So yeah, I'll be hitting up the big con again this year. Rooming at the main hotel and working Artists' Alley once more. I'll be hoping to get about 2-5 new pics from the artists there. Maybe finalize my rabbit guy, and possibly introduce someone new...

I'll probably also be running a short D&D session in the tabletop room. More details to come on that once it's finalized.

Leave a comment if I might see you there!

As I mentioned in my previous journal, I'm currently working on a new game, and I'm hoping to have a demo of it ready by the end of April or into early May. Around the same time, depending on initial feedback and interest, I will probably launch a Kickstarter to try and make the game prettier. That is, money to pay for higher-quality sprites, detailed backgrounds, art used for portraits, story slides, and special effects, themed music, and possibly even some minor voice acting.

To that end, I'm hoping to talk to some of these individuals to get some quotes and what their services might cost for such a project so that I might be able to accurately project the Kickstarter goals, as well as to prepare an effective game trailer.

Hence, if any of you are, or know anyone that is, one of the following, please comment below or send me a note with their information. I would greatly appreciate it!

- Video editor with experience working on trailers. (priority)
- Sprite artists
- Artists familiar with and good at drawing kobolds, humans, and backgrounds
- Effects animators for 2D environments
- Musician with experience with fantasy themes

Thank you very much!

Everyone here already knows that Undertale has an incredible soundtrack, but today I was informed of a remix album that is friggin amazing. Go check it out!

https://determination-ut.bandcamp.com/releases

A lot of things happened in the past week, and all of them good. So... I've got a lot to talk about!

GDC 2016
For my birthday this year, I saved up (and skipped out on MFF last year) to attend the 2016 Game Developers' Conference as a way to hopefully break into the game industry. Good news is that it was a very enlightening trip and I learned a ton about the industry, including ways to get into it. Bad news is that I didn't get into it (yet!). Now actually getting a job offer there, especially since I have zero industry experience would have been nothing short of a miracle. But I did learn exactly how to go about getting into the industry given my skillset.

For starters, I am head and shoulders above the competition in terms of raw credentials. Having a doctorate degree helps out a ton, but one ex-developer accurately described the industry as "incestuous" - meaning that it prefers to hire from within the industry whenever able. That means that ANY kind of industry experience will automatically put you on the short list of available candidates. But then you run into the usual employment catch-22: how do you get industry experience if you can't get a job in the industry in the first place? Well as I mentioned in my previous journal on the subject, QA testing is the one exception to the rule: you can get a job there right out of high school or college with no experience necessary. The problem with QA testing is that the pay is terrible (if any at all), the hours are torturous, and you'll be stuck there for years before you can hope to move up. With student loans and a mortgage to pay, there's no way I can afford to do QA work. So where does that leave me? Kinda what I had already learned - I need to make a game myself. More on that below.

Apart from those lessons, I learned a number of trends in the industry. For example, virtual reality is the future. Seriously, over half of the expo floor was dedicated to virtual reality demonstrations and tech that augments other virtual reality devices. I'm not entirely sure what that means for those of us that aren't into VR, but I suppose we'll see in the next year or so. Also, I did a ton of networking there and made about two dozen industry contacts, which will help immensely as I work on my game.

Birthday
I'm 28 now. Getting kinda old, maybe? I dunno, I certainly don't feel that way. It honestly didn't really feel like a birthday at all, but I suppose that's just what happens over the years. Maybe it was just because the big "birthday" thing I did this year was the California trip to GDC, which was really overwhelming. But either way, just another year older.

New game
I'm currently working on a new game in the Game Maker engine. I've already made some significant strides in its programming, and if I'm lucky I might have a playable demo ready by the end of April or into early May. It's a pixelated tactical RPG that combines some tower defense elements with Fire Emblem. I still have to decide how some of the fluff will work, but I think it's got a pretty solid base for now. If you'd like to take part in the testing phase, please let me know! Also, if you have any experience (or know anything with experience) with fantasy music, monster voices, or sprite animation, drop me a note and we might be able to talk business.

Career Prospects
I'm still hoping to go into video game production, and that will be a daunting task for now. But I think completing the game I'm working on (as well as the larger RPG I have in mind down the road), should give me a great kickstart to working in the industry. If all goes according to plan, I might be able to start my own studio or work for a larger company by the end of the year.

Current Games
All that work on the new game doesn't leave me a lot of time to play games, but I am still trying to keep busy with a few of them. I've gotten through both Birthright and Conquest of the new Fire Emblem, and about halfway through Revelation atm. I'm also nearly finished with XCom 2, and about halfway done with Mordheim: City of the Damned. I'll eventually play more 7 Days to Die now that they've released a new patch, and will probably finish off Stardew Valley after I'm done with XCom.

That's all for now. I hope you are all doing well, and I'll keep you posted on how the game development is coming. Seriously, keep on me about that. If I feel like you guys are counting on me for this kinda thing, or expecting that hard deadline, I'll feel all the more encouraged to do it on time.

Tomorrow I'll be flying out to California to attend the Game Developers' Conference. It is my sincere hope that this trip will set the foundation for a career change into game development. You'll probably know how it went as soon as I get back (As in, good news means a journal immediately, whereas neutral or bad news probably won't have a journal for a while). Also, I know I've been pretty lazy with my FA inbox lately. Bunch of new watches and I haven't taken the time to thank them or watch them back. My apologies for that, and I will try my best to get caught up with those once I return.

Welp, I'm going to give it a shot. At 8 PM EST tonight I'm going to do my first gaming stream. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be streaming yet, but it'll likely be some classic games like Earthbound, Mischief Makers, Gunstar Heroes, or something a bit newer like Dungeons of Dredmor, the Fall (blind play), or the Talos Principle.

The channel is https://www.twitch.tv/agwolf47

EDIT: Might be 8:30 EST, as I need to get a few things set up.

Taking everyone's advice, I'm going to plan to start streaming. Though it won't be for a little while. February and March are looking to be extremely busy at work, and I've got a trial coming up in 2 weeks. So I certainly won't be able to stream just yet.

However, I am hoping to get in the spirit of things by commissioning Bismarck, Zelse, Leonidas, and their new rabbit buddy (name to be determined) in the setting of various classic games (which may end up being shown on the stream).

The list is tentative, but hopefully there will be some pics that you guys will enjoy.

Here's what I've got so far:
1) Super Mario Bros.
2) Metal Gear Solid
3) Zelda (not sure which)
4) Fallout 2
5) Baldur's Gate
6) Mischief Makers
7) Advance Wars
8) TMNT (NES edition)
9) Punch Out!!
10) Final Fantasy IV
11) Metal Gear Solid 3
12) Sly Cooper
13) Mega Man X
14) Live-a-Live (might need some volunteers for this, as this will require EIGHT characters)
15) Kirby Superstar

Recently I've done a handful of streams among friends, with a number of different games (Metro: Last Light, Undertale, Invisible Inc., MGS V, Vanishing of Ethan Carter). I've gotten some positive feedback about it, so I've been curious: should I make this a regular thing? Like, posting something here when I'm streaming? And if so, what kind of games would you want to see?

Here's a bunch of FREE resources that I've found incredibly useful both while playing and DMing. If you're looking for something that's not on the list, post in the comments and I'll see if I can find something.

Mythweavers: http://www.myth-weavers.com/
This is an excellent site for character sheets for various systems. You can store them here or print them for easy reference. You will need to make a free account, however.

Tokentool (and RPTools): http://www.rptools.net/toolbox/
Tokentool allows you to easily make a small token (with border) out of a picture. Excellent for grid-based games. There are a number of other tools at the link, but I've only used Tokentool so far. Requires Java.

Roll20: https://www.roll20.net
This site is a fantastic resource for joining and running tabletop games. You will need to make a free account, but it provides a virtual tabletop, voice and video chat, dice rolling, character sheets, and ambient sounds. If you pay a subscription, you get a number of additional handy features.

Pathfinder SRD: https://www.d20pfsrd.com
This site contains all of the most up to date resources for Pathfinder, including a ton of fan-made content. Can be a little overwhelming to new players, but otherwise an excellent resource.

Noisli: https://www.noisli.com
This site provides a number of ambient sounds that can be very helpful for immersing your players in their atmosphere. For example, rain, wind, a crackling campfire, crickets, etc. are all available.

DnD Dice Roller: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm
A simple dice rolling program. Has all of the usual dice plus a custom entry if you need to roll a d5 or something.

Google Image Search
I've found this to be the best way to look up character art, provided you supply the right terms for it. Also great for scenes, background images, and maps.

Random X Generator: http://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/dungeon/
Sometimes your players go off the beaten path and you need to quickly make up a dungeon for them to explore. Here you go. Maybe they all go to a tavern and you didn't have one prepared. It's got that too. This site has a ton of resources for generating random things for when things don't go as you prepared.

World Building Checklist: http://arcadia.net/Cruinne/DnD/Arti.....tml#government
Want to make a homebrew world and leave as few plot holes or oddities as possible? Use this. This is an exhaustive, and I mean exhaustive list of questions to answer when building a world. You probably don't need to answer all of these, but they will provide plenty of things to think about.

Pyromancer's dungeon maker: http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/
An excellent resource for making dungeons. It takes a bit of work to get used to, but you can make some incredible dungeons with this.

Cartographer's Guild: http://www.cartographersguild.com/forum.php
Check the gallery here for some very detailed maps, including city maps and encounter maps.

Free maps!: http://www.dungeonmastering.com/too.....7-free-dd-maps
More maps!

Zenith Games' Pathfinder Guides Guide: http://zenithgames.blogspot.com/201.....er-guides.html
Want to find a good build for a Pathfinder class? Here you go. Also includes several guides for other topics, such as skill uses, useful items, and GMing.

Counter Monkey: http://spoonyexperiment.com/counter-monkey/
Plenty of exceptional stories of tabletop gaming here, including several lessons for DMs and players!

Dawnforged Cast: https://www.youtube.com/user/Dawnfo.....Cast/playlists
These guys provide a lot of great advice for players and DMs for all systems.

Character art: http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/390335256
I don't know what it is, but I've found tons of good character art with this particular query, assuming you're looking for human-ish things.

As with many gamers, the past several days of my life have been taken up by Fallout 4. Here are my impressions of it after playing it for 30 hours.

PROS:
1) Main plot - the main story has a nice initial draw, but then quickly takes a back seat to allow you to discover the world and do your own thing, like in Skyrim. But when you get back to the main story, you find that it has some really cool events and development. In fact, one of the side quests has a very nice tie-in to it too. Hard to say exactly since I haven't gotten that far into the main quest yet, but I'm liking it at the moment.

2) Looting - Looting has been improved significantly. No longer do you have to stop and check every crate, barrel, box, body, or locker. Just mousing over a container highlights its contents and you can loot them with a single button. So much faster.

