The long and the short of it, Gears of War 3 limps its way through the final installment. It accomplishes the tasks of finishing the story and completing the journey with those characters you started with but does without any flare or conviction. In remaining so close to the hew that was cut with the first game, it fails to present a compelling vision. For some, I suspect that the familiar is better than something new. For myself, I expected the final installment to have the same gusto as the original and deliver a playstyle that is a fresh, different, and tactical as the first was.

Let’s start with what went right. For what we are given, it was given with an extreme amount of polish. The game play is buttery smooth. Controls are tight and responsive, just as you would always want them to be. There is little question as how easily your intent is translated into the gameworld. You don’t have to hit the same button twice to get that twitch action neuron saturated with all of the dopamine it can handle. The gore is wholly visceral and the crunchy undertones bring an unrelenting satisfaction with ever trigger pulled.

What cuts deepest is the solution to every problem facing the characters in the game. Whereas in the first and second games there were moments when brain mattered over calibre, Gears 3 presents one and only one solution to every quandary besetting your avatar. Shoot it, stomp it, or just beat it with your weapon. As true to the nature of this game it might be, that nonetheless gives me with little else to dwell upon. Am I to be challenged only managing my ammo stockpiles?

Speaking of which, we do get new weapons to play with but so what? There isn’t any new tactics to use them with. And, no, flinging exploding boulders from giant beasts of burden does not a new tactic make. I am disappointed in the big new weapon being the “retro” Lancer. How is that remotely interesting? An older version of the main gun used throughout the game which doesn’t share a ammo pile with anything else. Gotcha. Cool story, bro. I’m gonna be over here using a chainsaw bayonet to cut someone in half. You can stab the wall.

The point being that it’s a DOWNgrade to an already all-around good weapon. Why do that? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But that’s not the only thing that got a downgrade. You remember those monstrous beasts that you had to keep running away from in the first two games because they were so much bigger and required, you know, cannons or space lasers to get rid of? Yeah, those! Those were awesome because you had to figure out a way around them. It was cool to have to think through those sections of the game. You couldn’t just shoot your way through them like everything else.

Yeah, those days are gone. Apparently no one told Marcus that you could use regular weapons on them. He knows now of course, and so you get to use your Lancer on those pesky Brumaks and Corpsers that were the bane of the first two games.

Having bigger, badder enemies to kill is part of the Tao of sequels. Having gone through two games where certain enemies needed special, and I might add, fun weapons in order to bring them down I was expecting something new and exciting for the final installment. Instead we get an underwater section that was obviously phoned in. Shooting space squid hanging in a omnidirectional sphere off a submarine (how is this thing attached again?) is wasn’t exciting but regrettably pointless. Gears, as a series, was known for the visceral depiction of what the weapons do. Since most of the time you’re regulated to shooting torpedoes heading for your sub, you don’t get any feel for the weapon, let alone tear through countless hordes of foot soldiers the way you can with the Vulcan or other mounted weapons.

Enough of the weapons, what about the other half of the reason you play the game? What of the plot?

So stereotypical it hurts. I started to cringe more and more as the game went on. Faced with a dilemma of resolving the outstanding questions brought forth in the first two games, I feel the writers were tasked with coming up with new plot elements instead. It is otherwise hard to understand the option to jump fifteen years into the future, given that Gears 1 and 2 were set mere months apart.

It’s also hard to call this a resolution to the story we stared out with two games ago. What was going on in Gears 2 with all the experiments on humans that the Locus were doing? Did the sacrifice of Jacinto make any difference with the Locus or not? These are the very base of things which should have been addressed in the plot, but are missing and replaced with a brand new assortment of mysteries.

Like the Lambent. Seeds of that story are admittedly planted in Gears 2 but again that jump of years imposes a great burden for the plot which is not met. Going from moving, glowing blobs to fully formed burrowing stalks of exploding death is something else. How about explaining how that happened or why? There’s a great voice over to start the game, something to bring the player up to speed that events X, Y, and Z happened, but lacks an explanation of why the game is starting then and not at some of those pivotal moments that were glossed over a few seconds before?

Because of this, I find it hard to ascribe any importance to the events of the game. They have no context, no way to draw the player into caring about what happens. I am not suggesting that the game isn’t exciting, it is. You are thrust into battle, sent through lands exotic and strange. The familiar is made weird by change. And yet this is all window dressing, a hollow storefront that a play is staged in front of. Nothing more.

