Aoth Anskuld's page

Don't suppose there's any chance of an adamantine bastard sword? :)

I am looking to run the three First Steps scanarios for new Pathfinder Society characters.

This will be PFS organized play.

All characters must be PFS legal, and must have ID numbers.

In the spirit of PFS, your character is yours, as long as it is within the rules. I will not be looking at background when picking characters, and I will try to simply select a reasonable group of starting characters to run.

If you are not familiar with pathfinder society rules, please refer to the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for what are legal in organized play are there, and supplemented here.

First Steps is a set of 3 scenarios to be run by brand new first level PFS characters, without any previous XP. I will not accept any characters that have run through any other scenarios, they must be 'new'. At the completion of the third module, retroactive prestige points will be awarded for all three modules, and you will then have the opportunity to pick a faction. You do NOT have to choose a faction before we start, and the idea is that First Steps will help you choose an appropriate faction for your character.

I'd rather not use this thread as a Q&A for things like "What is PFS?" and "How does prestige work?" so if you don't understand that stuff, please read the documentation I have linked to, or the forums, etc. There's plenty of information out there and I don't want to bog down with it here. :)

I'd like to keep the pace reasonably quick, so please do not apply unless you're comfortable with a few things:
- Players are expected to post at least daily.
- If you won't be able to post for a period of time, please LET US KNOW, and either work out another player to make decisions for you, or have me GMPC for you.
- To keep things moving smoothly, the only time I will wait a full day for everyone to post is during combat. Everyone is expected to jump in and roleplay, but if only a couple of people end up taking part in a conversation, they are presumed to be speaking for the group.
- Because prestige is awarded retroactively at the end of the third scenario, you really want to stick it out all the way to the end. Please don't apply if you don't intend to at least try to do that.
- Please don't bring a character you want to go play in PFS any time soon. Three scenarios of PbP could keep your character occupied for a long time, and using the same character elsewhere won't make sense until you're done here.

I will start with the maximum number of legal players (7) so that if people drop out we hopefully keep enough to complete all three scenarios. If we lose too many people, I will recruit replacement characters between scenarios.

After each of the three scenarios, I will reward a chronicle sheet for the completed scenario. If you do decide that you have to leave, that is the time to do so, so that you still get credit for what you have completed. You can then take that character and go do the later parts somewhere else, and get the same credit as if you had completed them all with me.

If you haven't been scared away, please link to your character here if you'd like to apply.

The very best a monk's unarmed attack ever does is 2d10, which averages 11 damage. Even compared to something like a quarterstaff, which deals 1d6 (3.5 average, you're only missing out on 7.5 average damage. At level 20. The extra damage from Strength and Power Attack that you get for using a weapon in two hands will always make up for (and probably surpass) the unarmed damage.

It's not worth worrying about, especially since weapons also make DR a hell of a lot easier to bypass and enchantments a hell of a lot cheaper to buy.

For a single attack, two-handing wins (a temple sword will double as a 2-hander just fine, you just can't use a light weapon). For a full attack, flurrying follows two-weapon-fighting rules and uses your full level instead of 3/4 BAB, and you're doing a lot more attacks.

At level 15, non-flurry (so you can 2-hand):
+11,+6,+1 so that's 3 damage dice + 3 attacks * 1.5(2-hand) * (str+PA) - 3*DR
= 3 dice + 4.5*(str+PA) - 3*DR
Let's assume best case for a monk, d10 two-hander, that's 16.5(dice)+27(PA)+4.5*str
= 43.5 + 4.5*str - 3*DR

Level 15 flurry:
+13,+13,+8,+8,+3,+3 is 6 damage dice + 6 attacks * (str+PA) - 6*DR
= 6 dice + 6*(str+PA) - 6*DR
Level 15 gets 2d6 unarmed, that's 42(dice)+36(PA)+6*str
= 78 + 6*str - 6*DR
Even with a 1-handed 1d6 monk weapon, 21(dice)+36(PA)+6*str
= 57 + 6*str - 6*DR

So, ignoring DR, 1-handing is doing a LOT more damage on a full attack(at +2 higher accuracy, to boot). You can also use various ki powers to make your flurry do even more damage.

To assess vs. DR you have to plug in numbers for strength and DR.

Since flurrying uses a higher BAB value and (barring enough DR) does a lot more damage, you will probably only want to attack using flurries. When forced to do a single attack, that's when you might want to two-hand a weapon, or do a maneuver since you're not penalized on those.