3) Crafting - Crafting is now a primary focus of the game. Not only will you be scrapping and modifying guns, but also building structures, farms, water pumps, and the like. This caters exceptionally well to the creative player, and offers you a lot of options for your gear.

4) Perk System - Instead of having skills and SPECIAL values to keep track of, now everything is derived from your SPECIAL values, and skills no longer exist. This is good because you aren't as locked into a play style by your skill numbers. Also, you can always check what comes later down the tree on the level up screen.

5) Companions - There's about a dozen of them, and each of them has a good bit of personality. Also, they are immortal, which is fantastic given how many times they have walked into my line of fire >.>

6) Repairs - GONE! Durability is no longer a thing, so that hassle is over!

CONS:
1) Perks - While the perk system is great, the perks themselves are very underwhelming. Out of the 70 perks available, a third of them are borderline useless. Of the remainder, their effects are generally so minor that you won't be looking forward to any of them. For example, there was a time when there were four appealing perks to me at one level up, and I didn't really care which of them I picked. Where's the excitement of finally being able to get that one amazing perk?

2) Explanations - A number of perk abilities, and especially settlement things, are unexplained. You have to check out the Steam forums to figure out how they work, such as with the Local Leader perk. Others have additional effects or requirements that aren't listed. For example, the Cap Collector perk gives you a discount at stores, but what it doesn't tell you is that it's also a requirement to build the best stores in your settlements.

3) Bugs - It's a Bethesda game, so these are expected. So far I've found a number of graphical glitches, a bug that has made a companion disappear (apparently permanently), and a game-breaking bug wherein a critical quest object leaves without me and becomes unusable. Here's hoping a patch comes soon.

4) Weapons - There aren't enough. The game emphasizes using crafting to customize a handful of different gun types into your preferred types. While this isn't bad, it has the dual effect of making the gun crafting perks necessary and also reducing the excitement of finding a new weapon. Back in Fallout 3, it was so awesome when you finally found a sniper rifle or revolver, but here it's largely irrelevant since you've already made a sniper rifle out of scrap parts you found on some raider.

5) Economy - I'm not really sure what to say about this. It just feels... off. Like, I've never been short on caps, there have only rarely been awesome items I've wanted to buy, and most of the items you loot aren't worth that much. I mean, maybe this is good because you no longer have to go around to several different shops to offload all your junk. But then again, it just feels weird to ignore most enemy drops because you know they're only useful as scrap parts, which you can find anywhere.

6) Quests - WAY too many repeatable quests. I'd even go so far as to say that over half of the quests I've done so far have been repeatable ones. While I recognize that the major focus of this game is trying to create thriving settlements in this wasteland, I'm really starting to not give a crap about the raider problems of the farm over there because I've already dealt with the same problems with 6 other farms.

7) Dialogue - While it has been streamlined so that you don't have to deal with dialogue trees, I actually miss them. There have been many instances where I wanted additional information on a quest or individual, but there's no option to go back in the conversation. The worst of these times was on a quest to rescue someone's daughter. I had no idea who this individual was, nor did the game give me the option to find out. As the quest progressed, I was quickly forced into an ethical conflict as to the daughter's fate. However, I still had no idea who this lady was, who her father was, or the potential consequences of either choice, and the game demanded a decision right then and there. This was not an isolated incident.

8) Progression - The older Fallout games had relatively obvious milestones in your progression, usually distinguished by either a particular perk, weapon, armor, or moment in the plot. For example, in New Vegas there were typically sets of weapons and armor for each character type every 25 ranks of each skill (such as with the varmint rifle -> hunting rifle -> sniper rifle -> anti-materiel rifle), major perks that were extremely useful (Grim Reaper's Sprint, Living Anatomy, Sniper), or that moment where you finally got Power Armor training. Here, the game front loads all of its best stuff, so you'll find power armor likely within the first hour of the game, as well as deal with one of its most deadly enemies like it was nothing. After this brief period of excitement, it's back to killing raiders and you have no idea when you'll be capable of handling one of those big monsters again. This was particularly clear to me when I happened upon two Deathclaws in a random encounter. I thought I was screwed, but then I was able to kill them both with my usual weaponry without taking a hit. I had no idea when I had become capable of this, but it was kind of disappointing that such an iconic, terrifying enemy had become so mundane.

9) Settlements - They are a central focus of the game, but ultimately it's not clear what they do, or if many of the amenities you can build there have any purpose. It is great to build up your own place and all, but what about all these nobodies around you? What do they do? Why should you be tasked with keeping them all happy when you just want your own place? If it's not your thing, you will not have a fun time with them.

10) Random Mods - Many times, a group of enemies will be led by a "legendary" enemy. This enemy has greatly amplified stats and will drop a unique piece of gear that you cannot scrap, but will have a special buff attached to it (like reduced fall damage, bonuses versus certain enemy types, resistance to a particular damage type, etc.). As far as I know, you cannot get these buffs anywhere else, so it kind of renders part of the crafting system moot because no matter what you make, you can't give it one of these buffs. I suppose this is good in a way because you can't just go out and get the best gear at the start of the game, but it is another progression problem because you might never find a gun type with the buff you want.

That's all for now. I'll make additional observations as I keep getting through the game, but I would definitely like to hear your thoughts on the game!

On Sunday, October 11, 2015, I had a moment of clarity in which I realized something that should have been obvious to me: I want to work in the game industry.

For those that don't know, I've been feeling very uncertain about my career in law for the past few months. I absolutely don't like the field of law I'm in (personal injury), and I've been looking to get into another field of law in the hopes that I'll have a more positive experience. But then I read a few articles that gave me the hard truth about my future in that career path - it's gonna suck. For starters, it is immensely difficult to change legal fields unless you have attended a top law school or graduated at the top of your class (and I have done neither. Case Western is in the top 50, but these people are expecting Harvard or similar). Like most jobs these days, they expect you to have years of experience in that field before hiring you, and they're only willing to give you room to learn if you were at the top of your class already. So already just getting out of personal injury is going to be an uphill battle.

Next, lawyers are a very classist bunch. Even among co-workers, there's a bunch of cliques and lawyers comparing themselves and each other based on their schools or past jobs. It is just like high school. To make matters worse, all that matters to most bosses is the bottom line - how much of your time are you willing to devote to making the firm money? Now, that's not too uncommon in most white-collar jobs, but here you are actively competing against your co-workers. Bosses know that there are hundreds of other lawyers that will happily take your position, so unless you put in 60-80 hour work weeks, they won't hesitate to replace you. ....Why the hell would I "aspire" to work in such an environment? Let alone actively devote time and money to try and work there? I'm already a second-class citizen among other lawyers because I didn't go to a top law school or do law review, so why should I put up with a career where I won't like the job, I won't like the people I work with, and I won't even be treated with respect?

So I began to look into alternative careers - careers in which I could put my law degree to work while not actually being a lawyer. Surprisingly, there are a lot of options out there. For example, teaching and human resources work are both possibilities, and both are very appealing to me. But then, on that fateful Sunday, I was listening to a podcast by the American Bar Association about alternative careers, and one line really struck home. "Follow your passions, and the rest will come." Almost immediately after hearing that, I was reminded that I am extremely passionate about creating fantasy worlds and characters. When I did my Pathfinder campaign, I would spend days writing and re-writing the plot so that it would make sense, have an engaging story, and give the characters personality. Likewise, when making new characters for tabletop games, I'll devote hours, and sometimes even days, to find just the right concept for them. And I don't even have to be asked to do that kind of work. I'll take time off of my actual job or work through my lunch hour on these projects, and then come home and work on them more instead of playing games. So there's definitely passion there, but does that translate to making games?

I think it does, especially for game producers and designers. And wanting this kind of job isn't exactly new to me - I've been thinking about being a game developer since high school. My initial major in college was even computer science so that I could learn programming and be a game programmer, but then I found that I couldn't handle Calc 2, so I switched to political science. That aside, I've identified four major hurdles I'll need to jump through if I want to get a foothold in the game industry:
1) I need to find out if I'll actually enjoy the day-to-day life there. From what I've heard so far, I think I will, but I am trying to do some informational interviews to find out exactly what would be expected of me.
2) I would most likely need to move somewhere, either the west coast, New York, or Texas. I'd prefer the west coast out of these since I do have some family there, but I would be very sad to leave everyone behind here. My family, my friends, the conventions I attend each year... I would probably only be able to keep attending Anthrocon, but perhaps MCFC would be possible too since that would give me time to visit my family. On top of that, I would have to endure the financial burden of the move, selling my house, and then finding a place to live out there. Fortunately I have a good amount of savings I can access if need be, but I don't want to jump into this without being convinced that it will work.
3) I need to make a game. Everyone in the industry has told me that if you want to work in the game industry, you have to make games. So a friend of mine has introduced me to Game Maker, and I'm going to get to work right away. With luck I'll have something finished within a few months, and maybe I'll have enough decent games finished within a year or two to have a decent portfolio.
4) I might need a transition job. If I need to wait until my portfolio is enough to get a job in the industry, what am I going to do in the meantime? I'll need to find another job that will be at least tolerable and let me keep saving money so that I can afford the move. Now with luck I'll be able to get an entry-level job in the industry, perhaps as a QA tester, that will get me started, but I doubt that will pay enough to afford the cost of living in any of those areas. Either way, that's something else I'll have to think about after the interviews.

So in sum, I'm facing a pretty life-changing decision. Blowing my life savings for a shot in the video game industry sounds pretty bad, but maybe it's just what I need to have a career I'm passionate about. Either way, I'll keep you all posted, and I would greatly appreciate any advice you'd be willing to share.

Thank you very much.

So this issue has come up a few times now, but I've never really asked others about their opinion on it. When I first became a furry, I really wasn't sure what to call myself, but ultimately decided on the name Bismarck out of my love of history and respect for the man himself. Plus I just thought it sounded pretty classy and at least semi-professional. Though my character changed over time, Bismarck eventually settled on my cheetah-hyena character, which was effectively "me" before Zelse came along. Although I loved the character, there was always a bit of a disconnect, like Bismarck and I were still separate. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that Zelse was a far better representation of my true self, and decided to switch to him as my main sona. Except that presented a problem: pretty much everyone in the furry community knows me as Bismarck, not Zelse, but Zelse is now "me." I really don't want to go through the hassle of making a new FA page, especially since Zelse is taken. I don't have an Inkbunny, Weasyl, or other pages, so those might work, but again, I'd prefer to keep this as easy as possible.

What do you guys think? Should I try and change my name or just stick to Bismarck?

You can read the full opinion of it here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion.....4-556_3204.pdf

TL/DR: States may no longer deny marriage licenses on the basis of gender. Same-sex marriages are to be afforded the same rights as opposite-sex marriages. The ruling goes into effect immediately.

I'll post a more in-depth journal once I have a chance to read the (rather lengthy) opinion.

