*eyeglow twitch*

*eyeglow twitch*

So, last Thursday, my mate and I met up. Because I was going to London the next day, I had to knock on the head the first chance we had to play a game and we just met for a chat. Anyway, he showed me some videos, and it brought the point home that I can list the weapons used by all of out D&D parties in short order, and they are all a small subset - dagger/swords, axes if dwarf, bows, crossbow if can't use bows, javelins if can't use crossbows, heavy mace if cleric, unarmed if monk (except for the One Guy who made me make a spreadsheet to track his monk because he wanted to have a flurry monk using TWF with TWO DFIFFERENTLY ENCHANTED KAMAS). No-one uses polearms (I think a couple of paties used a lognspear and a glaive at very low level) or anything like that.

Video showed some interesting things on spears, and how they ain't as crap as you'd think (after all literally EVERY culture has them and they wouldn't if they weren't good), so my free time while away was considering how to buff spears without changing the numbers (I gave them what amounts to a short of half-extra reach, basically, if you have 'em in two hands or are in formation and some one with no polearm or shield comes at you, you get an AoO). I properly buffed crossbows by canonised and expanding the Dreemaenhyll rules allowing you to make the equivilent of +Str bows, I increased the Heavy Crossbow's RoF to a 2/3rnds (by making it two move actions, not a fuill-round action to reload), added a "war sling" which is a martial weapon closer to how actual slings performed (i.e. better range than the bows of the time); this all required me to copy up and adjust the ENTIRE weapons table, and instigating PF's idea of keywords for weapons, basically, noly going further and slapping them into weapon groups (ala PF Fighter groups) and then using that to slap on special rules and cutting down on the repeated text on weapons. (I didn't save much spacde, in the end, because I did add a description of what every weapon actually was, but that's not mechanical in most cases.)

Not quite finished that yet, but that was on the cards today.

Nope, after revising formations, I realised Agile Shield Fighter needed a little look at and minor revision, which lead to me having to write-up all TWF (again), check feasibility of TWF with fighting defensively (you'll only get it with a Fighter in 3.A, but a TWF+TWD Fighter can fight defensively for some stupid-good AC boosts, but that's a narrow enough margin I'm not worried...)

One step forward, two steps back…

Part way trhough the adding of PF, I spotted grappling hook and read up.

Which lead to me deleting Use Rope as a skill.

Having done THAT, I realised I also has to redo ALL the skill feats (you know, the ones which add +2 to two skills). Complete revision, including knocking back Alertness from 3.A (+2 perception, +1 initiative) to PF (+2 perception and sense motive). Some of the feats now give you a bonus to three skills if one’s fairly narrow (I very nearly deleted forgery as well, but decided that one can stay…) Having done THAT, I then had to go through the bestiaries (i.e. the 3.A one, the 3.A summons one AND the Dreemaenhyll one) to correct that and take out all of the Alertness feats on animals and replace them with Skill Focus (Perception).

AND THEN had to go through and fix all the Skill Focus feats, since along with the PF version of the skill feats (where the bonuses increases to +4 if you have ten ranks), PF!Skill Focus gives you +6 if you have ten ranks. (As well, since I'd copy/apsted PF skills for the animals when I updated the bestiary last and they would have been wrong without PF's modifications...)

AND THEN, the big horror, the realisation that I’d not been paying attention to the PF skill rank prerequisites when I imported them and so now needed to go through ALL the feats by ranks and make sure it was all standardised…

So. The trained skill bonus does NOT now count as ranks for the purposes of feat pre-reqs or Prestige class requirements; the rule is now, if it’s out of the 3.A stuff, it’s already been corrected (i.e. all old 3.5 ranks requirements have been reduced by 3); if it’s out of a physical book, you just knock three off. (The master feat list DOES include the adjusted values though, so for feats, that’s now correct at least. While the temptation to write up all the affected feats was there, even just with stuff out of the psionics books and PHB2, I was like, “no, too much…” Especially as the psionic feats will need a pass later anyway…)

Thus I never got as FAR as finishing the weapons.

Let alone sorting out paladin smites, the lurk/ardent/divine mind/erduiate/spellthief/spirit shaman/shugenja/wujen upgrades, adding the rest of the rogue talents and FINALLY sorting the Soulknife blade powers which was was STARTED all this in the first place...