Danflor's page

Question for discussion:

I am starting a new Pathfinder campaign for a group of 4-5 adults (ages mid-20s to early-30s). Word apparently got around my karate dojo and a teen (16 I believe) expressed interest in joining. He's a nice kid and doesn't seem to have many geeky friends that he could play with so I feel compelled to let him join and learn the ways of the dungeon. At the same time, I honestly have no idea what kind of dynamic this would introduce to the party. Does anyone have experience with similar situations?

Drizzt wins this one for a number of reasons.

First, he is the good guy. Even if he gets killed, WotC has too many books behind him to let him die permanently.

Second, he's faster. If you look at the original series, I'm seeing Vader as getting one, maybe two attacks per round. Drizzt's gauntlets give him half a dozen or so.

Third, Drizzt has friends. Vader is, quite clearly, replaceable and not particularly amicable so no one of note would come to his aid in the obligatory boss-fight/final showdown.

Even after 10 pages of discussing Player Rights (as defined at the Lake Geneva Convention 1978 after the publication of "Tomb of Horrors") I still think my post is most relevant. If your players are not having fun, something is wrong.

Even if they are all level 5 and all have rings of three wishes and are the most munchkined party in existence, the fun is what matters. It sounds cliched, but it is true. If it's the roleplaying experience that you feel you are missing out on, I advise starting a new campaign using the XDM ruleset (as found in the Xtreme Dungeonmaster's Handbook by Tracy Hickman) which allows the players only one stat- the lower the better.

This sounds a lot like how I felt while running my last campaign. All of my players (including me) have 5+ books excluding the core rules. They would exchange books looking for the most powerful progression they could get. Most encounters saw them defeating creatures 3+ their CR without even batting an eye. It was difficult for me as the DM because I simply couldn't gauge their power level to make the encounters challenging.

I tried everything from banning certain spells and feats to whole classes and races. The process of nerfing was annoying for both me and my players. One day I just sat down and talked to them, only to find that they were thoroughly enjoying the campaign. I realized that I had been taking the idea of "Fun" too seriously and had made the experience less enjoyable simply by trying too hard.

When I stepped back from the rules I realized that all of their choices fit perfectly with their backstories and the way they were developing their characters in-game. Unfortunately, it took me so long to realize this that the only encounter left was the boss fight. I let them do what they wanted with their characters (within the limits of the rules, of course) and let them have it, pulling out all the stoppers. It was one of the most epic fights in my gaming career.

Lesson: It's a game. Even if it may not seem like it, you are probably having fun. (i.e. Gamers: Dorkness Rising)

PC's Name: Arkavor
Race: Tiefling Ghost
Class: Favored Soul
Level:10 (ish?)
Circumstances of Death: Destroying the vessel in which his demon father (Ochremeshk) was imprisoned. Because this vessel was to be a 2-4 session adventure hook, it exploded in a burst of dark "DM spite" magic killing him.
Setting: Ptolus mash-up

Thanks to the player's role playing ability this turned into the single best encounter ever. The 300 soundtrack in the background didn't hurt either.

My CoT group in its entirety. *ahem*

2 Human Bards: Pasper and Jasper, the wandering con-artists.

You are entitled to your opinions about each AP, but personally, CoT is my group's favorite since RotRL. I guess one difference for us is that we have all been theater/improv people at some point in our lives and the sheer amount of the adventures that is left up to the PC's actions is the cause of a major geek-out.

Since your party likes combat so much, you could add in your own little "set-piece adventures" to hold them over until the next book comes out. Instead of giving story XP just convert that into a side-quest.

Selections from Pink Floyd's The Wall, including:

Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 1
The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2

Goodbye Blue Sky

Comfortably Numb

22. Paint red, white and brown, place on head. You now have a Flying Spaghetti Monster hat.

I love the irony here.

Turin the Mad wrote:

Patrick Curtin wrote:

Danflor wrote:

I hate being an East Coast Gamer. Gencon, Paizocon, a decent gaming store... All are far out of reach. Woe unto me.

QFMFT

There are a few of us East Coast'rs "representing" at Paizocon as an FYI.

Wonder if next year we can file some sort of discrimination lawsuit and score some free trips? ;)

I know a guy who knows a lawyer...

I hate being an East Coast Gamer. Gencon, Paizocon, a decent gaming store... All are far out of reach. Woe unto me.

If you're willing to invest some money I would suggest the Draconomicon. It has stats for dragons at almost any level in any color.

My PCs did something very interesting and I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this:

Taking the SAT and then realizing you failed, meaning that you'll have to take that 5 hour long test over again.
(not a personal experience BTW)

Folks,

We're certainly open to working with Monte and potentially helping him and Malhavoc achieve whatever goals they may have. But it's up to him to decide what those goals are, and what form our help might take.