It's that time of year again. I'll be heading up on Thursday morning and working in the Artists' Alley again. I'm staying in the main hotel and will be around at least until Sunday night. If you want to meet me in person, the con store and the alley command center are probably the best places to check. If you'd like to hang out, best to let me know early so I can set aside some time. Anthrocon is always a very full weekend for me, so free time is extremely rare. Anyway, I hope to see you guys there, and that you all have a great time at the con!

There hasn't been much need for a Pathfinder Shenanigans journal recently as things have been...fairly steady in my games lately. Well, kinda. I suppose I should just explain. Right now I'm down to just a Pathfinder game and a D&D 5th Edition game. I left the Tuesday group due to some conflicts there, and my own campaign had a successful conclusion. Through the 5th edition game, I've found a new style of gameplay that's far more laid back and fun than how I was playing previously, so I think I'll look for more groups that play in the same style. But anyway, down to business. This journal is about a recent occurrence in the Pathfinder game, and discusses how DMs should handle player choices.

Are You Sure?

Our team is preparing to attack a group of Orc terrorists in the middle of a small grove of trees. Surrounding that grove is an open area devoid of trees, with three smaller teams of Orcs patrolling around it. We coordinated our plan of attack with an ally, such that we would approach from one side and they would approach from the other. Once the signal was given (a bird call), we would both commence our assaults. Our rogue attempted to sneak in to get into position, but was detected and we had to begin our attack at once. We gave the signal and engaged, emerging from the fight with only minor injuries. Not wanting to waste any time, we continued into the grove. Our rogue was again detected as he tried to sneak in, so we again had to rush in and engage the Orcs. This time, they were ready for us, and they kicked our ass. Two of our party were killed, and a third only survived because he stabilized while dying. The remaining two members escaped.

After the smoke clears, the DM mentions, "now, if only you had given your ally the other signal to attack..." to which I respond in agitation "what other signal? We only discussed the one signal. The signal that we gave before the first fight." What followed was a brief argument where we discover that the DM made an incorrect assumption about our plan, such that our ally did not join in. Additionally, our rogue comments, "I really wish I knew stealth was so useless in this game before playing a stealth specialist." What followed then was a discussion that revealed that he had an incorrect assumption about the stealth skill - he assumed that you could just stealth wherever (since his first exposure to a stealth-focused character was a shadowdancer that could do exactly that). When we informed him that you still needed something to hide behind, he further noted that "Huh, I figured I could hide behind trees or something, you know, in a forest." Another discussion followed, but ultimately didn't really accomplish anything.

Now, how could this situation have been avoided? Obviously the old adage about assumptions comes to mind, but the question of "Are you sure?" May have helped too.

Whenever the DM says "Are you sure?" you should immediately stop and reevaluate your situation, because it usually means that you are about to do something monumentally stupid or disastrous. But when should a DM say it? Obviously you can't stop the party every time they do something bad. In fact, another good approach is to ask the player "Why do you want to do that?" More often than not, that will encourage some discussion amongst the players, and everyone will have a better understanding of why the players are taking this particular action. The DM can plan around it, suggest alternatives, or allow the players an opportunity to correct a misunderstanding or false assumption. Here are some situations that

1) It's a new player making the choice - if the player is unused to a particular mechanic or the system entirely, then you should definitely step in and make sure they are fully informed before they commit to an action. Here, the obvious issue was stealth. Our player wasn't quite sure how stealth worked, and though he did a pretty good job of it, it never once worked out for him. Although I don't think it would have changed much in this situation, I don't think our player would have played a stealth specialist if he knew how it really worked. If a player that is new to a mechanic or system makes a questionable choice, I strongly recommend asking why, as there is probably a better way to do what they want to do - they just don't know about it.

2) The players are greatly deviating from the path - if the party is tasked with going to town A, and they all up and decide to go to town B in the opposite direction, then that's going to cause some problems. The same is true if they are tasked with bringing someone in alive and they decide to kill them. Be sure to ask the why they are changing course, and give them some rolls to see if their characters appreciate the consequences of their actions.

3) The players are doing something that the characters would know not to do. Usually this can just be solved with a common sense roll (typically a DC 5 Wisdom check), but other times you'll have to do those rolls to see if the character understands the consequences of such an act.

4) The players are engaging in a seriously risky or self-destructive activity. Again, be sure to ask why. Sometimes it's totally appropriate, other times they don't realize that they're walking into death. Have them take a moment and assess the situation, then if they still want it, then at least you gave them fair warning.

5) The players are engaging in something that will likely lead to real world consequences. This usually relates to PvP matters. These are far more common in games like Shadowrun, but can happen anywhere. If one player is plotting against another, make sure that all players are okay with that from the start. Groups have broken apart because one guy decides to exercise his PvP rights and the group splits up to take sides. This is definitely an area where the DM has veto power - you are ultimately responsible for the group, and if you don't want to risk the fallout of a player's action, then don't allow it.

I hope these suggestions prove useful. Exploring your players' motivations can greatly help their development and also solve a lot of potential problems when they make questionable choices.

Even though today is well known for pranks, the law doesn't consider that a valid defense. If you offer up commission slots and later retract them because you only meant it as an April Fools' prank, you may still be bound to do those commissions because you made an offer and others may have accepted. A retraction of your offer after acceptance may still be a breach of contract, and your commissioners will still be entitled to specific performance.

In other words, a contract written on a bar napkin is still a contract, and an offer for commissions on April Fools' Day is still an offer that can become a legally binding contract.

So I've got a lot of news, though a lot of things stay the same. I'll sort it by category so you can skip to the section you want.

Boyfriend
I'm single again. Simple as that. We broke up back in November and I've decided not to seek another boyfriend until my career is on track.

MCFC
Overall it was a decent con. It was a good experience for my first time as legal counsel at a con. Though I did jump onboard rather late. I think next year I'll have many more responsibilities. Either way, one of the best parts of it was just being appreciated for once. I worked every year at FCN (first two years as a volunteer, the rest as staff), and got virtually no thanks or respect for my help. I realize that I wasn't really very high up the totem pole, but it really made me think a few times about coming back. Plus on the last year they even forgot to include me on the mailing list so I could get a hotel room! But this con? These guys are really cool. I've made some good friends on the staff, and I think I'll be moving up to bigger things next year. I was a little sad that so few of my friends were there, and there weren't many artists to pick from in the alley, but it turned out okay. Looking forward to next year.

Job/career
I still hate my current job. I'm checking for new jobs every day and applying to every one that I can. I've had one unsuccessful interview so far, but will hopefully make some progress soon. Pretty much my entire life is on hold until I get a new job.

Tabletops
I'm still running my Pathfinder every Sunday, and hopefully it will end in about 3-5 months. Apart from that I'm in a Roman-themed Pathfinder campaign on Mondays, and a Star Wars-themed Shadowrun game on Tuesday. Good times all around.

Video Games
Currently playing Pillars of Eternity, Smite, and Payday 2.

Meetups
I'm going to try and make it to more of the meets in the area, and also try and host a board game night of my own at my place by the end of May.

Anthrocon
I need to find some others for the room atm, and also commission some badges to be picked up there. I'll be working at Artists' Alley again, so here's hoping it all goes well!

Relationships
Nothing yet, and not going to attempt to find another boyfriend until I get a new job.

Commissions
I've got a bunch of these to post as I've got quite the backlog of commissions, so hopefully those will be posted soon. I've got a few more on the way, and here's a few ideas for upcoming commissions:
1) Zelse as a naga
2) Zelse in a Samurai Jack style
3) Zelse, Bismarck, and Leonidas in a group pic.
4) Bismarck pinup
5) More Leonidas in general.

That's all for now. I'll try to get better about posting more recently, but I just have been so stressed and busy from work that I haven't had the motivation to post anything.

It's been a while since I've done one of these, buy I feel like the last session of my game warranted another shenanigans journal, so here it is. Read on for a tale of failed plans, unexpected party actions, and some really lucky (or unlucky) NPC shots.

Focus Fire

The party had gone through some restructuring. It now consisted of Logan (fighter), Inivari (arcanist), Krenvil (whip master), Savyna (shadowdancer), and two new members: Zasuzar (cleric with snake companion), and Corvus (archer cavalier). The party was trying to recruit the aid of a private army for their war effort. However, this private army was owned by a merchant company that was a bit...snobbish. The party gave the secretary a letter of introduction, and she indicated that the boss would get back to them in about 2 days. This was unacceptable to the party. This lowly NPC secretary dared to make them wait like commoners? The nerve! The party first tried bribing her to speed up the process, but screwed up the roll so bad that the secretary could only laugh at their attempt. Next, they decided to try breaking into the building and delivering the message in person. Because, you know, the fastest way to get someone to work with you is to break into their building and potentially murder their security. After a brief timeout where I explained the folly of what they were about to do, they decided to step back and just let the bureaucratic process work itself out.

The next day, the boss called the party back and explained that their terms were agreeable, but that the party would first have to deal with a rival merchant company. This rival company would sweep in and destroy the other company once the army had been mobilized, so they had to be stopped somehow before they could cause any damage. Of particular note was that this rival merchant house focused on advanced technology, including guns. The party was made aware of this, and they were sent on their way.

I had planned for a few different ways for the party to go in and accomplish the mission (I won't list them all here because the party still has to finish the mission). However, I had not planned for them to try and sneak in at night to scout the place out. The shadowdancer and the whip master both felt confident in their sneaking abilities, so they went in while the party stayed behind. Since I had not planned for this, I called a quick break while I readied a map and some guards. I prepared a stat block for each of the guards, who were all gunslingers armed with muskets (remember, focus on technology). They were a little under the party's level, and did not have optimized builds. However, they did have Skill Focus: Perception, because they were night watchmen. As Krenvil and Savyna climb up the wall, one of the guards spots Krenvil. Now, Krenvil is a Vanara, basically a race of monkeymen, so the guard isn't too used to this. He calls down "Hey, get down from there. This is private property!" Instead of leaving and coming back later, Krenvil looks to Savyna, mutters, "I'm the distraction," and then charges the guard on the wall.

It was at this point that we realized that we hadn't specified the location of the rest of the party. All they said was "far enough that we absolutely won't be seen by the snipers." So I had to make a judgment call as to available cover, guard patrols, shadows from the moonlight, etc., and ruled that it would take 1d6+3 rounds for the party to reach the fight. It ended up as eight rounds. In retrospect, I should've told them that they could buff, prep, move faster to reduce the rounds, or similar, but I was already preparing this on the fly, so it didn't occur to me at the time. Anyway, Krenvil manages to take down one of the guards and hit another one with enough force to knock him off the wall. The remaining guards on the wall all rush over to him and open fire.

