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[Neonivek]

I think in 3.5 perfect flight doesn't fail.

Pathfinder REALLY did a number on itself for only half-copying 3.5's flight rules.

[Harry Baldman]

Oh, hai giant flying genie! Your desc says you weigh almost a ton, yet you magic-fly so high my arrows can't reach? I use the the equal of a flashbang to stun you at range, (with a lucky/loaded roll), which paralizes you momentarily. Guess what now? You fall down, go boomboom, cause magic flight works the way it does! (Trollface)

I do have to wonder if the same applies to psionic flight. Kind of the whole point of psionics is that you don't need somatic or verbal components, right? Just keep yourself afloat with the power of your mind (in which case I guess if you're stunned you fall, whereas if you're paralyzed you do not, opposite for flight by propulsion?).

[SOLDIER First]

I think only rule sticklers would follow such stupid RAW for that, Wierd.

[Neonivek]

Oh, hai giant flying genie! Your desc says you weigh almost a ton, yet you magic-fly so high my arrows can't reach? I use the the equal of a flashbang to stun you at range, (with a lucky/loaded roll), which paralizes you momentarily. Guess what now? You fall down, go boomboom, cause magic flight works the way it does! (Trollface)

I do have to wonder if the same applies to psionic flight. Kind of the whole point of psionics is that you don't need somatic or verbal components, right? Just keep yourself afloat with the power of your mind (in which case I guess if you're stunned you fall, whereas if you're paralyzed you do not, opposite for flight by propulsion?).

No a lot of Psionics have somatic and verbal.

Look at the Force.

Psionic's thing (in 3.5... The Pathfinder rules are unofficial... Quasi-official... Unsupported, made by a third party, and made to be balanced within itself but not with the Paizo rulesets) is that it uses Power Points instead of Spell slots and spells per day.

[wierd]

I think only rule sticklers would follow such stupid RAW for that, Wierd.

I do believe I was pointing out how dumb the rule as written was, yes. That it clearly has some serious baggage, just for the sake of preventing a player from making a save if flying and paralyzed. (Heavy sarcasm)

If it applies to PCs that way, it should apply to NPCs and monsters too, or it is a broken mechanic.

That means genie fall down go boomboom.

[Rolan7]

Bizarrely, a lot of psionics apparently produces an odor...  Listed along somatic/verbal components displays... 

Actually the whole section is weirder than I remembered:  http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicPowersOverview.htm#display
Basically there are some "default" displays of the various types, and the displays don't exactly match up with real magic components.  Stuff like targets being briefly covered in shiny "ectoplasmic seepage", or a rainbow-flash of light bursting from the caster's manifester's eyes.

Apparently they can simply make a DC 15+level concentration check to prevent any display at all.  Completely free, they even cast manifest defensively at the same time - just a second check.

So basically yeah, decent manifesters can do stuff without any components pretty easily.  In fact I don't think they ever gesture or speak...  The audible display is a "brass hum", different from verbal components.  There could be some exception in the list though.

[Shub-Nullgurath]

Autarch is doing a Heroic Fantasy & Barbarian Conquerors Collection Kickstarter for ACKS. Considering how good ACKS is for 1st Edition D&D shenanigans, how good Autarch is at delivering and how great the idea is (basically Conan the RPG not tied to any setting), I really recommend it.

[Kadzar]

-snip-

This could make a really good Apocalypse World or Dungeon World playbook (basically Powered by the Apocalypse-type games' version of classes). My first thought is that you could base the design somewhat on Apocalypse World's Chopper, so like building your own gang you have the option to choose a couple options for your summon, and one of them would be a loyal parent+child relationship, which would work like making your gang well-disciplined (which makes it so you don't have to roll to control them, if I remember correctly), or you can instead skip that option to instead invest more points in its fighting ability, at the cost of it being potentially dangerous to you. And, if later you want to become loyal to you, you can use an upgrade to take that option.

[Neonivek]

You know what I am going to take the plunge and actually TRY to design a setting (or pieces of a setting) based entirely off African history and African nations... HOPEFULLY ignoring the whole White Slavery thing MOSTLY (mostly because... that is so cliché that not doing it actually gives you originality points)

Africa is so fascinating and yet I learned almost NOTHING about it other than "White people enslaved Africans here be" (Though... a group of people who start and end as victims with little-no other defining features is typical school history affair... Like Women's history!)

[NullForceOmega]

Africans enslaved each other too, for millennia.  Whites are not the only source of the problem.

Also, I am going to point at addendum 3 to the rules and call this topic 'Not Okay' for this thread, racism and all of it's many convoluted subjects belong in a different discussion thread.

[SOLDIER First]

the focus of his post was the setting, though

[NullForceOmega]

I'm only addressing the slavery part, as that has the highest potential of turning into a shitstorm.

[Neonivek]

Yeah the whole "racism" aside was more about how in trying to be sensitive to their plight we also kind of forgot to really characterize or demonstrate their culture or achievements in any meaningful way... all the more reason why such a setting would be fascinating.

Also yes! Africans did enslave each other! and interesting enough this is typical tribal behavior in some places.

Though it should be said that the African and Tribal form of enslavement is markedly different. In that a "slave" has all rights and privileges a lot of the time. As well as the form in which it took place.

So yes, my goal in this African setting wouldn't be to make sickeningly perfect African countries (I am not making freeken Wakanda... the most self-unaware fictional country ever!) but to try to adapt them to a fantasy setting.

[NullForceOmega]

One of the big things about any kind of 'fantasy' Africa, is the low population density tends to prevent the formation of large political entities (yes, there have been large entities in Africa's past, but most of them failed rather quickly.)  This would probably make it difficult to define anything other than generalized 'cultural regions'.  It also makes 'higher learning' and 'developed industry' extremely rare, Dark Sun might have some useful pointers for you.

[Harry Baldman]

You know what I am going to take the plunge and actually TRY to design a setting (or pieces of a setting) based entirely off African history and African nations... HOPEFULLY ignoring the whole White Slavery thing MOSTLY (mostly because... that is so cliché that not doing it actually gives you originality points)

Africa is so fascinating and yet I learned almost NOTHING about it other than "White people enslaved Africans here be" (Though... a group of people who start and end as victims with little-no other defining features is typical school history affair... Like Women's history!)

Not a lot of the culture that used to be there survived because none of it was written down. A funny thing about, for instance, the Congo region is that the first attestation of it in history is on a marker denoting the purchase of a Pygmy slave, purportedly from the land of the walking spirits, and the gratitude of a pharaoh for the exotic nature of the slave in question.

What doesn't help is that after starting to more intently interfere in native political entities the Europeans proceeded to fuck up the ethnography of the area, which they then fed back to the populace as stereotypes through the school system in the late 19th-early 20th century.

The Kingdom of Kongo is a fun one, being a Bantu kingdom whose kings became Christianized through exposure and trade with the Portuguese (to the point of one prince becoming the first black bishop in the Catholic Church before tragically succumbing to illness).