Taking Those Pixels Away

I like racing games, shooters, space-sims, the occasional adventure and just about every other kind of game that isn't a super realistic simulation or involves ponies. But if I had to name a favourite genre, I'd probably say RPGs. Especially old-school stuff like Wizardry or the better Might & Magic games where you create a whole party of adventurers from scratch, explore dungeons, slay dragons and all those cheesy things you do in these games. And how can you enjoy a good RPG and not have a soft spot for this:

Dun dun dunnnnnn!

A dragon's leathery nutsack full of weird dice to be used with Pathfinder, a tabletop-RPG, which works entirely without a computer. Well, almost.

You can get all the official rules and everything you need to know in order to play entirely for free on the interwebs. And by that I'm not referring to some pirated PDF-scans of official rulebooks, but the actual, real game and everything there is to know about it, perfectly legal and for everyone to use. We've bought the starter-set, because it contains those fun little cardboard-cutouts to help with the battles and it's all incredibly high-quality and full of amazing artwork for a reasonable price of 20something Quid.

Pathfinder uses a slightly modified D&D 3.5 ruleset and contains most of the same races, classes, items and gameplay mechanics you may be used to from the Forgotten Realms. It allows for some fun, interesting twists like Gestalt-Multiclassing, steampunky Gunslingers, interesting prestige classes such as the Eldritch Knight and some unusual, exotic races like raven-like Tengu or the Kitsune. You even get a few daily bonuses and abilities depending on what deity your character worships. And if that's not enough for you to create that one character you've always wanted, there's also a pretty detailed and helpful ruleset on how to create playable monster races. I think I might go for an evil, dual-wielding gnoll or something. Maybe something a little more badass than the Hogger some of you must be picturing. :P

lolhogger

Fortunately, the one truly, seriously annoying thing with most tabletop-RPGs, keeping track of every character's stats, abilities, gear and all the maths behind it, is something I can delegate to Hero Lab. This program is absolutely amazing and a massive help with character sheets. Let's say we want to stick with the example of my gnoll up there and I want to create a character sheet for him. Do you know all the racial qualities, traits and other details of gnolls from the top of my head? I don't, but Hero Lab does, so it automatically makes my gnoll a little stronger and tougher, but also a bit dumber and less charismatic than average Joe and gives him the appropriate racial goodies such as darkvision.

And since I said I wanted him to dual-wield I can go check the requirements for the Two-Weapon-Fighting feat right there in the program, make sure I spend enough points on raising my character's dexterity and maybe teach him to use exotic weapons, because dual bastard swords are cool and hit so much harder - if you can hit at all. Hero Lab automatically calculates the attack and damage bonuses for the main hand and offhand weapon and considers all current feats, ability-bonuses and whether or not you're using a small weapon in your offhand. Are you using a weapon you're not proficient with? Did you pick a fighting style, which simply isn't going to work with your character? Hero Lab will make sure to tell you.

It also checks the weight of all your possessions and tells you whether you're over-encumbered, calculates arcane spellcasting failure due to armor and does all that annoying crap, which is oh-so easy to forget when you fill in those character sheets, especially when you're a bit rusty with the rules.
Look. I know I sound like I'm trying to sell this thing to you or like they're paying me anything if you get it (which, sadly, they're not), but I simply cannot stress this enough - it's simply an incredible tool, which removes 90% of the hassle and lets you focus on the actual game. And it creates pretty decent-looking character sheets if you want to print them:

You just don't want to do that with with a pencil. Or MS Excel.

It's in every way as simple and intuitive as creating and leveling a character in a D&D-based computer game.

Speaking of computer games, of course I'm still playing Everquest 2, as well. My character has been stuck on level 83-84 for a while, because frankly, I've been stalling. First of all, you just stop getting new gear at level 79. You can buy instant level 85 characters in the cash shop (wtf? WHY?), whose equipment is more than twice as powerful than all the level 70ish crap I had on my berserker. So I was fully expecting to get my ass handed the moment I went to explore the 85+ zones. Which, fortunately, didn't happen, because the quest line there provides characters with free gear even more powerful than the stuff in the item shop. Good! Money should never buy power in an MMO.

The other reason I didn't level up much was the whole flying mount thing. You can have a burning pegasus. With leathery bat-wings or clad in fiery plate armor. Or one of  those cheesy ones with feathery wings, if that's your thing. Or grab any variety of drake, wyvern or dragon, phoenix, giant bird or giant insect you can think of. I couldn't make up my fucking mind! In the end I went with something completely different:

Red Bull will do that.

Not only are the flying animations surprisingly good (I love EQ2 and all, but most of the game's animations are wooden, choppy and pretty awful), but those wings really fit the character, perfectly. The leathery skin and texture go well with the lizard-tail and the frills and all the flabby lizard-features and it just makes sense.

The goofy pants might be a bit much, though.

-Cat