The first round is pretty uneventful - they only manage to hit Krenvil for about 8 damage. He thinks he can take on the rest of them so he keeps up the attack. Unfortunately, by the end of round 2, a total of 8 guards had managed to surround him, and all were focusing fire on him because he was the only visible threat. The shadowdancer was already inside the building. This time, the guards do a lot more damage. For those of you who are unfamiliar, guns in pathfinder are very unique ranged weapons. Generally, they do low damage per shot, and it is expensive to shoot them. However, they are highly accurate, and if one of them is a critical hit, the damage is immense. Sure enough, in this volley of fire, someone lands a critical hit. Krenvil takes upwards of 90 damage this round. He's barely on his feet, so goes back down the wall and tries to escape. Unfortunately the guards take another volley of shots at him and manage to bring him down with another critical hit.

The party all get there in just time to see the guy who shot Krenvil, a guy I named Sniper Steve, high-five his buddy on the wall with a "nice shot Steve!" The party isn't too keen on this, so they are all swearing to murder and desecrate Steve. Initiative is rolled for the rest of the party. Zasuzar (cleric) and Inivari (arcanist) go first. Zasuzar sends his snake in while he buffs up. Then Inivari goes in and tries to melt Steve's face with a Scorching Ray. Then the snipers go. They see a snake that looks...pretty weird to them, and then a spellcaster fast approaching. Being somewhat familiar with the threat of spellcasters, most of them focus fire on Inivari. Sure enough, another critical hit lands and Inivari is dead. The party gathers up the bodies and flees to come back the next day. Krenvil rolls on the reincarnation table and find out that he'll be coming back as an orc....and he refuses reincarnation. So he's making a new character for next session, while Inivari is just being raised from the dead.

Lessons Learned

When making a location for the PCs to investigate, make a map and prepare for encounters in every conceivable place the PCs could fight. I expected them to be kind of diplomatic about that other merchant house, not try to sneak in, but that's impossible now. Also, gunslingers are bad news. It's rare for them to crit, but when they do, they do it hard.

For the players: once you're past level 10 or so, the "charge in and alpha strike" strategy only works if you can actually win initiative and are able to keep the enemies from focusing their fire. Gunslingers do about 1d12 damage on their own. 2d12 when they get their second shot. That's not too much, but when you have 8 of them firing at once, with two shots each, it becomes 80% likely that one of them is going to be a crit. And when that happens, all the smaller hits are really going to sting. Do your best to force enemies to split their damage. It's easy to heal and reduce damage over time or poke damage, but when you take a crit or two, that character is effectively out of the fight. If nothing else, make sure the fighter goes in first and draws aggro before the mage steps up.

For the past few sessions, I've been thinking about an ongoing issue in my Pathfinder game - the issue of planning. In many tabletop RPGs, especially the ones that have less of a combat focus, the PCs will be faced with situations that force them to stop and come up with a plan. Sometimes these plans can be as simple as knocking out, rather than killing the upcoming enemies, but other times they can be on par with Mission: Impossible. No matter the complexity though, someone still has to come up with the plan, and this can lead to some nasty party conflicts.

Generally, coming up with the plan is the job for the characters with high intelligence, like the wizard or rogue. Those classes routinely deal with situations that can't be answered with just a fireball or crossbow bolt in the right spot, so it makes sense that they'd be instructing the Fighter or the Cleric where to make a distraction, what disguise to wear, etc. That's not to say that other classes can't come up with a plan, just that it's usually most in-character for the wizard or rogue to do it. However, sometimes the player behind the rogue or wizard really doesn't like planning or just can't come up with any good plans. Now what do you do? In situations like these, you can't limit the planning to just those characters. You'd end up shutting out players or character choices just because so-and-so can't think like a wizard, can't plan a heist, and so on. You need to open up the planning to the whole party, even if it is somewhat out of character. Obviously the barbarian with 6 intelligence can't come up with a plan to infiltrate the castle, but if the guy playing the rogue is really out of ideas, there's no reason the barbarian's player can't help out. Now, this brings up two problems that are currently plaguing our party:

1) How do you justify, in-character, a complex plan coming from a simple, or different, character?
2) What do you do when one or more party members refuses to help plan?

For the first issue, let's go back to the example I gave above, where the party has to infiltrate the castle. Let's say the rogue's player doesn't like to plan or just isn't very good at it, but the barbarian's player routinely came up with amazing plans on his old character. The barbarian's player comes through again and comes up with an amazing plan. Now how do you deliver it to the party in-character? The barbarian really can't do it because he obviously doesn't have the experience or skill to come up with something like that. Should the rogue deliver the idea? Is that fair to the barbarian or their player for the rogue to take credit for it? What happens if the rogue has to change the plan on the fly and the barbarian isn't around?

I really don't know of a good way to solve this. If you guys have any ideas, I'd be very interested to hear them.

The second issue strikes closer to home. In my Pathfinder game, I'm the one that's routinely coming up with all the plans. The other players suggest solutions to smaller problems now and then, but every time we have to do something complicated, they look to me, and me alone. The thing is, I don't want it to be me alone. I want to come up with something together with the party. I'd like it if my character suggested something, then the other characters chimed in with their own opinions or how their own skills and experiences could contribute to the plan. It doesn't happen.

Now, my DM has pointed out to me that I can't really complain about their lack of planning if I routinely take the initiative to be the first with a plan. I agree that I do voluntarily shoulder the burden because I enjoy planning, and because I like to keep the game moving. I figure that we only have a few hours each week where we're all together, roll dice, and get stuff done. Those precious few hours should not be wasted on out-of-character planning that could easily be accomplished over text on Skype. Hence, I take the job seriously - I do my research and have a plan ready ahead of time that we can implement right away when the next session starts.

But, to humor my DM and to try and encourage some of the other players to get involved in the planning process, I stepped back from our most recent plan. I came up with the big idea for it, how my character would contribute in his half of the plan, and then told the others that it was up to them to come up with their half of the plan. Only one of them rose to the occasion and suggested a pretty decent strategy. The other two offered little to no comment on the suggestion, and several days passed before the next game session without any discussion of their half of the plan. Then, when it comes time to move on to the part of the game we planned for, we have to stop because they still hadn't finalized their plan. They spend an hour or so coming up with alternatives to the previously suggested plan, but ultimately don't decide on anything. We end the session early, still unsure of how to proceed next time.

I now realize that it's not just a problem of planning, but also one of initiative. When I know that I have to come up with a plan in Pathfinder, I jump in right away and keep hammering at it until it's done, so that we can execute it right away when the next session rolls around. Now I know that I really can't hold the others to that standard, but it is very disappointing when other players hold everyone up because they couldn't be bothered to put some effort into moving the game along. To put it another way, it feels like working on a team project in school. Everyone on a team gets the same grade, without regard to who contributed most to the project. Half the team contributes their share, while the other half are content to do nothing, confident that the first half will do all the work because they want a good grade. The first half feels cheated because they did all the work and received no recognition for it.

I've been trying to think up a few ways to solve this problem, but it's incredibly difficult because it's really a matter of player personality. You can't change that without changing players. However, I did come up with one thing that I think would work pretty well on the right character. Plan tax. Whenever your guy comes up with the plan, and the others are content to just ride their coattails, make sure that your plan lets you handle the loot personally. Take an extra 10% or so just for yourself without them knowing, then divvy up the rest normally. If someone catches you and says something, call it a plan tax, and that if they don't want to pay it, they can come up with their own plan.

What do you guys think? Any suggestions for how to avoid/solve these problems?

In last night's session of Pathfinder, the group made a colossal blunder in revealing a warren of wererats to the city guard. We are now trying to recover from that mistake, and looking for a decent way to hide 30 or so wererats in the city before the city guard can do a genocide. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears. We could have avoided this mistake if we had just taken a little more time to question the NPC that gave us the quest. So here are 10 things that you should ALWAYS ask your quest NPC to hopefully avoid future blunders:

Ten Things to Ask Your Quest NPC

1. What EXACTLY do you want?
This may be self-evident depending on the circumstances, but try to get them down to a single sentence, like it's quest objective. A single objective like this is something your party can focus on with ease, such that you all know what you're ultimately trying to do. You can break it down into main objectives and side objectives if that helps, but make sure you know your goal.

2. What does [target NPC or item] look like? What's their name? Where are they? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
These ultimately boil down to just getting a complete description of your target. On more than one occasion, my party and I have gone to confront a boss, only to realize that we don't actually know what the guy looks like. As stressed below, don't just ask this question either, WRITE DOWN THE ANSWER! Otherwise I can guarantee your party will forget some important detail, and it will come back to bite you later. This is also effectively an extra knowledge check by your NPC to find out the target's type or special abilities, as they would be in a very good position to know about the target.

3. Why are you coming to us with this and not the local authorities?
This is partially for plot reasons and may not have much mechanical effect, but it should also be something to compare to your alignment. Would your good character be okay with being a hitman? Would your chaotic character be willing to work with the city guard? Are they working outside the law? Would your lawful character agree to this approach or try to do things by the book? It will also probably tell you what the NPC thinks about the authorities and whether or not you should be careful about keeping your actions quiet.

4. How discrete should we be, and how quickly does this have to be done?
Some of your players may have contacts that might be useful in this scenario. They might be all ready to rush over and get them involved, but the NPC may want their activities kept confidential. This helps to let your teammates know how loud or flashy they can be too, because sometimes they'll think of a plan that has a lot of collateral damage that the NPC doesn't want on their hands. Also, many parties can be guilty of the "15-minute workday" issue, where they go to a single fight, blow all of their 1/day powers, then go rest and come back tomorrow. Except in very rare instances, they shouldn't be afforded this luxury, and plans should go awry when they leave a job half-finished to go rest at an inn. Similarly, an NPC's plans should be inconvenienced because the PCs decided to take too long. On the other hand, this can also encourage the party to do more planning if you give them a very generous time limit - if they have a week to kill a guy, they might actually do some prep work instead of just charging in the front door and killing everyone.

5. Should we be on the lookout for anyone or anything in particular there? Does s/he have any treasure of particular note?
This is to alert the party to sub-bosses, captive monsters, trap rooms, or other dangers for which they should be on the lookout. This includes the boss's preferred tactics or special powers (like using teamwork feats, a breath weapon, filling the room with smoke and using Blind-Fight, etc.). It may also be useful for alerting them to hidden doors or secret treasure rooms. Plus, if the target has a really cool item, but it's not found on his body, it'll give the party a chance to go look for it instead of just taking a loss to the party loot.

6. What will be our reward for completing this task?
It's easy for an NPC or the DM to change your reward based on mood, or to just screw you over entirely if that's the NPC's character. Make sure you have an understanding of your payment before you do any work.

7. What would be the best, and worst-case scenarios, besides our deaths? OR Is there anything else you'd like us to do, or avoid doing, while we're there?
Usually the NPC has some larger goal in mind. They want to kill X NPC or obtain Y item to further their plans for Z. In the course of your mission, you may have opportunities to either further their goal, or screw it up royally, like we did with the wererats and the city guard. Also, from a metagaming perspective, most NPCs have a standard reward, and then either a bonus or a penalty based on how the party handles these opportunities or whether they assisted the NPC's larger plans. Asking this question can help you know what to look for, or how to more easily avoid the lesser reward.

