Magister Lajciak

Giants: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080512b

Wow, the Pathfinder RPG is really beginning to gather momentum. Today, Monte Cook, a co-creator of 3E D&D has joined the Paizo team working on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game as a Rules Consultant. Monte Cook stated: The thread containing the information can be found on the Paizo boards: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo...p;page=1#544442 The initial post containing the information does not link to a source, but the matter is nevertheless confirmed by Jason Bulmahn, the lead designer of the Pathfinder RPG later in the same thread.

Actually, the art direction of PFRPG is the one thing I am not so keen on myself.

Obsidian Devs, you may want to check out the aforementioned thread I have running on the Paizo boards: http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo...icProductsCRPGs

I like the idea of Epic levels as a possibility, but I dislike their impementation in the 3.X ruleset (though the Mask of the Betrayer did as good a job as humanly possible of reinterpreting them for the electronic version). But yes, I too refuse to use the current version of the D&D Epic levels in my games. If the rules were better, though, I can see myself being persuaded to continue a game into Epic levels.

From what we have seen thus far, I find the 4E way of doing epic levels preferable to that in 3.5E, which had a tacked on system of epic levels poorly integrated with the core rules.

Yes, I would absolutely love to see this too. I started a thread on the matter on the Pathfinder boards (I use the nick "Roman" on the Paizo boards) about two weeks back and one of the designers chimed in that it is definitely a possibility at some stage in the future (though the implication seems to be that nothing concrete is in the works or even under discussion at this time). I hope it works out and a Pathfinder RPG is made - in the thread, I suggested Obsidian as the ideal company to make it, of course...

Good stuff! The ruleset is still in the midst of Alpha phase playtesting, but it is increasingly solid and I also like the changes. The adventures are also well known for their quality.

Lately, I have been quite excited about the Pathfinder RPG published by Paizo (a company that split off from WotC and published the Dragon and the Dungeon magazines for D&D), which is currently running an open playtest (for those interested, here is the announcement with the possibility of a free download: http://paizo.com/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG and are the messageboards: http://paizo.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Store....Fmessageboards). It is essentially what I like to call a 3.51E (or 3.75E) in that it is an outgrowth of the 3.5E rules with significant backward-compatibility. What do you guys and gals think about it?

From what I understand, skill challenges (using multiple skill checks to overcome a situation) are similar to how many of us (or so I suspect) DMs have been using skills for a long time now, but they have the advantage of being codified in terms of what kind of challenge a given skill challenge presents for the characters. It's like the difference of having monsters without a challenge rating and monsters including a challenge rating in their desciption. This appears to be a good move by the 4E design team.

I also sometimes speculate about reducing the ridiculous amounts of hit points at high levels, but the PCs might become too weak if you reduce their hit point progression by so much. How about doing what Pathfinder is doing, but instead of getting rid of the d4 and pushing classes up to higher hit dice, let's get rid of the d10 and push classes down to lower hit dice. The problem of weakness at very low levels can be addressed by granting each character racial starting hit points, but these, of course, won't increase with level. I would also recommend changing the rules for dying and disabled. For example, I am using the following house-rule: Characters become disabled at 0 and remain disabled until they reach -(10 + Constitution bonus) hit points at which point they are unconscious and dying. Characters die when they reach -(20 + 2 x Constitution bonus) hit points. When disabled, characters taking a strenuous action lose 1d6 hit points. Upon reaching unconsciousness, a character loses 1d6 hit points per round until stabilized. A character can stabilize on his own (Fortitude save, DC 10 + current number of hit points below zero), or can be stabilized by somebody else using the heal skill (Heal check, DC 10 + current number of hit points below zero) or using healing magic (automatic stabilization). My aims for this houserule were to: 1) Increase the disabled, the uncionscious range and the negative hit point buffer 2) Provide uncertainty in terms of the precise timing of death and thus increase the urgency of healing intervention I also have the AD&D Combat & Tactics book. The critical hit system described therein is excellent and I have indeed even used the charts for 3.X edition critical hit effects. The tables are in the book itself, though, so no Word or PDF...

We haven't heard any rumors, not to mention news, on the new NWN2 expansion pack for a while now. Hopefully, the rumors alleging its existence were not false (though they did seem pretty credible) or that it hasn't been cancelled.