Also, suggesting that I needed to read the supplementary novels or comics is a non-starter. The game is the medium in which the story started. It should be where everything crucial to the story happens. In taking vital, necessary portions of the story out of the game, you have diminished the power the game has to tell stories. If games are to be held up and take their place with film and literature, then this short cut needs to be eliminated.

To summarize, if you liked the previous Gears you should give this one a chance. Rent it first and see if it can’t justify the purchase.

Inspiration for writing mods and stories can come from any experience in life. The most profound ones sometimes dive deep into your psyche that make it hard to later identify as they have become so ingrained into your personality and waking thought that you no longer notice. This is a short musing on one such series of events which still impact the way I think about myself, the world, and my place therein.

Desolation is the only way I ever got a sense of a scale of the world. Specifically, the desolation of the Kansas Flint Hills.

For those too lazy to hit Wikipedia, the Flint Hills is a stretch of prairie in eastern Kansas, about two hours west of Kansas City. Known for a bit of oil and cattle ranching, it is about as untouched as you can get. It is also empty. There have been a few attempts at settling it, but those were abandoned when it become unfeasible to keep trucking in the food needed to sustain living. The culprit here is the rocky soil. Ideal for the scrub and grasses native to the region but unworkable in any real sense for food crops.

My old scout troop would go camping out there once every couple of years. It was my first camp-out with the troop, actually. And it was hard, very hard, to not fall in love with the place. That emptiness, that Desolation (capital “D” well deserved here) gnaws at your mind until you finally comprehend your size compared with everything else. Out there you have the scale of the world pressed upon your mind. You see that you are as a flea to the grandness of the Earth. Your import, your ability to affect and shape is only in proportion to your size. And is just during the day. At night you are exposed to the cosmic scale. There are no lights save for those you bring. You see stars that you never otherwise see. You can watch satellites pass with without any telescope or binoculars. The galactic disk is obvious and bright. You see that we are nothing but a mote of dust, clinging to a mote of dust, swirling across the infinite void.

That is how empty it is. And that emptiness weighs on you. The nothingness is heavy enough to crush and sets in immediately as we turned off the highway, starting down those chert crusted roads and into the rolling brown expanses.

We went late in the year, late enough to not bother any cattle or to cause problems with the small derricks dotting the surface. Not that some of us didn’t try to cause a little trouble. People who shall continue to be unnamed decided that the best way to clear some of the debris from around their tent was with fire. In the constant 15-MPH wind, the dry November grass did more than clear out from the camping area. It cleared out several acres, leaving a straight black line across the otherwise dun hills.

But that momentary scratch on the surface of the hills was impermanent. As is all technology in that place. It endures in a way which belittles humankind’s efforts to tame it and to bring it under our control.  It is a hard place, it can be an unforgiving place, but those things give it part of its beauty.

Tags: Camping, Desolation, Flint Hills, Inspiration, Kansas, Scouts

I didn’t want to play Half-Life 2 when it first came out. I found the demo to be an glorified tech demo, bland and predictable. On the other hand, Team Fortress 2 with its siren call of competitive and cooperative game play is something I’ve been meaning to check out. With a choice between the Orange Box (giving me many games for one low price) and purchasing TF2 solo (this was a couple of months back before it went free to play) I chose the more economic option and became a proud owner of HL2.

Simply put, Half-Life 2 tries hard to be an excellent game. It looks good, the controls are easy to use, and there is a lot of world-building to see. But that’s the problem. All I ever got to do was look at the world, I never got to explore it. The limitations artificially foisted are numerous and varied.

For one, there is the story. All by itself, it might have sufficed to be a short novel perhaps. But as part of an interactive medium, the story suffers in its inability to let the player be the hero. In giving no quarter, no choice to the player, the story of Half-Life 2 becomes a bland background. This is incredibly jarring since NPCs constantly say that the player will think of something and lead them to victory. But no thinking is required on behalf of the player. Just follow the primrose path laid before them. How then is the player motivated? There is absolutely no reason to save the world because there is nothing at stake. There are no worthwhile failure conditions. And it doesn’t matter what the player may want or do, the world will be saved because that is what the story says will happen. For as much choice Half-Life 2 gives the player, you might as well be playing a high-res version of pong.