8. How can we trust you?
This may not be necessary depending on the circumstances - in many cases the NPC is showing a great deal of trust in your party by coming to you instead of the authorities. But every once in a while, you may need to be sure that the NPC can be expected to come up with your reward or not to use you as a scapegoat.

9. What will you do after we complete this task?
This is primarily for RP purposes, but can again help you obtain the bonus reward by taking opportunities to advance the NPC's larger goal. Additionally, it encourages the party to use this NPC as a contact later on, which may be extremely helpful depending on the circumstances.

10. Do you have any advice for us? Can you offer us any aid?
If the NPC is hiring adventurers to do a job, then they've certainly given a lot of thought to the job already. They've probably thought up some plans, but realized they wouldn't work. They may have spotted a weakness in the target's defenses, but couldn't exploit it on their own. They might know that the guards all have Damage Reduction except against a certain material, and the NPC has some samples of that material if they party asks for them. The DM will usually have all of these at the ready, but can't use any of them unless the party asks. So ASK!

It's not enough to just ask these questions, you should also write down the answers. It's embarrassing when your party face doesn't remember the name of the NPC, the item, the village, or similar, and it's all too easy for people to forget, especially when a quest takes more than one session to complete. Designate a party scribe if you must, but try to take the initiative and do it yourself. And if you do have a party scribe, show them some appreciation - they're doing your job for you.

You really don't know how difficult it is to be a good GM until you've tried it for yourself. And I'm not just talking about the plots or the characters, I'm talking combat. Like it or not, most tabletop RPGs are combat-based. Some moreso than others, but most of those stats you juggle around on character sheets are for the sole purpose of leaving you better off than the other guy after weapons are drawn. As a GM, it is your job to make every combat memorable in some way, and it is exceptionally difficult to do so. In my Pathfinder games of this week, we explored a few different encounters, and I made a few observations about the matter. Read on for more about how to make battles that leave lasting impressions, and the importance of a balanced, diverse party.

MEMORABLE COMBAT AND PARTY PLANNING

As I have previously mentioned, I am currently part of two separate Pathfinder games, with many consistent players between the two games. In the first game, which takes place on Monday nights, our team had some new players this week. This was due to the fact that we almost never have a full party due to scheduling or technical difficulties. So our team is now comprised of an oracle, a witch (as a necromancer), a fiery sorcerer, a druid and his raptor companion Fluffy, a hunter, a brawler that throws his shield (Captain America), and a swashbuckler (me). That's a pretty diverse crew, but, as usual, we were down some players due to various difficulties - tonight we just had the witch, the sorcerer, the druid, the brawler, and the swashbuckler.

Our team had just entered a cave to investigate some strange murmuring. Shortly after we entered, we were attacked by an ooze monster that was disguised as a rock. We weren't too concerned - it had thus far only attacked one of the witch's undead minions and we all knew that oozes have horrible defenses. We started to attack, and swiftly discovered that we had to make a reflex save every time because it could transform points of impact into rock to reduce damage. This kind of defense would be extremely challenging to lower-level party, but we were able to overwhelm its defenses and bring it down.

Just as we finished with the ooze, we were attacked by several Dark Folk, creatures that can see in any darkness and explode like a flashbang grenade when killed. They had sneak attack damage like a rogue, but we were able to slay them before long since they were still quite squishy. At the end of the battle, we were still in good shape - our casters hadn't used many spells, our melee characters hadn't been too injured - so we pressed on. Our next encounter turned south very quickly as we found ourselves surrounded and bottlenecked by a good dozen or so Dark Folk. Normally this wouldn't be so bad - they were still squishy, so even a swam of them would fall quickly to our attacks - but immediately their caster hit us with Deeper Darkness, a spell that blackened the caves and blinded the entire party.

No one in the party had a way to deal with the darkness. A dispel magic or powerful light spell (daylight) would have solved the problem, but no one had that prepared. The Dark Folk were not impaired at all since they could see through any darkness, but only one of us had Blind-Fight through the use of his unique class ability. What ensued was one of the longest and most tedious fights we've ever had, solely because of the darkness. Half of our attacks missed, and the sorcerer was out of his AoE spells. Only one or two party members came close to dying, but ultimately it was just an exercise in tedium as we kept on swinging until they all dropped.

I'll talk about the lessons we can learn from that fight in a moment, but first let me switch to the other game, the Tuesday game. Our team there was a warpriest, a gunslinger, a slayer, a ranger, and a monk (me). Towards the end of the session, we came across evidence of vampire activity in the building that we were investigating. All of us knew that vampires were involved out-of-character, but none of our characters had a way to know about vampires, so they pressed on in ignorance. We next discovered four coffins in a crawlspace beneath the shop. Again, we all knew it was vampires, but our characters did not. So our ranger led the way and opened up one of the coffins with the gunslinger at his back. Fortunately for us, the creatures were only vampire spawn, so they weren't that tough, but unfortunately for us, the ranger was dominated immediately. As the ranger and gunslinger left the crawlspace, the four vampires misted through the floor and engaged us. The ranger fought and killed the gunslinger due to the domination right away, the warpriest engaged the vampires, and both myself and the slayer fled (we had told the warpriest to run due to being outnumbered and because the ranger had turned traitor, but he engaged anyway). I attempted to bring the gunslinger's body with us, but he was too far out of reach. The next round, the warpriest was dominated, and the battle was over. We lost three party members in that fight, but should be getting some good replacements next session.

Lessons to be learned: Making combat interesting

We probably will not forget about those fights for quite some time. What made the Dark Folk battle interesting was the darkness. All of us were significantly impaired because we had no way to blast an area, to dispel the darkness, or to mitigate the penalties associated with blindness. The ooze battle was interesting because of its defensive mechanic and its ooze characteristics - it was already in close quarters with us and you NEVER want to grapple an ooze. The vampire encounter was interesting because of both the domination and the location. The four coffins were in a crawlspace (difficult terrain for everyone since no one was small-sized), effectively splitting the party at the battle start, and then the domination spells quickly cut our numbers almost in half. In each of these circumstances, the standard tactic of "walk up to it and hit it until it stops moving" was not the best option in any of these situations. The fights forced us to change our tactics and try different things, with varying degrees of success (mostly none). We can look at these situations to point out other ways to make combat more memorable, but the most common factor is some unique circumstance that forces the party to plan or act in ways that they normally wouldn't. Here's a more in-depth look at various ways to make your fights more memorable:

The Environment:
Let's start with the easiest example - the environment. In the above stories, that was the crawlspace. Nothing special or magical about it, it was just something that prevented the party from effectively moving together. If we had small party members or a Reduce Person spell, it wouldn't have been an issue, but remember that those are things players wouldn't usually think of. In many cases, a small character is treated just the same as a medium one except for combat or skill numbers, and Reduce Person is largely ignored in favor of the much more useful Enlarge Person since that one gives your fighters reach. Other environmental factors can easily be thrown into most encounters to spice them up, such as:

Spilled drinks/oil - free Grease spell. Maybe the stuff is flammable, maybe it's not, but making players move around spilled liquids is a good start. They'll have to make saves or else fall prone while moving through the affected squares. Not a big deal for the rogue, but the fighter in full plate with the massive armor check penalty is going to change his course.

Weakened floors/walls - Construction standards probably aren't too rigorous in the world of Pathfinder, and an upper story floor might not be able to take the impact of a fighter in full plate dropping prone there. Same for walls in case he's pushed back. Maybe the floor is rotted away and just walking over it causes it to collapse. Either way, now the encounter is a rescue to get the character back, as well as handling the enemies.

Elevation differences/sniper posts - Balconies, tree limbs, windows, and the like all provide areas for people to take cover and shoot at the party below. Only the party's caster or archer can really handle these guys, or your fighter can demonstrate his intelligence by using the backup bow he brought for just such an occasion.

Clutter/difficult terrain - Slows down the party and prevents 5-ft steps.

Lighting - If your party has lots of non-standard races or hands-free light sources, this probably won't be an issue, but technically dim light is supposed to provide 20% concealment. That's extremely annoying if you don't fight near a torch.

Water - Almost no one takes ranks in Swim, so a sudden dip into a place with an aquatic monster can be a huge game changer. Even if you don't actually make them swim, you could argue that water does interesting things to electric-based spells and weapons. Oh, and don't forget gear. Walking around in wet clothing should be a penalty to Sneak. Your scrolls? Better hope they were in a waterproof bag or they're probably ruined.

Traps - These take a bit more prep time, but large, obvious traps (things they don't need a rogue to see) can quickly corral a nervous party along the path you want, and then you send in enemies that are good at forcing the party into the way of the traps.

Spells:
There's a reason why transmutation casters are considered the "best" arcane casters. A caster can take on many roles, but one of its best is shaping the battlefield such that the fighters can do their thing at their best. Think about it, combat generally goes on until one team's HP reaches zero, and the fighter-type characters are designed exclusively for making the enemy team's HP hit zero as quickly as possible. In most cases, they will be your team's best when it comes to taking and dealing damage, so as a caster, you are immensely useful to your team when you line up the enemies for your fighter to knock down. Shaping the entire battlefield can be an enormous advantage, and can easily create or counter many of the environmental factors listed above. Enemy sniper perched up high? Won't be a problem after the wizard casts Fly on the fighter. This is also why Haste is one of the most damaging spells in the game, despite the fact that it doesn't do any damage by itself. Some good, situational spells can easily catch a party off-guard, or force them to positions/rooms that they wouldn't otherwise use.

I could do an entire journal just on the uses of transmutation magic and the roles of arcane casters, but that's for another time. For now though, just look at transmutation magic, as well as any spell that's dismissed as "useful, but only in certain situations." You are the DM. MAKE THAT SITUATION HAPPEN! Use those spells to alter the battlefield, like the darkness used by the Dark Folk above. However, try to keep it to spells that the party could feasibly counter. If they need a really obscure, situational spell to counter your really obscure, situational spell, then they'll just get frustrated. Remember that you want to make them change plans and adapt to the situation, not make them deal with a really annoying battlefield without any way to adapt to or counter the battlefield circumstances.

Mechanics and special abilities:
The darkness effect worked wonderfully for the Dark Folk because they have natural abilities to ignore that condition. It made sense that they'd use it to their advantage. Similarly, creatures with Scent using Obscuring Mist really works well too because they can "see" through the mist with their scent - they're playing to their natural advantages. Have your NPCs do this often, it makes them much more unique.

Similarly, every once in a while throw in an NPC that has a really weird build. Don't just send a fighter against them, send a fighter that specializes in the Dirty Trick maneuver. Instead of a ranger, use a ranger with a spider companion that immediately webs the party. Send in enemies that work in teams that all share certain teamwork feats. They won't be expecting exotic setups like this, and will have to change their plans to deal with them.

