to its armor class. For each size category the defender is smaller than the attacker, subtract 2 from its armor class.
If the attack is successful, the defender takes 1-2 points of subdual damage and is knocked prone for the remainder of that round. An attacker cannot knock over a defender two or more sizes larger than himself.

PUMMEL

Action: Normal.
Make a normal attack roll against the targets normal armor class. The basic to hit bonus may or may not apply, depending on the circumstances.
If the attack is successful, the attacker deals subdual damage modified by its Str modifier. The exact amount depends on the attackers size:

Attacker Size	Damage
Tiny	1
Small	1
Medium	1-2
Large	1-4
Huge	1-8
Gargantuan	1-10
Colossal	1-12

READY

Action: None.
You can ready outside of initiative. If an initiative roll is called for within the next minute make a Wisdom check vs. CL equal to the HD of the weakest enemy present. If you fail you roll initiative normally. If you succeed your initiative is automatically 10 for the first round of combat. You can use the Ready option 1 time per day per 3 levels (1 at levels 1-3, 2x at levels 4-6, etc). Note that Readying has nothing to do with Surprise.

REAR ATTACK

Action: None, used in conjunction with an attack.
You gain a +2 bonus to hit an opponent from behind.

SEARCH

Action: Usually Extended.
Searching includes looking for traps or trying to find something specific in a relatively small area.

STAND UP FROM PRONE

Action: Simple.

TOUCH ATTACK

Action: None if used in conjunction with casting a touch-range spell. If used in following rounds it uses a Normal Action.
Make an attack vs. AC 10 + Dex + any magic items + any active spells.

TURN UNDEAD

Action: Extended.

TWO WEAPON ATTACK

Action: Extended.
Make 2 attacks, one at -3 and one at -6, modified by Dex. The character’s Str modifier only applies to damage.

USE A CLASS ABILITY

Action: Varies but usually Normal.

USE AN ITEM

Action: Usually Simple. Some items may state otherwise.
This includes mundane tasks like lighting a torch, drinking a potion, drawing a weapon, etc.

Orlandia Samples

For anyone too lazy to go over to my Orlandia site I'm going to post some snippets here and see if I can get some feedback. I hate feeling like I am operating in a vacuum and love getting feedback (even if its nothing more than "man that sucks" lol). So without further ado, here's my Actions Cleanup for Castles & Crusades rules.

Actions Types

In a combat, characters can perform a wide variety of actions. Actions are categorized into four basic types, Free, Simple, Normal, and Extended.
In a single round you may:

• Use one Extended Action and 1-2 Free Actions (but not Simple Actions).
  
• Use one Normal Action and one Simple Action and 1-2 Free Actions.

Notes:
You can not perform two Simple Actions by trading a Normal Action for a Simple Action.

FREE ACTIONS

• The GM will determine if what you want to do makes more sense as a Free or a Simple Action, though common things such as speaking, or drawing a weapon, would usually be considered Free Actions. This is purposely vague as circumstances may cause a normally Free Action to become a Simple Action, or vice versa.
• You can usually use Free Actions even when it is not your turn, within reason.
  

SIMPLE ACTIONS

• Cast a cantrip or orison spell.
  
• Move half your normal movement.
• Pick up, put down, give, take objects (assuming no resistance).

NORMAL ACTIONS

• Move your normal movement.
  
• Make a Normal Attack (or perform a Normal Combat Maneuver).
• Use most Class Abilities.
  

EXTENDED ACTIONS

• Cast a 1st-9th level spell. Note that some spells may use lesser actions. Those will be stated in each spells description. Also, when a spellcaster is able to cast 4th level spells, 1st level spells are reduced to only needing Normal Actions to cast. From that point forward, spells of 3 levels or more below the casters highest castable level are reduced to Normal Actions (unless stated otherwise of course).
  
• Make an Extended Attack (or perform an Extended Combat Maneuver).
• Move more than your normal movement. You can move up to four times your normal movement but you suffer an Armor Class penalty against melee attacks (but a bonus against ranged attacks) depending on how much you move. You can not move more than twice your normal movement in any sort of rough, difficult, or hampered terrain, or when your visibility is limited (in an area of fog, or you are blind, etc).
  

Forum Fight!

Yesterday I got into it on the Paizo boards with some folks over the fact that there are no rules for defining line of sight in Pathfinder. I was not the thread starter on that subject but only jumped in after the fact to try to defend the OP from several sarcastic replies and to agree with him that it seems like it should have been in there.

Now this may seem odd coming from someone claiming to be a "hardcore grognard", needing a definition of "line of sight" and all. I mean, its pretty obvious, line of sight is what you can see. If you can't see it you don't have line of sight. Leave it to your D/GM to let you know if you have line of sight.

However, Pathfinder is not generally a "GM-call" sort of system. Its a very rules heavy system. It has rules for virtually any scenario. If this were Castles & Crusades I wouldn't have even thought twice. C&C is supposed to be rules-light and assumes a lot of GM calls. Pathfinder however, is by no means rules light. Lacking a definition for "line of sight" when it is a mechanical term that is used frequently throughout the rules is a mistake in my opinion.

So now we have to question "why is the rule missing?" Possibilities include:

• It was determined to be unnecessary.
  
• Oops. It was left out by mistake.

After a later post from the OP on that thread, it appears to be more like the latter option. It looks like the 3.5 rules (as well as several other d20-based systems) included definitions for line of sight but in 3.5 it was embedded within a diagram in the PHB that was not included in the SRD and therefore not included in Pathfinder. With that said, I am guessing it was not intentionally left out and later statements saying it wasn't necessary was a CYA sort of deal.

With that said, I grow tired of dealing with Pathfinder. The forums particularly bother me.Originally the Pathfinder forums seemed to be filled with generally polite and helpful people but now it appears to have devolved somewhat. There's a lot of derisive commenting going on over there now.

I think I'm going to take a break from d20pfsrd.com and pushing Pathfinder for a while. The site seems pretty self-sustaining at this point anyway. Traffic grows every day, getting between 1500-2000 visits a day. A half dozen or so people are regularly updating it (though not what I'd always like to be updated) so I'm guess I could drop out of the picture altogether at this point and the site would be fine.

This just gives me more time to focus on Castles & Crusades I guess :)