As for the combination of Ptolus and Golarion (or Zobeck and Golarion, or any other campaign setting and Golarion), we'd prefer to keep our focus on making great chocolate, and let other people focus on making great peanut butter. If you want to make yourself some peanut butter cups, you'll have fine ingredients.

Great. Your analogy has made me hungry.

Designing a Feat is a lot like designing a wondrous item: it needs to be simple, useful, and applies to all classes. So I'd suggest building a Feat.

I also wouldn't be disappointed in a 'Design a Spell' (or 'Design a Cantrip') contest, but that does exclude the non-spellcasters.

I think that designing a feat would be a little tricky because you have to work around mechanics more, so there would be a lot of repeat concepts moreso than with a magic item.

I was actually thinking about designing a spell too, but there seem to be more of those than magic items these days! ;-)

Wondrous items work so well, I guess, because the term is so flexible. What about extending it to more types of magic items? Or would that be too hard to compare?

Very good points Guennarr. BTW I just heard that Malhavoc is printing a new Ptolus adventure called Dark Tide. Maybe we can expect more soon!

Just wanted to say, This is an awesome idea. It gets rid of all that time mucking around with dry erase boards! :)

I used to have this problem with my orders. Once the mail-carrier actually broke the spine on one of my Pathfinders. I switched to UPS shipping. They put it in a sturdy cardboard box that physically can't be stuffed in a mailbox. It costs a little extra, but it's worth it to have the books in perfect condition.

I heard him reading off of a piece of paper. He didn't sound hugely sincere.

There are a couple of things we've found predictable. My player can generally spot where the obligatory dungeon is going to be inserted, and where the "boss fight" falls. His players identified the main villain of RotRL #2 based on a brief encounter in RotRL #1.

I think that the decision to do room-by-room dungeon descriptions is sometimes made unthinkingly; some adventures would feel a lot less stock if done in a different way.

My biggest predictability problem, especially with SD, is the handling of betrayal. Too many repetitions of "you can see you're being set up for betrayal, but you'll break the plotline if you don't cooperate." We had problems with that in SCAP and the SD scenarios look, to the best of my current understanding, very similar. My player sees these coming a mile away. He identified the traitor in RotRL #3 instantly, for example, probably based on consideration of character archetypes. In the case of SD #1 I think I'd better not run it as written, because he will see the betrayal coming and the PCs are likely to disengage.

The other thing that is bothering me is scenarios that promise critical information or tools to defeat the foe, but don't deliver on their promises. This happened in RotRL #5 and it sounds as though it happens again in SD #5. My player is becoming cynical (and therefore hard to hook) about promises of strategically useful information.

The large-scale structure of the APs is certainly predictable. The first couple of modules develop the small-scale detail of the starting location. The PCs are then forcibly removed from that location and sent off on increasingly distant missions. There is generally one symbolic "return to your origin" adventure later on, usually not a whole module's worth. It's hard to avoid this, given the need for radical level advancement, but it does make them all feel somewhat the same. I thought this was particularly a problem in CotCT, which had been billed as a single-setting city adventure, but it also troubled us in RotRL...

These are several of the problems I've run into as well.

As a side note, we are all having a lot of fun playing through these and they are, on a whole, very well written.

As my players and I are playing through Second Darkness and Crimson Throne, having finished Rise of the Runelords, they are already picking out trends in the adventures. They are at the point when they can predict what the next encounter will be and where it will lead them. Maybe my Players are just too smart for their own good, but I am beginning to notice it too.

From what I have read, all of the adventures are structured the exact same way. I think it would be good to mix up the styles a bit, maybe start with a boss encounter and have that be the adventure hook. Perhapes a Mythic Vistas setup would be better, letting the PCs choose what to do next.

Any thoughts?

My item has been submitted! Man, I can't wait a whole month!

Ptolus modules would the kick-a**est thing since Ptolus itself! And Eric, please don't tempt me into buying more of them! I'm up to my neck in them! ;-)

I have had this problem with Adobe. I think the problem lies in the background. it has to reload every time you access a new page. If you keep the view to 75% it should go a little faster. Scroll in only when you are on the page that you want to look at in detail. If you have a Mac I found that this happens a lot less in Preview.

Cleave was hardly fine the way it was. A feat that's usable ONLY if you drop someone AND you have another opponent adjacent? As for Great Cleave, for that to be useful, you had to drop someone, have an opponent adjacent, drop that opponent TOO, and have yet ANOTHER adjacent opponent. Cleave is better in Pathfinder than it ever was in 3.0 or 3.5. That's my opinion anyway.

I agree. Cleave was only useful at low levels when you fought 10 kobolds at a time. I was recently playing a game where my fighter was surrounded by fairly tough zombies and the new great cleave was beyond useful. Much more than the old cleave which I used maybe twice in my life.

