[OOC] Above Board: The OoC Thread

[kaiser6012]

Yes, normal HP conventions. I wasn't aware that there were other options.
*goes looking*
Hrmm... I can't seem to find any other options - I may not be looking hard enough, though. Either way, max first HD is the way we're going.

[Jondera]

I may have been remembering something from the alpha playtest...

Ah well.

Anyway, sheet's pretty much done. I haven't touched equipment, but I figure for the moment that's somewhat flexible.

[Fragmaster01]

Aowsaw: My brain is attempting to figure out what's going on with your character sheet, but it's given up in utter confusion. Mind walking us through it? The aasimar traits I get, the Young and Autism stuff I get... where's all the Celestial Blessed stuff coming from? For that matter, how'd you pull off a 20/20/19 on standard point buy?

The brain, he is confused, and is currently hiding in a corner stuffing his mouth with cookies to ease the pain.

[Jondera]

It would probably help if you had been able to read all the secret text discussions between Aosaw and Kaiser about the various traits and such that he was working with.

EDIT: by my count, it was two templates (young at -1 CR and Celestial Blessed at +1 CR), at least one flaw, and possibly a trait or two.

[Aosaw]

Young and Autism were both -1 CR templates, and Celestial-Blessed was a +1 CR template. I figured that it balanced out despite being a net -1 because the Celestial-Blessed template has a sort of variable power level depending on the inhabiting angel, and Colin's angel happens to be a Solar.

For reference's sake, the Celestial-Blessed template is on the d20pfsrd site: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/mon...ature-template

The Autism template is completely homebrew on my part, but in essence it bestows a -4 penalty to Wisdom and a -4 penalty to all Diplomacy and Bluff checks. I'm not sure if we decided to call it a -1 CR Template, or just a flaw.

The rest of it is a secret to everybody. Well, everybody except for those people who can read secret text...

EDIT: Also, here were Colin's initial stats for 32 point buy:

12
14
11
17
8
14

Aasimar grants +2 to Wis and Cha; Young grants +4 Dex and -4 Str/Con; Celestial-Blessed grants +4 Str/Wis/Cha and +2 Dex/Con/Int; Autism grants -4 Wis.

I think that covers everything. It's a high-power build, but the math should all be correct.

[Fragmaster01]

Kayo, that makes more sense. Pathfinder templates as written tend to be silly, yes. The attribute mods for Celestial-Blessed are all over the map, but the template has it at +1CR regardless of type, despite there being little attempt at balancing them against each other. Silly Pathfinder.
In this case, we have Colin being a smorgasbord of awesomely awesome and awesomely bad, balancing out in an odd sort of way(for instance, I'd rule that that automatic +1d6 damage vs. [Evil] would be a bit icky in the hands of someone like a fighter, but given his Oracleness, that's not really something he'd be getting a lot of mileage out of anyway, so it's not really worth anything as far as Colin's concerned).

Checking math, it doesn't seem to quite add up on the initial point buy, though. Going by standard pathfinder point buy(I use 20 from base score of 10, just because that's the numbers printed in the book. You can just add 2 to each to get 32 point from base 8, same idea), we get:
12 - +2
14 - +5
11 - +1
17 - +13
8 - -2
14 - +5
To a sum of 2-2(0) + 5+5(10) + 1+13(14) = 0+10+14=24. That comes out 4 points too high(equivalent to a 36 point buy if you wanna go by the 3.5 method). Still, that's easily choppable without changing modifiers: drop the 17 to a 16 and the 11 to a 10, and you get the same modifiers with the proper math.

I do like the ideas on the Autism template, though my brain comes up with odd wiggles there. For instance, I've known an autistic kid who was profoundly perceptive in regards to concrete information, despite his obvious lack of perception in regards to emotion. The blanket penalty to WIS seems to counteract that sort of mental pattern; Perhaps some sort of shuffle where they get a bonus to Perception but a penalty to Sense Motive? Regardless, my nitpicking on character is done. Let us all go out and get our new heroes mercilessly slaughtered exposed to an all new sort of 'fun'!

[kaiser6012]

Everything looks good to me. As you say, it is high-powered and there's a critical weakness in this build that pulls it back down to earth (a negative CON modifier is never a good thing), so I'm okay with it. I was, however, taken a bit by surprise by the Solar's modifiers - very high for a +1 template, but then I look into the nuts and bolts and find my worries are alleviated by the rules.
Still, I'll be monitoring things from the control booth and, should there come issues, I'll have to step in. I hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does I'll try and sort it out.

EDIT: A "blanket template" on Autism is always going to be a subject with no right answer. There's a reason specialists in the field have started referring to Aspergers, Autism, Savant behaviour etc. as "Autism Spectrum disorders". Really, the best thing that I can say about this template is that it is a demonstration of the specific type of autism that Colin exhibits - a person with a poor grasp on human interaction and relations without any sort of academic skill. Other sufferers of autism have a skillset that borders on the scary, still others have no chance of existing in society at large and others yet live normal lives (such as yours truly).

tl:dr version: It's impossible to have a truly accurate Autism template. Best analogy is that he has the "Colin's Autism" template.

FURTHER EDIT: Excellent work everybody! Just waiting on Ginnungagap and BadBasset's sheet now. Everything's on track, running smoothly - looking forward to seeing everybody in action!

[Aosaw]

Yeah - and actually, a more accurate description would be that this is "a template that describes a state of mind which today's doctors call any of a number of different kinds of autism".

We may discover over time that Colin isn't autistic at all.

EDIT: Also, I would be perfectly happy to drop the Celestial-Blessed and Autism templates, and just stick with Young; the only reason I started looking at templates was to offset the penalties of the Young template. (I briefly considered the Half-Celestial, but it looked even more potent than what I've got now.)

In any case, Colin's not a combat-finisher. The abilities that will come into play are Dexterity, which determines his AC, and Constitution, which determines his HP. Outside of combat, the score with the most impact will be Intelligence, and that's primarily for Knowledge checks. I wouldn't worry about Colin ruining any encounters.

[BadBasset]

Terribly sorry for the delay Kaiser! I'm working on it now, and will have Mr. Carroll's papers in order tomorrow.

[kaiser6012]

No rush, no rush. If you wish, you can still post in the story - the stuff that actually needs crunch is not now.

[BadBasset]

Ok! I've put August's character sheet up in the 'characters' thread. Sorry again for the delay - I'm not at all familiar with the D20Modern spin and had to read up on it a little bit. Please let me know if I've done any of it incorrectly.

Now... action!

[BadBasset]

Oh, I see by the others' character sheets that you're looking for a Pathfinder CS for the dreamland characters. I'll start posting in the story to help things get moving and work out the other sheet soon. That'll be an easy transfer to make, and I'll be on that asap. Hopefully that side of things won't come into play immediately!

[Ginnungagap]

Exactly how do we treat characters on the Modern sheets in comparison to the ones on the Pathfinder sheets? I mean, Modern characters likely don't have the same feats, nor classes, as the fantasy versions, and it's equally unlikely that they have identical physical ability scores. Conundrum must be averted before I even try to do this! Else I shall go insane...oh...too late...well, then...how about...um...I will go MORE insane!
I'll just do the basic stuff, but I want to know what all will be identical between the characters before I do anything.

[Jondera]

In case anyone is interested, I added a pic to the appearance portion of Akilah's description.

[Aosaw]

Hmm.

Yeah, Derek can work with that.