While you're planning your battles, it's important to keep your goal in mind - you don't want to KILL the party, you want to CHALLENGE them. You want to give them something that they -should- be able to overcome if they play smart, but will punish them if they act stupid.

However, sometimes the party makeup severely limits your options. Looking at our stories above, the darkness encounter was ultimately a failure. It was certainly interesting and memorable, but we didn't have fun. Why not? We had no way to plan around or deal with the darkness. We couldn't retreat because it was on something that one of the enemies carried with him. We had no one with Daylight or Dispel. But should we have had something like that? Maybe. Out of the entire team, we had two people capable of using Dispel Magic. One of them was the oracle, who has consistently missed games (so we couldn't count on her). The other is the witch, who only had two level 3 spell slots and had not had a prior occasion to prepare Dispel. So no, this was a situation where we really could not have planned around the darkness, we just had to deal with it.

Let's look at the vampires next. There were two problems with this one. The first was a lack of knowledge about vampires. The party had two occasions to discover that we were about to fight vampires, and neither one was relevant because no one had the knowledge skill to make use of those observations. Had we known, we would've been able to prepare and stand a far better chance against them, but instead we got dominated and ran. The second issue was the domination magic itself. This is classified as an SoS ability, short for "Save-or-Suck", because if you fail your save, you suck for the rest of the fight. These are differentiated from "SoD" abilites, short for "Save-or-Die", which, as you might expect, kill you outright if you fail. Most players and GM's have a gentleman's agreement to not use SoD abilities because no one likes them and they typically do not do anything other than frustrate both players and GMs. However, sometimes SoS abilities drift into SoD territory, and this fight was one of those times. Ordinarily, it's fairly easy to detect a domination effect, especially if you're a caster. However, in that game we didn't have an arcane caster, and our only other caster didn't do much in the way of spellcraft. So our characters had no idea what domination magic was or how to fix it. This made the domination ability into an SoD effect solely because the party didn't have anyone that could respond to it. In some cases, like with the Darkness, you can call it the fault of the GM, but that only extends so far. You're an adventuring party - you're supposed to be prepared for all sorts of things, and if you don't have someone with the right spells/abilities, hire them as an NPC. Obscure spells and effects - yes, you can blame the GM for those, but basic magic? Nope, that's the party's fault.

This actually would take me into a much larger discussion about party planning and roles, but I am noticing that this post is approaching 5 pages in length. So that will be saved for the next journal. Suffice to say, sometimes you just have to suck it up and play a class you don't want to for the sake of party balance.

Just wanted to post a quick journal apologizing for my inactivity. I'm really, really not satisfied with my job right now, but unfortunately it's unlikely that I'll be able to find anything better in the same industry. I'm currently at a personal injury law firm, and I could tell from the first week that I was not at all passionate about this kind of work. There's no end to the stress, you have no friends outside of your office (not even your clients), and at any time the work could spill over into your non-professional life. On top of all that, it's virtually impossible to get another job in the legal industry unless you have 2+ years of experience, and right now I'm just hovering around one. I can't take another few years here, so I've decided to work my way out of it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I really wasn't passionate about any kinds of law. So then I switched it around - what things am I passionate about? Video games, music, tabletop games, and computers all came to mind, so I began to look for opportunities in the legal field that worked with video games. Unfortunately, there's not much, but all of them did have something in common - intellectual property (IP) law. IP law encompasses patents, copyrights, and trademarks, with occasional dips into other fields like contracts. Back in law school, I always dismissed patents as boring, but I never really understood why I thought of them that way. I still don't think I understand them fully, but I know for certain that if I want to do any kind of law that relates to video games, knowing patents is essential.

There's just one major problem: to do patent law, you need to pass the patent bar exam. Okay, I can study for a few months, save my money and get a review course, and give that a shot. Unfortunately, there's another hurdle before that: to take the patent bar, you need to be an engineer. That means you either have a bachelor's degree in engineering, you take enough engineering courses in college, or you pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. I don't have the time or money to go back to school, so that means I've gotta take the exam.

The exam covers everything you'd learn in a 6-semester engineering major. That means 6 semesters of calculus and other advanced math, physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and all sorts of other topics that I've never taken. So that's been my life for the past few weeks - working all day, then studying all night to slowly prepare myself for this test. It's been about a month now, and I'm still trying to figure out just the math part, but I'm making progress.

I'll be more active once I'm done there, but for now those occasional breaks to play Pathfinder are about the only meaningful breaks I get. I might play an hour or so of another game some days, but otherwise that's all I've got. So again, sorry for my inactivity, but I really need to get my career on track before I can rest easy again.

I recently had the pleasure of playing a bard. And yes, it was very fun. I know everyone jokes about how bards are useless, but you'd be surprised - this guy pulled his own weight and contributed to fights in a significant way. Conversely, in another game, our party has a bard that is pretty much useless. You can tell this is the case when he literally cannot find something to do on most rounds. Virtually every character (except maybe a summoner) doesn't have enough actions to do everything they want in a round, and if you can't find things to do to take up your actions in a round (like our current bard is doing), you are doing it horribly wrong. So this is a short guide on how to do a bard right.

HOW TO BE A BARD

Class Features

d8 Hit Die: You won't be quite as durable as a fighter, but you're not far off. You're on the same level as the rogue, so going into melee is totally an option; just don't try to be the party tank.

Class Skills: You get 6 per level, and you get a wide variety of skills. You will be something of a skill monkey, but keep in mind the skills of your other party members. Also remember that you get the fantastic class feature of Versatile Performance. These will effectively make your Perform ranks affect two other skills, allowing you to use points from, say, bluff or diplomacy on appraise or stealth. To this end, you will probably want to put ranks into three different Perform skills. Make sure at least one of these is for flavor, not optimization. If you wanted pure optimization, you wouldn't be a bard. Bards are designed to have a ton of flavor and RP potential, and if you focus solely on numbers, your bard is going to suck.

BAB - Medium: Your BAB isn't as good as a fighter's, but it's still workable. You'll hit a fair amount, so don't shy away from weapons.

Saves: bad Fort; good Reflex; good Will: Two ain't bad, and your Will is probably the most important because you dumped Wisdom.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: Let's start with the weapons. You get all simple weapons, plus the longsword, shortsword, rapier, sap, shortbow, and whip. These give you TONS of options. The longsword, shortsword, and rapier are all fairly solid melee weapons. If you have a strength setup, pick up a longsword or longspear. If dexterity, a shortbow or rapier. And if you want to do combat maneuvers, get a whip. All are viable.

As for the armors, you get light armor and shields, plus the freedom to cast in light armor without penalty. So put on that chain shirt and get to work!

Spells: Let me explain this stuff right now: you don't do damage spells. You barely do control spells. What you actually do are buffs, debuffs, and especially interrupts. You get haste, slow, invisibility, mirror image, all the usual good stuff (and these can really ensure that you survive for a long time in melee), plus the almighty SAVING FINALE. As an interrupt,, you end your bardic performance and allow an ally to reroll a failed save. You cannot quantify how useful that is. You can prevent TPK's with this, and it's a level 1 spell that only bards can do. And on top of that, you have Liberating Command - as an interrupt, an ally gets another shot at breaking a grapple, with a bonus to the check equal to your caster level. A bad grapple will end a character because so few characters are capable of dealing with them - especially casters. If your caster finds himself in the path of a Black Tentacles spell, then you probably just saved his life because he doesn't have a hand free to cast Grease. Again, do not count on your spells to do damage or control the battlefield. They're designed to get your party out of bad situations and apply some very nice buffs and debuffs (mostly buffs though). Except for Saving Finale, you won't do it better than a wizard, so don't try to - free up his slots to do more of the spells that only he can do.

Bardic Knowledge: This is decent, but not amazing unless your party really doesn't have anyone with knowledge skills. If you are the designated enemy identifier, then yeah, this will be a godsend. But if not and you want an archetype that replaces this with something else? I wouldn't lose any sleep over its loss.

Bardic Performance: Here it is, your bread and butter. Well, kinda. There are several different songs that come in this package, but only a handful are actually useful. For most of your career, it's Inspire Courage. Bonuses to attack and damage for your party - can't go wrong with that. Inspire competence may be good if you -really- need to work on a skill check, but in many cases Aid Another will be just as good. The rest either come very late into the build or are way too situational, like distract and countersong. Focus solely on Inspire Courage.

Versatile Performance: As indicated above, this is a good way to maximize your skill points. Get a variety of perform skills and enjoy applying them to several different skills.

Lore Master: Like with Bardic Knowledge, if your party really needs someone to do knowledge checks, fine, but otherwise don't feel bad getting rid of this in an archetype.

Jack of All Trades: By the time you get this, you've got ranks in all the skills you want. It is highly unlikely that you'll be using this to pull off a trained skill in which you have no ranks.


Pulling it All Together: Builds

As much as you might want to be the dedicated skill monkey and leave the combat to the other guys, Pathfinder (and 3.5) is a combat game. You are expected to pull your weight in battle, so make sure you know what you'll do once initiative is rolled. Here are a few possible setups that work for a bard.

Archer:
This is probably the classic setup. As a bard, you really don't have a lot of feats that you absolutely MUST pick up. That leaves you a lot of room to develop your own combat style. In this case, you'd be spending about 6 feats to pick up all of the big archery feats (Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Manyshot, Deadly Aim, Improved Precise Shot), ending up doing very respectable damage with a bow. You'd be prioritizing DEX and CHA for this setup, possibly a bit of STR if you can afford it to get some extra damage out of your composite bow. This was my personal favorite because the damage I did kept up well with the melee attackers, and I was able to help everyone do extra damage with my buff spells and songs. You'll have a slow start because it'll take you several levels to pick up all of the archery feats, but the end result is a very solid character.

Melee:
Prioritize STR, CON, and slightly CHA for this one. Your bard spells (mirror image, blur) will give you some very nice combat protections, so long as you've got time to cast them before battle. You probably won't be doing as much damage as an archer setup, but remember that you have lots of feats to work with. You could very easily set up a teamwork feat build with an ally thanks to your Coordinated Effort spell, or multiclass into something like rogue to do bonus damage. You -can- just do a basic "hit stuff with sword" route, but it will be subpar compared to the other melee attackers. Remember, the best thing you can do as a bard is to make everyone else better while still doing a decent job yourself. Focus on things that will improve both you and someone else (like teamwork feats, combat maneuvers, buff spells) before focusing only on yourself.

