I've got a Roegadyn Gladiator on Zalera. If you see an eight-foot Drow woman with sword and shield, that's probably me.

ooh tanking is hard. I'm mostly on Gilgamesh these days.

More adventures in 5th Edition. Ryan played another session yesterday, with his mummy helping out with the front-line fighter for a while. Some spoilers for the Starter Set adventure follow, so: They cleared out a goblin hideout, with a final climactic battle against seven of the little beggars. Ryan was getting worried after they won initiative and dropped the front-line fighter, especially as he, the party cleric, was out of healing spells. I held back a bit, had a couple of them just take defensive positions. And the leader spent his turn dropping the hostage to 0 hit points (literally, he shoved him off the embankment). Nonetheless, Ryan was getting a bit concerned because they were outnumbered.

However, while Ryan was out of his 1st-level spells, the party wizard hadn't cast any of his yet. One Sleep spell later, and the number of opponents was halved. Ryan perked up quite a bit with that one. (The leader woke one of them up, but only after the party was clearly going to win.) At one point there were three people down, but Ryan used a Healing potion and some good Medicine checks to stablise them all. It was the last fight, so they could all rest up thereafter.

However, the big news of the day is this milestone: Ryan scored his first ever critical hit! And he did so rolling for the rogue while he was performing a sneak attack, which also benefits from 5th ed crits. 'Twas a wide-eyed little boy who rolled four dice of damage to one-shot one of the baddies.

He was still talking about it this morning, and asking when we can play next. I think he's hooked.

After this session, the whole party levelled up. Second level! He's pretty happy about that too.

That's some fun stuff, BT.

One thing I like about Pathfinder goblins is they're so completely off-the-wall they make for great 1st-level foes because as DM you can just have them start bickering amongst themselves or doing bizarre sub-par tactics if you need to fudge things a bit without it feeling like you're doing so. I'm definitely going to import their personality into my 5e games.

A little over a week until my 5e PHB should be showing up.

I do like the look of the Pathfinder goblins. They're one of their most iconic creatures, yes? I've never played Pathfinder, though, so I don't have much of a feel for them.

Hey, is there a single publication that details the world of Golarion? I just don't have the time to get into Pathfinder, but I do like Paizo's world-building. (And frankly, Forgotten Realms ranks about last on my list of favourite fantasy settings.)

The Inner Sea World Guide is their big setting book.

Yeah, their green, melon-headed goblins are pretty much the company mascot at this point. Pathfinder goblins are always-hungry, superstitious, dog-hating, easily distracted pyromaniacs who believe writing steals words out of your head.

I'm currently running the Anniversary Edition of Rise of the Runelords, which was their very first adventure path after WotC took back publishing of Dungeon and Dragon magazine near the end of 3.5. The adventure starts with a goblin attack on a town during a festival. During the attack, the DM is encouraged to have goblins do things like leaping off a roof to attack people and miss, breaking their legs in the process, accidentally set themselves or other goblins on fire, stop and laugh at the misfortune of their companions, stuff their faces with festival food, throw assorted refuse, etc.

This is my first time actually running anything in Golarion. I've always been a home-brew world DM. It's also my first time actually running a published campaign. I am having a lot of fun with their twists on various classic monsters, making for some memorable encounters.

They sound fantastic. What's Pathfinder's take on hobgoblins and bugbears? How do they relate to the goblins?

Pathfinder bugbears are scary. They're basically the serial killers of the goblinoids. They get off as causing as much pain, fear and suffering as possible before they kill someone.

I haven't had any run-ins with hobgoblins yet but they seem pretty close to their D&D counterparts. Their Bestiary entry is here: [link]

FF14

Laga, I just hit the level cap for the free trial(20) and I was trying to decide if I wanted to just explore, or start a new character, when I realized - In this game you can join guilds for the other combat classes the same way you do the gathering/crafting classes! I could theoretically max out on all the classes with the same character! So I'm working my way through Arcanist now.

Hey, what did you mean when you said tanking was really rough in this game(I, er, haven't run a group quest yet.)?

FFXIV

Ah yes if you're following the story line... I don't want to give too much away. A thing happens that ends up in you visiting (I think you started in Ul Dah so...) Gridania and Limsa Lominsa. Then you'll be asked to go back to Limsa to deal with some pirates. I think the quest is called "It's Probably Pirates". This sends you to a dungeon called Satasha via the Duty Finder. The low level dungeons all require four players, a Tank, a healer, and two DPS. As Tank it is your job to get all the aggro (called enmity in this game.) However baddies tend to attack whoever is causing the most damage (DPS) and anyone who throws Healing Spells (your healer). When I'm tanking I find I am constantly losing enmity.