Second, there is the actual game itself. Only at its very end, did Half-Life 2 resemble anything like an actual game. And that was more an homage to the old arcade Tron game.

Otherwise, Half-Life 2 is best described as a series of in-game cut scenes punctuated by an occasional puzzle or fight. This really makes it no different than any other FPS released in the last decade. Most of the puzzles and fights are very easy. But there are a rare few which jumps so far up the difficulty curve as to be completely separate from the rest of the game. And while this is a fantasy game dressed in the guise of science fiction, there are more than one puzzle or fight which defies the rules of their world. Almost every enemy could see through walls, there were enemies which never faltered in their aim, and enemies immune to all attacks.

I think that the designers of the game were not so interested in what the player can achieve but were far more engaged in celebrating their own creation. Like some four year old holding up their crayon art for praise, Half-Life 2 wants you to be impressed with itself and not the experience that it brings to you.

This attitude is endemic in the video game world. We hear that the game creators want to engage Players through story and consequences, but Half-Life 2 gives no control over either to the player. Where this discontinuity originates, I have no idea. All I can see is that there is no trust in the player to be the hero, there is no trust in the player to choose the righteous path. I am not asking for an AI game master to  improvise at the player’s whim, but something far simpler. To start, failure should be an option and it should not end the game. Right or left should be meaningful options. At the very least I should be able to chart out the plot as per Robin’s Law of good gamemastering and have it be a straight line.

Games like Half-Life 2 that attempt to dazzle to distract from their flatness do a disservice to all games.

Tags: First-person shooter, Games, Half-Life 2, Meaningful Player Choice, Orange Box, Player Agency

A short story for the Reverse Big Bang on Livejournal

We move in with Grandfather during the first gray days of winter, between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am distracted by the new school and new friends at first, but quickly fall into my old boring school routines. I want something exciting to do but my parents don’t let me explore the new neighborhood, leaving me to explore Grandfather’s house.

I start poking into every nook, every corner of my new home looking for something, anything to relieve my boredom. A week passes before discovering a door, hidden behind some moving boxes in the kitchen. It doesn’t feel like an accident that the boxes are there. Mom and Dad seem to ignore the door, not looking when they pass by; Grandfather merely glances at it once each day. What is behind this door?

One afternoon, when everyone else is napping, I get my opportunity. It takes a few minutes, but I move enough of the boxes to get close to the door. Running my hand across its surface, the flaking paint bites into my palm. There are dents and gouges marring its surface, speaking to past abuse. It also has an odd odor, like a public bathroom after someone has cleaned up week old vomit, and it looks like it should weigh tons.

The cold brass knob turns easily but the door remains shut. I shake the handle, in case it’s stuck, but it remains closed. I start moving the boxes further back thinking that is blocking my progress, but am wrong. I start looking at the door itself and finally notice the massive deadbolt several inches above the handle.

Dad comes in to the kitchen and ushers me off to less noisome play. That night, I wake to strange sounds coming from the vent next to my bed. I can’t tell if they’re voices singing or an unknown language.

The next morning, I ask Grandfather where the door goes.

“Down,” he replies.

“What’s down there?”

“Never you mind. Now finish eating and get ready for school,” he says. His thick accent changes the cadence of the words, making them into a chant.

My curiosity overflows at the rebuff and I wait for an opportunity to corner my parents and then surprise them with a direct question: “What’s downstairs?”

“Don’t go down there,” mom tells me.

“No. You can’t go in the basement. It’s too dangerous,” my father responds.

“Never-never go down. Verboten,” pronounced my grandfather. His hand landed on the table with a heavy bang, a signal that this is the last time it was to be brought up. I start to protest, but my parents remove me from the kitchen.

My mom looks me in the eye, “That’s enough of the foolish questions. You shouldn’t be bothering him about it. Now, I understand you’re curious, but you’re going to have to be happy with the mystery.”

“But I heard something from my vent last night. It sounded like someone talking,” I explain.

My parents look at each other for a fleeting moment, before turning back to me. My mother runs her hands through my hair while dad grabs our jackets.

“We are going to a movie tonight. A treat since your Mother has a new part-time job,” he says over his shoulder.

I wait by the door as they finish getting ready and Grandfather wanders over to me.