Mid-line Reach:
This setup relies either on the longspear, whip, or another reach weapon if you spend the feat to get proficient with it. The point of this setup is to stick a little back from melee so that you aren't as likely to get hit, but can still contribute. This can include any number of things, from combat maneuvers, to combat reflexes to get more AOOs, to just plain poking enemies with the longspear. Now, two things should be noted here. First, the whip is extremely handy for combat maneuvers, and with reach, you can do them safely. However, you'll still typically want to invest in the feats for them, and at that point you might as well do it in melee. A second thing to note is the Banner of the Ancient Kings, which is an item that gives several buffs if it's attached to a long pole and brought into battle. Specifically, it gives bonuses to saves, initiative, and makes your Inspire Courage better. A longspear is probably the only weapon you can use with this thing, and that means you gotta attack at reach. One other consideration is using a net. You would have to invest a few feats, but you could reliably use a net to entangle and trip foes - not amazing, but still quite potent, especially against a caster. For this, you'll generally want to emphasize STR and CHA, giving you some more freedom with the others.

Combat Maneuvers:
As indicated above, you have feats to use. And one of the most versatile ways to mess with a foe is with combat maneuvers. Grapple, disarm, trip, sunder, steal, dirty trick....all of them can really mess with an opponent and make them lose their turns. You'll want to focus on STR, CHA, and CON here, and put your feats towards improving combat maneuvers. Teamwork feats may also be good here because a few of them greatly expand on combat maneuvers too. As mentioned above with the whip, you may even be able to do these at range. You won't be doing much damage with this, and you'll probably never kill anything on your own, but your fighter is going to love you when every round you're tripping the enemy barbarian, who can't get a full attack because he's spending every round standing back up. Or you've sundered his greataxe.

Magic Items:
This is not a setup for low-level characters. You must be at least mid-level before attempting this setup because otherwise you can't afford the items for this set. Basically, the idea is to get numerous items that cast spells on activation, like scrolls, wands, or other wondrous items, and then basically use those every round. The benefits: you can focus primarily on CHA and then be whatever you want after, possibly DEX to help with your ranged touch attacks or CON for more HP; you never have to worry about weapons at all; you come to develop an arsenal of cool magical effects, many of which are reusable. The downsides: you're never threatening a square, so you can't help your allies with flanking or AOOs; the magic items you need are expensive, so you'll be noticeably behind others in terms of magical passive benefits; there aren't that many feats that complement this build, so you'll most likely waste a few; if you face a magic-immune enemy or are out of charges for your stuff, you're useless for the rest of the day; you waste valuable actions swapping between magic items as needed. I really don't like this concept as it restricts you to a handful of spells and effects, and at any time you could waste a round by failing your UMD check.


Keep in mind that the point of a bard is to find a balance between effects that benefit others in the party and effects that improve yourself. You want to do as much of the former as possible, while still remaining decent at the latter. You will never be a better caster than the wizard or a better warrior than the fighter, but with your help, those classes will be doing far better than they could on their own. And then after you've over-optimized the rest of the party, you take out your weapon and provide some respectable damage on your own.

Beyond Battle

The above sections were all about what bards should do in battle, but they didn't address what the bard should do outside of combat. Typically, you will be the party's face. You should do your best to make friends with NPCs, and your perform skills will be spectacular with this. Diplomacy is one thing, but you probably won't need it after doing an excellent performance on stage and the crowd loves you. Make use of Bluff too. Be suggestive, boast a little, and talk up NPCs to reveal information that they wouldn't have otherwise. Ultimately the specifics of these are up to each individual bard, but no matter what, you are really good when it comes to other people. Try to do a lot of spontaneous RP about things. Never just spend a night at an inn, do a performance too! Take someone to bed with you! Compare favorite drinks and have drinking contests! As a bard, you are in a unique position with all of your knowledges, social skills, and performances, that you can just make people have a good time pretty much whenever you want. Practice some jokes, spend time on your wardrobe, overly describe your actions...your place is supposed to be in the spotlight, so make the most of it!

This time, I'll be relating the tale of how one of my campaigns was brought to a close through a dragon encounter, and telling of the many things I learned before and during the event. Like most stories about dragon fights, this is a long one, so sit back and enjoy.

DOMINATION AND DRAGONS

Three weeks ago, our party finished a dungeon. We received a crapton of loot and money for doing it, ad we were in very high spirits. Two characters went into happy retirement (well, it may not have exactly been happy at the time, but they did have 'good' endings despite their hardships), and the group was told in no uncertain terms that their next task would be to slay a dragon.

From a character-survival perspective, I was all against this, because dragons are serious business. They have very good stats, impeccable strategy, virtually limitless resources, and as soon as they expose a flaw in your plan, you're dead. But then again, how many players have had a chance to take on a dragon in a straight-up fight? People talk about them all the time, but not many players reach the level or play the campaign in such a way that you can prepare to fight a dragon. So from that perspective, I was all for the encounter. I had never before fought a dragon in a tabletop game (Neverwinter Nights doesn't count), so I jumped into this with gusto.

The party had about 40k gold each to spend preparing for the fight. We knew the thing was a blue dragon, and that it was ruling a small-medium size desert town. We were tasked with going there, finding the dragon's lair, killing it, then bringing back its head. The session then closed, and we had a full two weeks to prepare for the fight - time for us to discuss strategy, do shopping for gear, etc. I opened up a Google Doc immediately for us to share ideas and come up with a plan. Over the next two weeks, I gathered as much information as I could about dragons, and ultimately ended up contributing 97% of the content in our planning page (totaled about 8 single-spaced pages). That should've tipped me off for how this would go, but I still had hope. If you guys would like me to summarize my findings in a separate journal, I can do that, but otherwise I'll just go on with the story.

We finished our shopping and traveled to the desert town. The town had no idea that it was being run by a dragon, and the dragon could have informants everywhere. We had to play it cool. Being the bard, I immediately started playing music and talking up the locals in a tavern, asking for local events, tales, and not drawing suspicion. We got some decent information from that - that some merchant had sighted a dragon recently, and where we could find a good store for high-end food products (I figured that a dragon would want luxury foods, the kind of stuff that it couldn't just find out in the desert, so by finding his source, we could track him down). We slept without incident, and the next morning split up to gather clues. I know, splitting the party is usually a terrible idea, but we figured that we hadn't aroused suspicion yet, and each of our guys individually could handle the usual stuff around town. I thought that it went without saying that we wouldn't go after the dragon on our own. I was wrong.

The party's new wizard and I followed up on the luxury foods idea. We didn't get much info from that place, but we did find out about a local butcher. Figuring that our investigation would take a little while, we resolved to follow up with the butcher the next day, and to wait for the rest of the party at the tavern. The golem barbarian didn't find much and returned to the tavern as well. However, our samurai and monk found something. They found an imp that had been hired to collect dragon parts for his master. The imp and the two party members (samurai and monk) reached an understanding and then departed. The monk returned to the tavern while the samurai investigated one more lead - a goatherd that had apparently seen the dragon.

The samurai successfully convinced the goatherd to take him to the entrance to the dragon's lair. The goatherd asked "Shall we go now then?" The correct response to this would have been "Not yet, let me gather my party before venturing forth." Instead, he said, "Sure, let's go right now." The DM takes him into a private call, and we know it's bad news. We then see a Will save or two appear and collectively groan. By the time the character gets back to the tavern, it's night time, and we're wondering where he's been all day. We immediately know that something's up.

Now I've mentioned this before, but how these games work is through a system called Roll20. It's an online virtual tabletop platform that we use for maps, tokens, dice, and the like. We then have our conversations through a group Skype call. As soon as we ask the samurai where he's been, he responds, in a robotic monotone, that he's fine, and that he's located the entrance to the dragon's lair. It takes us all of about 5 seconds to determine that he's been dominated. However, in-character, our characters don't know this - they didn't roll high enough on their Sense Motive tests to figure it out (by the rules as written, they had succeeded, but the DM figured that, since this is an ancient Blue Dragon, it's had a few centuries to perfect its use of the dominate spell. That makes sense, plus there's the fact that dragons just get to break the rules now and then, so it's all good). But here we have a problem - our characters don't know he's dominated (one guy has a suspicion, but that's it), but out of character, we know for sure that he's dominated. So now we're all going back and forth trying to think of ways for us to tell if he's dominated while remaining in-character. Both the players and the DM realize that this is going to take all night and that it will eventually devolve into a lot of complaining and debating, so we just resolve it with a simple d100 roll. We succeed on the roll and our characters suspect that he's been dominated. The dragon swiftly realizes this, so he has his samurai leave the tavern to go back to the lair. No one is really willing to detain him, so he heads out, and the monk goes after him.

The monk finally confirms that he's been dominated when the two fight. A monk vs. samurai duel. This would have been awesome....except that it only lasted a single round. The monk won initiative, delivered a powerful flurry of blows, and brought the samurai down to less than half health. The samurai responded with an iaijutsu strike....which critically hit. He did enough damage to kill the monk instantly, so that was that. The rest of us hadn't followed them, so we had no idea what happened to the monk, or the samurai. We just knew that they were both gone. It was now 3/5 players against the dragon and 1 player.

Unfortunately, the monk never told us about the imp, and the samurai had never given us good directions to the dragon's lair. So all we had left was my plan of tracking him down via the butcher shop. Turns out, I was right. We had our golem hide under a box like Solid Snake to stake out the butcher shop. That very night, he saw a man leave with several animals and head out into the desert. We followed him and saw the landmarks that the samurai had mentioned about the dragon's lair. Knowing that this was the place, we start casting our buffs and summon some help. No sooner do we finish than the dragon emerges and charges at us. He had prepared well, and we take a decent chunk of HP damage right off the bat. With the dragon are three helpers - the samurai, the imp (turns it that was the dragon's familiar), and a Glabrezu that he had bound. With our buffed up barbarian, we managed to kill the samurai in just two hits. We then realize that we had made two mistakes. The first was forgetting true seeing. I had made a note of this in our planning document, but I had already spent all my money on gear - I was relying on someone else to purchase scrolls for it. Second was that after killing the samurai, the barbarian's remaining attacks went at the dragon instead of its imp. The dragon had Blur and Mirror Image, so we had a very tiny chance of actually hitting him. The imp, however, had no such defenses, but, like most familiars, we ignored it in favor of its master.

We regretted that immediately, as the imp hit the barbarian with Greater Dispel. With the monk and samurai gone, the barbarian was our only capable damage dealer. But after getting hit by a greater dispel, he lost most of his good buffs, including Form of the Dragon 3. The wizard may have been able to do something, but his most damaging spell was a maximized fireball, and the dragon had very solid spell defenses. At this point, I had no choice but to try our secret weapon, a bag containing Dust of Choking and Sneezing. This powerful cursed item causes everyone within 20ft of the user to roll a DC 15 fortitude save or take 3d6 Con damage. Now, at our levels, that kind of save is fairly easy, but here's the real danger: even on a successful save, the victims are stunned for 5d4 rounds! Now, the DM had not considered this item. I had asked him about purposely crafting cursed items, linked him the page containing all of the specific cursed items, and he gave the nod that we could do it. After reading the description, he wanted to allow for a fortitude save against the stunning effect. We ultimately decided that it was fair, because otherwise this thing really was just an "I win" button. Although the save was suitably high, the dragon made it, and I knew we were done.

