Welcome to the Mad Looter
The Mad Looter is inside every tabletop gamer… she lurks and sneaks and when you finally unlock that treasure chest, or find that secret door, or when you just manage to kill the giant ogre and the rest of your party are lying unconscious - THE MAD LOOTER STRIKES!
The Mad Looter is that excitement and anticipation as you wait to see what treasures you can use to make you more powerful, more sneaky, more diplomatic. Or maybe you just want a big glowing sword to swagger across the village square brandishing and waving around proudly, and a sack of gold coins to fill your belly with ale.
The Mad Looter aims to satisfy all your Mad Looting Impulses. We don't just want to bestow this loot upon you though. More importantly our philosophy is to give you unique and challending encounters within and outside the dungeon to use all of the loot and abilities that make your character interesting and special.
The Looter's House of Rules
This article introduces 'The Looters House of Rules' series. These explanatory pieces will be regularly released by The Mad Looter, and will discuss elements of the rule-set for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game (PFRPG).
We believe that there are many interesting and imaginative uses of this vast rule-set that a lot of players and GM's shy away from utilising. They may not have the time to invest in learning and understanding these more complex areas of the game, or are simply too overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.
Our goal at The Mad Looter is to offer unique and interesting game play experiences. We intend to fully utilise all of the nuances of the Pathfinder RPG rule-set, across a number of the core publications. These articles aim to help members of the tabletop gaming community understand and enjoy these mechanics with confidence.
By nature, any tabletop RPG is vast in scope and only limited by the imaginations of the players and the Game Master (GM). To cover everything a player, monster or Non-Player Character (NPC) could ever dream up is not practical, which means any rule-set will never be 'complete' and leave nothing open to question or interpretation.
The PFRPG rules do an excellent job, and they are ever evolving with new supplements to the core rules being released regularly. This in itself can create some confusion, as new rules might not perfectly align with original rules, or may have unanticipated consequences. Publishing and the process of editing also means that the space on the page of a rulebook is prime real estate. Sometimes rules that might have been perfectly clear when written can be edited down to a version open to interpretation.
These articles will aim to deliver a concise but complete explanation of each topic, using common sense interpretations. We will present our interpretation and briefly explain why this makes sense. We will not go into detail outlining the debate behind alternate interpretations – but there will be a discussion thread for each article in our forums for those who wish to provide feedback or troll us there.
We will link the rules for discussion to the relevant sections of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document (PRD), but will also include the key parts of rules in text so you do not have to have 28 browser tabs open at once to understand our explanation. We will clearly identify these sections as Open Game License (OGL) content by displaying them clearly formatted as below:
As a standard action, you can attempt to grapple a foe, hindering his combat options. If you do not have Improved Grapple, grab, or a similar ability, attempting to grapple a foe provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver. Humanoid creatures without two free hands attempting to grapple a foe take a –4 penalty on the combat maneuver roll. If successful, both you and the target gain the grappled condition.
Specific examples of how the topic being covered will work in game will be stepped through, and we may include multiple examples where required. This is a key element missing from many explanations of PFRPG rules that are out there now, and will help players and GM's think through real game play examples they can identify with.
Where required we will also include visual examples on a tactical combat grid, for example:
Overall, the main goal is to present the information you need to make your game interesting and fun and avoid having your head stuck in a rulebook during your game session. Please enjoy!
Welcome to the Looters Lair!
Welcome to The Looters Lair. This will be the place where all kinds of useful and shiny loot will be hoarded.
The Looters Lair willbe a repository of useful and interesting information, and there will be an ever growing hoard of loot here. You can help yourself to a pocketful of gems, or as much as your encumbrance will let you stagger 5 feet per round with.
The loot hoard is divided into several cache's:
• The Looters House of Rules
• Loot Reviews
• Upcoming Plunder
• Master of the Lair
Overall, the main goal of The Looters Lair is to present the information you need to make your gaming experience interesting and fun. If you can think of anything at all that would help you with this – please visit our forums and make a request and we will do our best to help you.
Overall - please enjoy!