“I heard what you told your parents. This old house has many strange noises, you should not worry. You had a dream. Nothing more. You were dreaming noises.”

After that, the subject is dropped despite not being sure I believe their answers. The basement can’t be all that dangerous. I watched the moving guys taking our stuff in there. And the noises aren’t something I dreamt.

I think it over for a few days and decide on a different approach. If I can’t ask about the house as it is now, I should be able to ask about it in the past. So I go to my Dad and ask him about growing up here. I ask my Mom if Dad ever told her any stories about growing up. And every time I do this, Grandfather comes into the room. Both of my parents immediately go quiet and ask me to go do my homework.

I stew for days without any other ideas until one lands on me from school. It’s time for the annual Science Fair and I have one put away from last year. Down in the basement. I just need to time it so I catch Mom or Dad alone to ambush them with my request. It happens to be Mom in the living room a day later.

“I want my toys,” I tell her.

“Which ones,” she asks.

“The rockets. They’re in my moving box,” I say.

She looks at me skeptically. Luckily, I have a good reason.

“I need them for the Science Fair,” the smile on face broadens as I say the words. I should feel bad at the lie but I don’t.

“It’ll have to wait until your father gets home. He knows where all that stuff is.”

“But I should start on it now. I want to make sure nothing got broken,” I say.

“And you’ll have plenty of time when your father gets home, it won’t be long. Now sit down and be patient,” she says.

Mom goes back to reading her book. I hadn’t counted on her immunity to my whines, something I make sure to note. I sit down and pull open a magazine, slowly turning the unread pages waiting for Dad.

When he does get home, Mom tells him of my request and then the two of them go find Grandfather. I watch from top of the stairs. There’s some discussion, but I can’t hear what they say to one another. About ten minutes later, Dad and Grandfather go out the front door. When they come back after a few moments, Dad has my box of toys.

“I brought the whole box so you don’t have to worry about getting anything else out of the basement,” dad says.

“Thanks dad,” I smile and take the box up to my room. So much for that plan.

I think about it for a while and can’t come up with another excuse. Nothing of mine is left down there and I don’t want anything of my parents’. I stay up to listen to the vent but don’t hear anything. I think about going outside to see if there is another way, but finding an excuse is hard with the snow piled up. My quest is forgotten in the hubbub of the holidays and family visiting.

Spring comes with sun and warm temperatures and Mom takes the opportunity to get some planting done. I get dragged along for the usual reasons. She directs me to a spot near the back yard, along the side of the house. As I start digging, something glints at me. It takes me a second to realize it is a basement window.

A basement window!

I don’t immediately run up to it, despite every desire screaming at me to do so. Mom isn’t that far away and is half watching me.

I spot a window looking into the basement and remember. It is painted white from the inside, obscuring any view. I don’t immediately run up to it, despite wanting to. Mom is nearby and half watching me to make sure I don’t kill the new plants.

We go around the outside of the house planting, me noting each and every window I see. Each one had been painted from the inside, and none of them have bars. I might be able to get inside from the outside. The question becomes one of timing. When will I get the chance to test the windows or to look through the paint?

I don’t have to wait long.

Another week passes and it school releases for Spring Break. Mom found a temp position and dad has the same job he always did. This leaves Grandfather watching me before and after school. We have an established a routine. He’s up with my parents to help them and then gets me breakfast. Normally, it’d then be time to go to school, but with break, I’m getting kicked outside until lunch.

No one is thinking about the basement since I stopped asking questions. No one thinks I’m curious about it anymore.

I shake with fright and excitement. I try opening the first window I noticed. Locked or stuck. It doesn’t matter which, I can’t get inside. And I can’t see through it, despite the scratches and uneven paint. The next two windows are the same. Lunchtime looms and I know Grandfather is awake again.

I meet him on the back porch, pretending to have been playing with my rockets. As he stands with the door open, my guts are churning. We eat lunch together and Grandfather takes us to the library for the afternoon. There were two other windows to check out but it isn’t going to happen today. As I lay in bed, the noises come from the vent once more. I listen very closely. Is it heavy breathing? Were those words?

The next day, as soon as I am sure Grandfather is sleeping I run to the remaining windows. The first one is as stuck as the others. But It is not as well painted. I can see shapes through it, something moves away as I watch. The last window is different from the others. It has its hinge on the outside and something is lying on the ground next to it.