I immediately suggested that we just call it then and there, since we no longer had any way of killing this thing. The others said that they'd see it through to the bitter end. While they were discussing that, I managed to find an escape route for us. We got far enough from the dragon and had our Astral Deva plane shift us away, eventually ending up in Sigil. The dragon didn't have a plane shift ready, and couldn't tell where we had gone even if he did. We had survived with no casualties (in the fight itself, the samurai and monk were already gone).


Lessons Learned

Dragon fights are team efforts. No question about it. You really need to work with your team and communicate with them in order to have a chance. If you have teammates who don't usually communicate or don't do much planning with the group, the burden is on you to pull them in, if only for this fight. Here are the situations where the whole thing turned south for us:

1) Lack of group planning - during the preparation period, very few people contributed to my planning page. For the most part, people were going to do their own thing, buy their own gear, and just treat this like any other fight. Going into a dragon fight with that attitude is just asking to die. Furthermore, the point of group planning is to make sure everyone knows the plan, so that if the party is separated, or if someone forgets something, you have the rest of the team to pick up the slack or remind them. This became painfully obvious when I forgot about True Seeing, assuming that someone else had picked it up. I should've double checked it before we set out, but I had been considering so many other things that it didn't occur to me. Had we a proper group effort, I feel that someone else would have caught that problem.

2) Splitting the party - I had a feeling we were dead as soon as the samurai went off to find the dragon on his own. We had previously maintained a "never split the party" attitude, but figured that simple information-gathering would be okay. He absolutely should have known better than to go towards the dragon's lair on his own.

3) Failing to kill the familiar - I'm not an expert on familiars. I know what they're capable of in general, but I don't know the full extent of their abilities. I did not plan for the dragon's familiar being able to hit us with greater dispel. I feel that with a proper group effort (as some players are more familiar with certain rules than I), we could have thought of this, and targeted his familiar right away. This may have prevented the dispel, and allowed us a decent shot at the dragon with our buffed up barbarian.

4) The dice - This isn't anyone's fault, but we just had a lot of bad rolls this session. The greater dispel could've failed entirely, the dragon could have failed its save against the dust, the samurai may not have landed a crit and killed the monk instantly....there were a lot of times where the dice just did not go our way. But you can't plan for that, you just have to work around it.

I've learned that when it comes to high level content (and you may want to consider these in lower level content too, if your character is genre savvy), you really need step it up with the group planning. You may be hesitant to pick up teamwork feats because they interfere with your build, but look at them. If it makes you and your buddy work much better together, do it. You also need to talk to each other about your builds. If you're familiar with wizards, talk with your team's wizard. See what spells he has, and what his usual plan will be for combat against various foes. Give him suggestions, or point out the flaws in his plan. You may also want to prepare for domination spells. A pretty easy way to beat them is to just come up with a code phrase unique to each party member. Something simple and innocuous, like "Remember what we had for dinner at the Beggar's Rest?" "No, but the bard was wearing most of it by the end of the night." Or, you could come up with a puzzle, like upon hearing a code phrase, only responding in single-syllable words. In case you have a dominated party member, they wouldn't be able to respond properly. Just do that every night before bed, and you can guarantee domination won't be a problem (unless it's done by another party member, but you've got much bigger problems if that's the case).

Speaking of domination, you really need to be careful when doing it against a player. Keep in mind that (in most cases) they don't want to be dominated, and they want their party to free them. So they will be trying to drop subtle hints that things aren't what they seem to be. Sometimes, like with the robotic monotone, it's not so subtle. If you don't think the player can pull it off, then it's probably not going to go well at all without extraordinary measures, like having the player leave the room and take over for them, or saying that their microphone broke, so they have to type everything. Either way, you really have to prep the dominated player to be sure they'll pull it off right.

I honestly did not expect us to win the dragon fight, no matter how much preparation we did. This was (for most of us) our first dragon fight, and (for a few of us) our first high-level fight. The very fact that we tracked the dragon, engaged it, did decent damage to it, and escaped with no casualties, is a major victory to me. After our surviving party members escaped to Sigil, we called the campaign there. Our group had no intention of returning to the normal world, and my bard in particular would have felt completely at home in Sigil. Everyone was also looking forward to the next campaign (which starts today), so I think we were about ready to let this thing go. A skirmish with a dragon and then a planar journey to Sigil is probably the best end we could have hoped for.

In last night's session of Pathfinder, our DM took the party completely by surprise by making an already-difficult encounter far more deadly...by making up rules on the fly. Needless to say, I was not pleased, but I would like to hear what you guys think. TVTropes defines an ass pull as: "a moment when the writers pull something out of thin air in a less-than-graceful narrative development." Was it an ass pull? Let's find out.

Ass Pull Rules

Our group has been investigating some ancient ruins and basically robbing the crap out of the place. Don't worry, we got permission from the local leaders, so it's all good. So far we've encountered constructs and skeletons, pretty typical fare. Those fights went off without a hitch and we were feeling good. We go down another hallway and find a pile of corpses that appears to be quite ancient. We also see a magical amulet clutched in the hands of one of the corpses. Naturally, we want it.

Our first thought is to just reach over and get it. But no, the DM calls for a sleight of hand check because it's apparently somewhat buried in the corpses. I'm a little confused by this, as it doesn't really make visual sense and it's a very unusual use of sleight of hand. But, it is plausible, so I just let it go. Our party, not wanting to make sleight of hand checks (my character could have, exceptionally well I might add, but he was not about to reach into a pile of corpses), decides to just hack away the corpses in the way.

It takes the DM a moment to realize what this entails, and asks for a sunder check. Sounds fair, and the character makes it. Then the DM says that he needs to look up the rules on sundering magical items. We immediately clarify that we're just sundering the bodies that are in the way - clearing them out so that we don't have to do a sleight of hand check. The DM still doesn't seem to follow, and so our magus (our best mage) decides to just risk the sleight of hand check to grab it. He fails, and then is immediately asked to make a reflex save. He fails that too, and numerous rot grubs leap onto his arm and start burrowing into it. This also reveals a 10-ft by 10-ft rot grub swarm coming out of the pile of bodies, and immediately surging over our party.

Thankfully, my character was apart from them at the time and did not get hit by the swarm. However, almost none of us was prepared to deal with a swarm. Swarms are virtually immune to weapon attacks and spells that target specific things. Only area effect spells such as burning hands, fireball, cloudkill, etc. are truly effective against a swarm. And here, we had exactly one person with an area-effect spell....the magus that reached into the corpse pile. Needless to say, our party immediately starts running from the swarm, except for the magus and the oracle. The oracle starts summoning a fire mephit, and the magus prepares his fireball and does a solid 45 damage to the swarm.

It was at this point, however, that we learned of what truly made the swarm devastating - while their normal damage was minimal, each hit required a DC 19 reflex save - a fairly tall order for most of the party. Failure meant that the rot grubs would burrow into the flesh of the victim and inflict 1d4 CON damage. Further, the grubs would continue to burrow and inflict that damage every round for 1d6 rounds. Everyone in the party except my character fails their save and starts losing CON fast. What makes this especially dangerous is that CON damage is unique - if your CON is damaged enough to reach 0, you die. Further, restoration spells take several rounds to cast, making it nearly impossible for us to heal the CON damage until the swarm was dead.

At this point, the party was split into two - the oracle and magus doing their best to handle the swarm, and the rest of the group fleeing out the entrance and taking CON damage every round because they have nothing that can affect a swarm. Or, at least, they think they don't. It takes the oracle and magus a good 4 or 5 turns total to finally kill the swarm. As for the rest of us, the Paladin uses her channel energy power to heal the other team, which is basically a burst of holy energy that heals living things within 30ft of the Paladin and damages undead things. She's doing this because CON damage comes with some fairly hefty hit point loss too. She does this about two or three times.

Our Slayer comments that he's down to about 5 CON, and that it's very likely he'll die. I remind him that he's got about a 50/50 shot of survival - the CON damage effect last for only 1d6 rounds, and 4 rounds have already passed. The DM then informs him that he has 3 rounds of CON damage still to go. I tell the DM that that's impossible, it's been 4 rounds, and even if he rolled for max duration (which we don't know - we didn't see that roll if it happened at all), there are only two possible rounds left. The DM then tells us that the paladin's channel energy had been healing the rot grubs infesting their victims and adding rounds to the infestation duration.

Bullshit.

I don't say much at the time because I'm dumbfounded by this ruling, but apparently I bitched enough about it to get the GM to "compromise" down to just one additional round. Due to this additional round, our magus dies, and our slayer drops down to just 1 CON before finally stabilizing.

The rest of the session is spent healing and reincarnating our fallen ally. While I slowly try to make sense of the swarm encounter. Here's what I came up with:

First, the swarm shouldn't have existed in the first place. As stated in their flavor text: "Thankfully, rot grub swarms occur only rarely, as they require the infested carcass of a Huge or larger creature and many weeks to build up the numbers necessary to constitute a swarm." This was merely a pile of bodies of medium-sized creatures, not enough to support a swarm. It is -plausible- that they could exist in such a space, but then consider that this pile of bodies is probably hundreds of years old - there isn't anything there for grubs to feast on, let alone support a swarm. I realize that this is entirely a flavor reason, but when you demand that a campaign makes sense, it is no less valid.

Second, before the encounter even started, we should have seen the swarm from down the hallway. As described in their entry: "Generally, a handful of the grubs infest a single corpse at a time, and a DC 15 Perception check is enough to notice and avoid the grubs." This was not a handful, but an entire swarm. The DC to notice them probably would have been lower. Even if it wasn't lower, some of us have +16 or higher to our perception checks - we would have noticed them even by accident.

Third, the "Paladin's healing affects parasites" ruling. Effectively, the DM did the following:
1) Created a new mechanic (no rules ANYWHERE that mention healing spells affect infestations)
2) based entirely on an arbitrary interpretation of vague or absent flavor text (he didn't know exactly what the duration meant, so he assumed that the infestation was slowly dying off or that our bodies were rejecting them somehow.....because that's totally how the human immune system works)
3) that alters well-established and bounded mechanics (channel energy, treating infestations -as diseases-)
4) to the detriment of the players (this one is obvious)
5) without telling us (usually rule changes or new rules are announced one session in advance, or only after being discussed with the players)
6) in a way that will likely -never- be reciprocated by us (typically rulings like this are supposed to cut both ways - if the enemy gets that advantage, we get to do it too sometime. But when the hell are we ever going to unleash a swarm like that?)
7) and in a potentially lethal situation (1d4 CON damage per round)

I will admit that the "healing affects parasites" thing is -plausible- at best, but without any mechanics or precedent to back it up (I couldn't find a SINGLE instance of this for any other creature in Pathfinder), it is NOT the thing you just pull out of your ass. If you do, it is effectively just a big middle finger to your players.

I think this was complete and total bullshit, but maybe I'm overlooking something or being too overzealous. What do you guys think?