Here is my Mr. Plugg, though it doesn't use ACG, it is far superior to the one in the book. Mr. Plugg
+1 to Trollbill. Walter is correct that the winds of change are moving towards more good aligned missions or meta narratives. PFS should incentives playing good, or at least some loyalty to the society. So far as shown in season 4, not so much. Season 4 Spoilers abound: I personally thought that at the end of season 4 if you had all those boons your soul should of been sucked out at the end and your character should of been retired from play because of their treachery against the society. Multiple people WILLFULLY compromised the entire society for their own personal gain. What negative effects do they have? Oh in the finale fight he can spend his precious action economy to make a minor negative effect. Please, the second you fight Krune all your bonuses should of just turned into auto penalties.
Ok so I have been working through this since I am going to be hosting a party of six. I have the Wormwood Mutiny done. So here it is Ill_Made_Knight's GM Guide to Skulls and Shackles for Six Players .
Hey Roy, So you have three options here. 1. Let the person continue using the term and have the offended party feel alienated.
Trust me, 1 and 2 are easy but with 3 you gain the greatest reward and a better community. People are messy it is easy to shame and feel righteous about it. Your going to get nowhere in this society by creating more wounds. Do you want alienation or transformation? That is why I disagree with your position.
A Short Essay on Optamization, Power and Where our Hearts are at. I know this has been said, but optimization is primarily subjective, but it has boundaries and you can look at most scenarios and judge what is effective but still has a chance of failure (I am saying rolling under 10) but again that is a subjective experience. Optimization is primarily about one thing: Power. We often go to this game as a form of escape, which is what it is. We want to escape from the mundane of our lives to be something more. When a person builds a character that is optimized to the max and breaks the game, guess what they don't have in their life? Power. I will be the first to say that I go to this game as a source of enjoyment and yes I get a feeling of power from the game but they don't have drive us. Power works itself out in multiple ways as we play this game, but the two main sources it shows itself in is how a player can take a loss and the willingness of the player to be in control. We see a how a person deals with loss in two ways: Faction missions and the death of a character. Faction mission is where we see this the most. How many times have we seen people try to finagle every which way into completing their faction mission and then get upset, shut down, emotional and angry when they are not able to complete it. They fight tooth and nail to get that 1 prestige point while disrupting the entire table's flow. This directly assaults why they are coming to the game, the power of their character. The second is character death. People that often optimize deal with this poorly. Now I am not saying that we can't get disappointed when our character dies, it sucks, however, we as a community to need to say "Hey, it is OK to die," rather than believing it is weakness in our character creation. We play a game with dice and sometimes they are not on our side and that is actually more like life. When we go up against a hard fight and get our butts handed to us, our first reaction shouldn't be “I need to build a better character.” But we see this all the time. This is probably the greatest blow to an optimized player's pursuit of power in the game. Their imaginary power is laid bare before them and it shows where they have placed their heart in this game. People view death as a mark of shame rather than a mark of the character's adventures. People that don't pursue power end up taking death a lot better than people who do. I would also like call attention to how an optimizer hunger for control. This is the "Metagamer." Dice and unknowns are the things they wish to defeat and when they can't predict them or deal with them, that sense of power crumbles. These are the ones that get frustrated when they can't identify a monster because they don't have skill ranks or they try to presume an ambush or betrayal. The whole Spindle argument goes into this category by negating challenges that would crush a person's sense of power in the game. Ironically, trying to negate the unknown robs the character of the narrative experience he is involved in. Rather than being submissive to the story the character steal power from the story for his own personal power. Most of this thread focuses on the symptom, namely the uber optimized character, however the disease which is the pursuit of power at the expense of the narrative is a harder discussion but one we need to star having if we wish to be a healthier community. Hopefully this will be a paradigm shift in the community.
It is my honor to announce that over the weekend, Nathan King got his 4th star. This is a huge milestone for the man who started playing PFS in APRIL (That's right, he did it in 9 months). Nathan is a great GM and player and I am humbled by the fact that he has put so much effort into building our community here in Saint Louis. His dedication and fortitude is unmatched. It is a pleasure to know you good sir.
Kyle, great job. May I also suggest that an edited example be put there. To give clarification of the "Can I Upgrade a Named Magic Item" Q: Can I work my way towards a named magical item of the weapon or armor category? Such as Celestial Armor? Yes. So, for example I have a Mithrial Chainmail which I bought for 4150. Over time I add my +3 bonus for an extra 9000. This puts me at a +3 Mithrial Chainmail which cost a total of 13,150. I now wish to upgrade to Celestial Armor for the difference in price 13,150-22,400= 9250. I will still need the fame score of 36 to purchase this item. If this is too confusing or wordy feel free to clean this up.
Psh, Halfling Paladin/Fighter (Dragoon) Archtype for sure. PFS Play, 20 point buy. Str 13 (7)
1 Paladin- Fey Foundling
So, You wish to Try Sandman, which I am well skilled in. The steal spell is pretty good, but where you bread and butter will come from is the bonus to DC you get for your opponent being flat footed. Your going to want Spring Attack because you will want to get the heck out of range of whoever your stealing their spells from. Here is my build Human Bard (Sandman) 12 Pathfinder Society 20 Point Buy 10 STR (0)
Feats Level 1 - Weapon Finesse, Dodge, 0-- Daze, Detect Magic, Light, Resistance, 1-- Grease, Saving Finale
Trait: Vagabond Child (gives you disable device as a class skill), Reactionary (you want to go first) |