I saw the original version in a Dragon mag a while ago. It's an elf and a sorcerer: the perfect combination of bada**.

I usually read the Journal part and skim the monsters to start with, then skim the articles and read them if they interest me. I then read the adventure, skipping over non-vital encounters. Before each session I read the part that I'm going to be running. I will probably fall behind with the latest shipment, though. :-P

I would definitely buy a Paizo monster book. If you do so please add LOTS of ecology entries. The 4e MM has crushed my heart.

Just throwing another viwpoint into the mix:

If my players stopped depending on Magic items, they would tear me to pieces. To them there's nothing more exciting than finding a beholder crown or a +5 Greatsword of Bashingness. I don't like the idea of limiting the number of items you can have (kinda like only being allowed to have one ring on each hand) but some varient rules might be welcome. Even another supplement similar to Iron Heroes maybe.

If you look at the Alpha Releases you will notice things like: Fighters getting something at every level, Wizards and Sorcerers getting bonus abilities and extra spells. While playing with my group, we are quite enjoying these changes. It is impossible to make every single level of a class (FORGET THE EDITION) interesting and enjoyable to everyone, but I would say that Paizo has gotten very close to reaching that impossible.

They do ahve awesome APs, though I hope the next few have more talking situations. My PCs got a little bored in RotR.

I suppose the philosophy that I prefer to go by is:
If using game mechanics makes the encounter more interesting and function better then use them. If it bogs it down with dice rolling, then screw the rules.

I really like the Scion: Hero rule of only having the PC roll if it's an interesting outcome both ways. While you can't always have that apply to the situation, it's good to keep in mind.

Voted!

Just butting in here, but I would like the people posting in this thread to read over the last 5 pages and see just how circular this conversation/argument has become. Even when people post something that should stop the bickering (contend/dispute/debate/quarrel/quibble/spat/squabble/whatever) one or two people either ignore it and keep defending a point that is dead and covered in carrion crawlers or they find a nit-pickey detail and start it up again.

I know I'm probably about to be blasted for this but please, for sanity's sake! :)

Do you at Paizo have any plans for an Item Cards pack for underwater/nautical adventures? Sinister Adventures coming out with Razor Coast soon, so there's some incentive. Plus, I have this image of a sword made out of coral that would be fun to give the PCs of which there is not yet an item card.

So, yeah. How 'bout it?

If you don't have drow paired with some form of arachnid, it's like commiting treason!!!

Even if some people say that it's copying every other campaign setting, more people will be dissapointed by the absence.

I will be buying both the Beta Softcover an the final Hardcover.

2. Better iconics. I'll take Amiri over Krusk, Lem over Gimble, Kyra over Jozan, Lini over Vandania, Valeros over Regdar AND Tordek, Sajan over Ember, Seelah over Alhandra, Harsk over Soveliss, Merisiel over Lidda, Seoni over Hennet, and Ezren over Mialee ANY day and twice on Sundays.

Here here! :D

While I like Sam Wood and Todd Lockwood, the execution of the iconics was... shabby. Has anyone every seen a good picture of Mialee?

I went and made my own sheet, based off of the core D&D sheet.

Here is the link.

Very cool! :D

Danflor wrote:

That soooo doesn't make sense. The Tarasque is supposed to be the most powerful being in the multiverse that no one can kill!!!

Bigger doesn't mean badder. ;)

Tuh, Puh, Chu, Yeah! It does! ;-P

That soooo doesn't make sense. The Tarasque is supposed to be the most powerful being in the multiverse that no one can kill!!!

KaeYoss wrote:

And the Tarrasque needs to stay in, too, if only to let Keyra Palin's ship have a name that makes sense ;-P

The Tarrasque plays a role in Golarion's history, based on the preview copy of the Pathfinder Gazetteer that I just finished. So you can rest assured that it is going to remain a part of Golarion's lore.

-Lisa

Can you make sure it's bigger than it is in the MM? I've always hated how the Red dragon is bigger than it.

Danflor wrote:

Oh... Jabber. When will you read the post that said I was being SARCASTIC!!! No, I don't think that it's good DMing to do something like that. NO,NO,NO! GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD!!!

I was addressing Zombieneighbors' comment to my comment, using something you said as an example. Your reaction is as puzzling as it is inappropriate.

I apologize. I mis-read your post. So, what exactly are the problems people have had with the 15 minute adventuring day? I have never experienced them.

How are wizards perfect with the pathfinder changes? Seriously, other than perhaps black tentacles they haven't fixed any of the problems with the wizard, just added a random whack of new ones.

And resting after 5 rooms isn't stupidity, or poor strategy. Its a reflection of the way the 3rd edition was intentionally designed. Check the DMG- encounters are supposed to use up roughly 20% of the party's resources. So resting after 5 encounters is whats expected with the default assumptions of the game.