A key lays on the grass next to the window, where the ground has been churned up. My head goes light. I know it belongs to the basement door. I simply know it.

It goes straight into my pocket and I run to the back yard, where my toys are. I want to look like I was playing if Grandfather finds me. Once there, I stand staring at the back door. Grandfather is still sleeping. I could sneak in and unlock the basement door. My heart races and my palms are slick with sweat. I rub them on my jeans and try the door very, very carefully. It opens soundlessly and I step into the kitchen.

Tip-toeing through the kitchen, I spot Grandfather sleeping on the couch. Soft sounds coming every few seconds. Silently, I go back through the kitchen, and stopping in front of the door I reach up, slipping the key in the lock. I turn it, and feeling its release. With a twist of the knob, the door open slides open revealing a world of chipped concrete, rotting floorboards, and an angel sitting on the stony stairs.

The angel stares back up at me. Its beautiful, argent wings open and I feel their breeze. I step inside and close the door behind me.

With a vast majority of 2010 behind me, I have taken a few minutes to look over what I was able to accomplish versus what I was actually able to do. Can’t say I’m happy but I have learned quite a bit and can see where I need to improve things.

The first thing to address was 2010 Plan. This consisted of me mostly working like crazy on WFRP modules. I was wanting to do something like one per month. I have since realized that this is quite a bit more work than it at first seems. Especially when you have only yourself to write, edit, and then test the modules. Despite  making as much noise as I could about these, I didn’t get a whole lot of feedback about what did and didn’t work.  What I got was from GMing them. And those friends who were kind enough to play, did genuinely enjoy themselves and I certainly had a good time running them.

Then there was GenCon. That was an incredible experience. Ran these mods for random strangers who had fun. The laughter and jokes are unforgettable.

Moving on. Aside from the reviews of L5R, I can’t say I got much done gaming wise this year. There was the 24 RPG creation over on RPGGeek that was a lot of fun. It also exposed me to a lot of what other people think. And what they want to play. That’s the important bit. People won’t write or create things they don’t want to play. If there is any chance to get an idea of what people want, look to what they create. So there was and continues to be a lot to learn from the those games.

Finally, there is this site. I didn’t make nearly as many entries as I could have. This needs to be a place where I put all of my thoughts on games and gaming. No matter how weird, unusual, or simply wrong those thoughts may end up being. This is where I need to put them. To make it a habit, not something easily or quickly done. That has to be the goal of this site.

Which then leads me to 2011 and what I wan to try to do with it.

Lucha Libre the RPG needs to be made. Well, finished. It was started with the 24 Hour RPG competition, but it has been simmering in the back of my mind as something which has real potential. Setting it an era of pulp adventures opens up a lot of possibilities. Given a decent, flexible system, then players can have a lot of fun creating the sorts of wrestlers and characters to inhabit the world. There is also the matter of making it easy to create and run adventures as well. That is going to have to be a major goal.

Which helps with the first goal of making this my default writing place. Keeping some sort of design journal about how that project is going. And throughout the year giving previews and discussion over what I am doing with it and why. A place to keep my insights into its design.

And that’s it. Nothing more to say today.

I have been granted the privilege position of knowing close the three gentlemen who are going to be running the new Heroes of Rokugon campaign. As such I, my wife, and some other friends are one of their sets of guinea pigs…er…playtesters.

If you are interested in the campaign, and it looks like it’s going to be a fun one, they are premiering it in Kansas City this upcoming November 4th through 7th at KC Game Fair. If you cannot make it, there is a HoR3 yahoo group you can join and soon there will be a website with further information.

I wanted to go back and address a few points now that I’ve had the chance to play through a few sessions. What follows are a few notes from that experience.

Character creation was fairly simple. As I noted in my initial review this could be greatly enhanced by having a set baseline for character points, a step by step walk through, and a completed character to reference. The playtest group did this mostly together and noticed that  there was a subtle expectation for players to be theorycrafting and metagaming while doing so. I imagine the designers think groups sit around saying things like,”You take the higher Water ring, I’ll get Fire, you should totally get Void 3.” Which, if that made-up quote is anything like what they’re witnessing, sounds like they need diversify their playtesting groups. In any case, since we chose widely different schools, and all Bushi at that, I’m not sure that there is much point to trying to investigate further.