I just checked paizo's website and downloaded pathfinderRPG's alpha release pdf. They have some neat ideas and have converted quite a few abilities from PrCs into core class abilities. The whole thing is that they let the player pick which ones he wants. Yeah, I like what I am seeing too. You are correct and it was a deliberate design decision for the following reason: Over the years, power creep has meant that 3.5E has introduced new races and classes that were simply stronger than the core 3.5E races and classes. The Pathfinder RPG aims for a reasonable degree of compatibility with 3.5E, so the decision was made to bring the old races and classes in-line with the power level of the later 3.5E races and classes (it is easier to do then depowering many or all of the later classes) thus creating a level playing field. This also gives them the opportunity to give every class something interesting at every level. They said that in effect the new classes will be similar to level +1 of the old core classes in terms of power level, so it will still be easy to be backward compatible in terms of older adventures if you bear this in mind (so you can just run a 3.5E adventure for levels one or two higher to give the PCs an appropriate challenge). Of course, new adventures for the Pathfinder RPG will be designed with the new power-level of the characters in mind from the get go.

There seems to be pretty overwhelming agreement on the matter.

I have now finally made the decision not to move to 4E. The new edition is something I have really tried to like, but I simply cannot overlook the large number of (from my point of view) very negative changes made to the ruleset and the complete 're-imagining' of flavor both for the implied setting and for Forgotten Realms. Many of the changes to the implied setting are not bad on their own, but their sum total is so huge that it loses the feel of being D&D as far as I am concerned and that is the feel with which I want to play. The changes to Forgotten Realms just seem to be bad all-round both taken together and individually. As to the mechanics, they have thrown out any pretense at simulationism and cater wholy and entirely to gamism (and even there they used design philosophies that I cannot agree with) and that is not what I want to see from the rules. Despite this, I have been putting off my decision in the vain hope that some major new announcement will salvage 4E for me, but it has now become abundantly clear that such a communication from WotC will not take place. I do like some aspects of 4E, such as the fact that all classes will get some interesting new power at every level, but they cannot hope to compensate the negative parts of the system for my games. I recognize that others may find that 4E will fit their needs, but it won't fit mine. That means I will either be staying with D&D 3.5E or move to what I like to call 3.51E (or 3.75E) called the Pathfinder RPG published by Paizo (a company that split off from WotC and published the Dragon and the Dungeon magazines for D&D), which is currently running an open playtest (for those interested, here is the announcement with the possibility of a free download: http://paizo.com/pathfinder/pathfinderRPG and are the messageboards: http://paizo.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Store....Fmessageboards).

Wizards of the Coast now releases previews every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until the game is released on 6 June 2008.

I will bear that in mind about the drivers. On the other hand, few computers these days are offered with Windows XP anyway, so it's not as if she has choice in the matter...

This is important to know - I was worried that there might still be stability issues with Vista. Yeah, she does plan to use the laptop for gaming, so backwards compatibility with older games does matter.

I guess that answers my question.

The Vostro line is nice, but it does not offer some of the things she finds desirable (such as Blu-Ray, HD Screen...). $3000-$4000 is too much. The price for her laptop should probably be in the vicinity of $2000, perhaps $2500 if $2000 proves insufficient. P.S. Any idea on the hard drives - are they both internal?

I cannot find it. It does not seem to be on the Dell website. Agreed - I hate software bloat. The only available options are Windows Vista. This is probably not so great, because Vista supposedly still has serious stability issues and is not great at backward compatibility with many games. Kaftan was talking about the RAM of a graphics card. As for normal RAM, the laptop has 4GB. In this case, durability matters more. The laptop needs to last a while. Good to know - I have heard good things about Dell, but this will be the first time anybody I know personally will actually get a notebook from Dell. Thanks!

I did not realize that the faster drives wear out so fast. This is very important for me to know, since the laptop is supposed to last her a long time. 5400RPM HDDs it is than, despite the fact that they are slower. Thanks! Hmm, I just checked and the option for that amount of RAM for the graphics card does not seem to be available.

Indeed, Mr. (Mrs.?) Starwars, indeed! I am happy to see that the contest has been this successful!

My sister is currently in the U.S. for one trimester and her laptop has suffered a catastrophic malfunction, so she will be getting a new one, which needs to be powerful - she likes gaming, multitasking, music, films, etcetera. I am supposed to make sure it is of such nature and will remain good for this for as long as possible. Based on previous advice on this site, I have turned to Dell. The Inspiron 1720 with pretty much maxed out specs seems pretty amazing and should do the trick for her, but it is still best to ask: The laptop has two SATA 320GB hard drives for a total of 640GB of space. This is almost unimaginable to me on a laptop, so I smell a trick - perhaps one of the hard discs is external? Is 5400rpm for the hard drives a good speed? I don't know what the standard speeds are. Is the graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB RAM) a good graphics card for notebooks? If she gets also the Blu-Ray Drive (I presume it is also a burner)... are these reliable? The technology is still new... Also, can a Blu-Ray burner burn dual layer (and multi layer, when they come) Blu-ray discs? There are three options for sound, from cheapest to most expensive: High Definition Audio 2.0 Integrated Sound Blaster