I'm also really curious as to what cantrips would be at all useful in an encounter involving a pit trap, an iron golem, or a pod of black puddings.

Regaining hit points- what, are they PCs vampires now? How does that even work? And 1/2 the monsters' CR is a pitifully small amount of hit points, no matter what level this is happening.

Okay, now you seem to be getting away from the issue here. We're trying to put a stop to the 5 rooms and you're done style of play. The way I see it, the only way to change that is regenerating Hit Points, giving PCs more hit points, Making healing spells cheaper and more readily available, etc.

Two words: Spell Compendium.

You're right, but what other alternative is there? I certainly don't see you responding to these with coherent ideas of your own. If you give the players too much, they regain too much. Too little, and they go back after 5 rooms. This idea was meant to be a filler in addition to clerical magic.

Danflor wrote:

No matter what you do, someone will always abuse the rules and go home and rest. As long as spellcasters have some form of unlimited use magic it works. At that point, it falls to the DM to prevent the PCs from running back to town after the first encounter.

Unless you're playing in a Basic Game dungeon crawl, the bad guy should always be doing something. Whether it's investigate the recent deaths of his minions or send out assassins to kill the PCs and their allies there have to be consequences for packing it in and packing it up, and sneaking away and buggering up, and chickening out and pissing off home oh so bravely throwing in the sponge.

If nothing gets the point across, make the dungeon recharge. Every time the PCs run away, have all of the monsters magically reappear, only with 10 extra Hit dice. That includes the boss at the end of the level who they only managed to beat with a natural 20. Also, refrain from giving treasure on these "bonus" levels.

If your Wizard uses up his magic missiles up too quickly, give him a really good crossbow or sling. Another option to consider is having the spell-caster take a level in warlock or warmage to ensure that they have more uses of spells and invocations. Instead of making a cleric, maybe try Favored Souls.

My players often forget to sleep as they consist of a Warmage, a troll barbarian, a Dusk Blade, and a Shugenja.

All in all, the problem is based off of how much your players are willing to role-play.

... what? The problem isn't roleplaying, or the lack of it. It isn't even tangentially related to roleplaying. In fact... it's more likely that a party would go rest if they're in danger of dying due to lack of resources. Unless they're role-playing complete morons, they aren't going to continue marching into the jaws of death with half hit points and no useful spells.

Magically respawning dungeons to punish them for not playing your way isn't much of a solution either. Its merely a sign they should get a...

While you are correct, The way people handle their characters is the problem with Wizards/ Sorcerers. The way they are now in the Pathfinder RPG, Wizards are perfect. The problems are the players who use up all of their spells int he first 5 rooms. Mechanics can't fix bad strategy (or stupidity, as you say). There are lots of cantrips that can be used very effectively.

Re-spawning dungeons are quite obviously, not the way to go. It's like saying: "Frank, because you're talking, Billious gets struck by lightning and dies." I was being sarcastic.

You have a good point the matter of Hit points. What if they regain hit points equal to 1/2 the CR of the monster they defeated? It's not that helpful at high levels, but by then you have wands and periapts up the wazoo.

Danflor wrote:

If your Wizard uses up his magic missiles up too quickly, give him a really good crossbow or sling. Another option to consider is having the spell-caster take a level in warlock or warmage to ensure that they have more uses of spells and invocations. Instead of making a cleric, maybe try Favored Souls.

That works fine at level 3, but higher levels.

Then use the varient spellcasting system in Unearthed Arcana. It's complex, but it's a decent recharge option.

No matter what you do, someone will always abuse the rules and go home and rest. As long as spellcasters have some form of unlimited use magic it works. At that point, it falls to the DM to prevent the PCs from running back to town after the first encounter.

Unless you're playing in a Basic Game dungeon crawl, the bad guy should always be doing something. Whether it's investigate the recent deaths of his minions or send out assassins to kill the PCs and their allies there have to be consequences for packing it in and packing it up, and sneaking away and buggering up, and chickening out and pissing off home oh so bravely throwing in the sponge.

If nothing gets the point across, make the dungeon recharge. Every time the PCs run away, have all of the monsters magically reappear, only with 10 extra Hit dice. That includes the boss at the end of the level who they only managed to beat with a natural 20. Also, refrain from giving treasure on these "bonus" levels.

If your Wizard uses up his magic missiles up too quickly, give him a really good crossbow or sling. Another option to consider is having the spell-caster take a level in warlock or warmage to ensure that they have more uses of spells and invocations. Instead of making a cleric, maybe try Favored Souls.

My players often forget to sleep as they consist of a Warmage, a troll barbarian, a Dusk Blade, and a Shugenja.

All in all, the problem is based off of how much your players are willing to role-play.