The other thing of note for character creation was the difference between the flavor text describing the school and the actual granted abilities. This felt very incongruous with my chosen school, the Mastu Berserker. In this case, the text I’m referring to says “…focus heavily upon the Full Attack Stance, which makes them heavy-hitting opponents who have to position themselves carefully in order to prevent an opponent from exploiting their lower Armor TN.”

Looking over the five school ranks, there’s not a single one which addresses this. Nor is there any provisional option, like with the fifth rank technique, to spend a void point and do something cool like ignore the TN penalty of the full attack stance. One might think that it is referring to the first rank ability to move an extra five feet in battle, if you didn’t already move your maximum, but that would be silly since any opponent could follow you.

Stances were something I cited as needing more experience with before making a call. Having a few games under my belt, I feel far more comfortable with them but find their usefulness lacking. That said, I really want to like them. Having done five years of intramural fencing in college, I can attest to the strategic difference between defensive and aggressive stances make.

So far, it’s not made a huge impact on how the players have worked through combat. There have been a few times where it’s made it easier to hit our opponents when the GM chose the “full attack” stance but as of yet, the additional 2k1 hasn’t had much strategic appeal over the standard attack stance. Or the defensive stances.

I suspect this might change with some experience expenditure. As noted in my initial review, the system has changed how the R&K works when you exceed 10 rolled and/or 10 kept dice. Right now, none of our characters come close to exceeding either one of those limits. If should I ever find my character at that point, turning that 2k1 into 0k2, might just do it for some extra dice in the damage pool.

As for other rules changes, the one which has caused the most conflict is the removal of the returned Void rule.

In the previous edition of L5R if a player rolled three tens on a single check, their character got a point of Void back. For the uninitiated, Void points are like Action points from 3.5 D&D variants or like Fortune points from 2nd Ed WFRP. With the returned void rule, the PC could effectively have twice the number of Void points as their ring would indicate. I have been told this wasn’t the problem most GMs ran into. Instead it was the players who would do silly actions in order to roll and have a chance at recovering spent points. The favorite of which was to “practice” drawing their sword during a battle in order to have the chance to throw dice and see if they could get another void.

On the one hand, I understand the frustration GMs who encountered that situation must have felt. There’s very little more disheartening than a player who solely uses the rules for exploitative purposes. And as a designer trying to correct this, my first reaction could very well be the same: take away the toy causing the problem. But this feels like overreach. On the other hand, why weren’t those GMs finding ways to tell their players “No”? This strikes me as something that falls well within GM fiat.

What we played was fun and well worth some of the frustrations in character creation. Most of it works very well, and despite the flaws spoken about I continue to like the amount of control over the dice that R&K systems provide the player. However, I am sticking with labeling this as the “Angry GM” edition.

Now, you could ask me why I continue to play this edition given the flaws I have pointed out here. This is a fair question. My answer is twofold. The first and foremost is that I want to support my friends in this. They’re taking on a huge, and I might add, unpaid job in creating and running the HoR3 campaign. The very least I could do is to lend a hand by playtesting their work. And secondly, as with any campaign be it HoR or Pathfinder, most of the fun comes in being with your friends. Any opportunity to hang out and potentially have fun is one that’s hard to pass up. If it comes with the price of having to use a fun, if flawed system, then so be it.

That’s right. NanoWriMo was last month and I participated, thus the lack of posts.

But now it’s December and after the upcoming weekend, time will be free again to keep up experimenting with games and brewing. I have a few things on the way and hopefully will be posting on a regular schedule. That’s the goal at least.

Sorry for the downtime but that’s what happen when life gets busy.

Our Pathfinder group stepped away from the season one Chronicles this weekend and started the Council of Thieves Adventure Path. I created a monk and to set him apart from other monks, decided to play him as a drunken master. And it was a lot of fun. This seemed like a good time to update the actual Drunken Master prestige class to fit better with Pathfinder. There are a few new powers and amusing abilities that you may not have seen before. I had almost as much fun creating this as I did playing my character.

Drunken Master

HD: d8

BAB: medium

Saves: good Fort and Ref

Skills: 4+Int mod (Acrobatics, Bluff, Climb, Craft, Escape Artist, Perception, Perform, Profession, Stealth, Swim)

Requirements: Acrobatics 5 ranks, Dodge, Great Fortitude, Improved Unarmed Strike, flurry of blows, evasion, must survive a night drinking with the drunken masters without poisoning, incarceration, or extraordinary embarrassment.

Drink Like a Demon (1^st): can drink a “stiff drink” as a move action; each such drink inflicts a -2 penalty to Int and Wis, but grants a +2 bonus to either Str or Con (player’s choice).  May use a number of drinks equal to class level this way; benefit lasts class level +3 rounds.

Catch Off Guard (1st): You gain Catch Off Guard as a bonus feat, even if you don’t meet the prerequisites.  If you already have this feat, you may select another feat for which you meet the prerequisites from the list of monk bonus feats on pgs. 58 & 59 of the Pathfinder RPG.
Stagger (2nd): The Drunken Master can charge in nonlinear fashion, making Acrobatics checks to avoid provoking AoOs while charging at full speed through combat.

Painless (2nd): As a standard action three times per day, the drunken master may convert one of the drinks in his system (see Drink Like a Demon) into a DR rating of 1. This ends the effect of that drink on his ability scores as if the duration had expired. The DR rating increases to 2 at 6th level and to 3 at 10th level. The effects of Painless last for 1 minute per class level.

Swaying Waist (3rd): The Drunken Master gains a +2 dodge bonus to AC against a specific opponent chosen each round.

Improved Feint (3rd): You gain Improved Feint as a bonus feat, even if he doesn’t meet the prerequisites. If you already have this feat, you may select another feat for which you meet the prerequisites from the list of monk bonus feats on  pgs. 58 & 59 of the Pathfinder RPG.

AC Bonus (4th): You gain a +1 bonus to AC. Improves to a +2 bonus at 9th level.

Improved Improvised Weapons (5th): gains Improved Improvised Weapons as a bonus feat, even if you don’t meet the prerequisites. If you already have this feat, you may select another feat for which you meet the prerequisites from the list of monk bonus feats on  pgs. 58 & 59 of the Pathfinder RPG.

Slippery Customer (6th): Even if surrounded, the Drunken Master’s erratic and random movements protect him. Opponents wishing to flank a Drunken Master must make a Perception check versus DC10 + class level + the Drunken Master’s Reflex bonus. If this check is failed they are considered to be flat footed on the Drunken Master’s turn in addition to being denied their +2 flanking bonus.

Improved Grapple (7th): gains Improved Grapple as a bonus feat, even if he doesn’t meet the prerequisites. If you already have this feat, you may select another feat for which you meet the prerequisites from the list of monk bonus feats on pgs. 58 & 59 of the Pathfinder RPG.

What Did You Drink?  (7th): As a standard action three times per day, the drunken master may convert one of the drinks in his system (see Drink Like a Demon) into a cloud of noxious fumes. This is an emanation with a 10 ft radius around the drunken master; any breathing creature within the cloud must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + class level + the drunken master’s Constitution modifier) or become nauseated. This condition lasts as long as the creature remains within the cloud and for 1d4+1 rounds afterward. The cloud lasts for one round per class level in still air; high winds and the like can disperse it in one round. Using this ability ends the effects of the converted drink as though the duration had expired.

For Medicinal Purposes (8th): three times per day, can convert a drink (see Drink Like a Demon) into a cure moderate wounds potion, which he is considered to have just drunk. This ends the effect of that drink on his ability scores as if the duration had expired.

Corkscrew Rush (9th): can make a bull rush attempt on any successful charge attack (the bull rush gains the usual +2 for charging); if the bull rush also succeeds, the starget must make a Will save (DC 10 + class level + drunken master’s Wis mod) or be stunned until the drunken master’s next turn, but if it fails, the drunken master falls prone in front of the target.

Greater Improvised Weapons (9th): improvised weapons improve again, to a maximum of 2d6 (3d6 if two-handed), and critical multiplier is x3.

Breath of Flame (10th): can use a drink in his system (from Drink Like a Demon) as a free action to breathe a 20-ft cone of flame, dealing 3d12 points of fire damage (Ref save, DC 10 + class level + Con mod); the drink’s effects on the drunken master’s ability scores immediately ends, as if the duration had expired.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!