The way I see role playing, we are engaging in a sort of cooperative story telling where the choices players do matter. In my experience haunts don't make for cooperative story telling at all. The only choice the majority of players have is to participate in them or not. Let me explain.
Right off the bat, haunts are a passive, reactive thing. With traps, you can kick into paranoid mode and start searching places you suspect there might be a trap. You can also do things like flying or spider climb to bypass suspected traps. There are also spells to detect traps and class abilities which help you deal with them. Haunts rob players of the option to prepare.
When you interact with a haunt, you are also bereft of choice. You make a Perception check, then you roll initiative. Players who made their Perception check AND act before initiative count 10 can do *something*. What exactly is that *something*? For many characters the only choice is to run away because only a small number of classes can deal effectively with a haunt with positive energy. Worse, even the few classes who can deal positive energy damage, often can't do enough to destroy the trap outright. Players are robbed of the ability to react effectively against haunts.
Essentially, haunts turn a cooperative story telling experience into a bizarre circus ride where a party of adventurers is strapped in, going from place to place, hoping whatever damage the haunt mechanics crank out is less than lethal, and spending resources patching up after the fact. It's sort of the 'It's a Small World' ride at Disneyland only each country you visit you get smashed in the face.
Next time I see an adventure with haunts... I think I'll pass.
I'm going to be brief, just to be mindful of my place in things.
There's a lot to be said about learning by doing, and sometimes we don't get a really good idea 100% perfect the first time- because we're learning. It's hard to see the end result till we try to implement it.
But out of these experiments we get some cool things, as well as the opportunity of doing it better the next time.
I'd ask that you give Mark and Mike some grace to try some innovation (and by proxy the writers, who get to implement these ideas and learn and develop too.
Its hard to spontaneously generate perfection. Please consider giving them a chance.
but you miss all the fun stuff! (yeah, I know, I'm a little strange that way. I like the lower levels - I get to learn my PC better and know what he is all about that way.)
What a pathetic excuse. We've probably all run into this scumbag, who thinks that he can steal from the party and call it "good roleplaying".
If I make an assassin who kills party members in their sleep, is that "good roleplaying"?
They've chosen a concept that is destructive to the party cohesion, and that is a douche move. Period.
The player needs to be told that when the party eventually discovers his trickery, he'll be stripped of all items, and then expelled from the party (if they don't kill him), so he better have a backup character waiting that has a better concept to take over, since this one is doomed.
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is this something you need to take care of as a GM?
I would give characters with high perception a chance to note that the rogue is gaining items that aren't accounted for. I would also change his alignment to evil if the behavior continued.
Out of character I would allow this concept just as quickly as I would allow any other concept which invites party conflict. It does not work well within the game.
I have begun running the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. One of the players has chosen to portray a female elven cleric of Shelyn. Rain, as she is called in the Common Tongue, has taken to wandering around Sandpoint in her off time, chatting with the folk of the town.
In particular she has begun telling the children of the village stories and legends from Shelyn. The player has been sending me these stories in between games as he writes them and I thought it would be fun to post them here. They have nothing to do with the adventure itself, other than the fact that they are great role-playing items and they have helped create a deeper and wider game world for us.
So as he sends me these tales that Rain is passing on to the children of Sandpoint I thought I would share them with the community here as well (with his permission). If they help anyone else's game in any way that would be great, too.
I would like to request a sticky thread be created (not this one because I can't edit it after an hour), that would, in the first post, give a list of guides in this sub-forum.
In the thread we'll discuss which guides to include and which category they should be in - it would be a community project.
This is my no means a complete list...its just a start.
Also, if you are going to post a guide for this list, please have a discussion thread for said guide in the Advice forum so we can link to it. The guide can be off-site, but we need a discussion thread for it, please. Also somewhere in your guide please reference which books you use (Core, APG, UM, UC, etc...).
In the earliest days of the Pathfinder Society, Josh Frost and Nick Logue included the following section about characterization in the Guide to Organized Play.
Spoiler:
A good way to bring your character to life is to ask yourself some questions about them. Or ask them. If they talk to you, go ahead and conduct a little interview using the following questions or others of your devising. Though not required, answering these questions can give you a clearer understanding of your character in a Society that appreciates well though out and well roleplayed characters.
1. Where were you born? When? How old are you? Were you born into opulence? Were you born behind a dung cart on a short break from another of your mother’s back-breaking work days?
2. Are your parents still alive? If not, when and how did they die? Does their present situation or the circumstances surrounding their death have any effect on your life choices? What is their legacy? Did they pass on a family curse? Was their fortune swindled away by a scurrilous villain? Were they nobles? Were they dirt poor? Were you ashamed of them? Were you proud of them? Were they ashamed of you? Were there secrets? Did your father have a strange signet ring that disappeared mysteriously when he died? Did your mother run a mage academy? Did people give you sidelong glances and mutter about your “real” father when you walked past them in the market?
3. Do you have any siblings or other extended family? How important are they to you? Do you love them? Hate them? A little of both? Are they dead? Are they missing? Are they cursed by an evil lich? Do they own a ship? Do they embarrass you? Do you embarrass them? Did they marry the love of your life? Do they steal? Were they crippled in an accident you caused? Blinded by a torturer because they wouldn’t give you up to the authorities? Do they hunt you in vengeance?
4. What is your favorite color? If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? If you had 100,000 gold pieces to spend, and you couldn’t buy anything even remotely useful, what would you spend it on? A menagerie of exotic animals? A magical pleasure barge? An ostentatious harpsichord? A personal chef who follows you around? A parcel of swamp land? A fossilized dire sloth?
5. Who do you hate? Who would you murder if you were sure you could get away with it and no one would ever find out? If you could erase one custom, invention, or practice from the face of existence, what would it be? Why?
6. Who do you love? What person would you sacrifice a thousand people to save? Why do you love them? Do they love you? Are you sure?
7. What do you look like? Are you stocky? Do you have huge jowls? A pug nose, broken from too many bar brawls? The thick forearms of a sailor? Spindly legs with knobby knees? A scar across your forehead? A facial tick? A lazy eye? Are you missing two fingers on your left hand? What happened to those other fingers? Are you bald? Do you have a braided beard with golden ornaments in it? Are you unnaturally tall? Are you an albino? Do you have particularly (and unsettlingly) sharp teeth?
8. What do you believe in? Do you have faith in a higher power? A god? A demon lord? If so which one? Are you a pragmatist? Do you believe people are born good? Evil? Do you believe in fate? Do you think people choose their own destiny? Do you believe peace is the answer to the world’s ills? Education? Conquest? Are you a patriot? What’s an ideal you hold on to? Compassion? Bravery? Righteousness? Power? How do you see yourself ?
9. Are you superior to others in your own mind? Are you unworthy of another’s love? Do you love yourself ? Do you hate yourself ? What are you afraid of most? What have you done that you are most ashamed of? What single deed makes you most proud?
10. How do you dress? Do you wear black satin doublets because they are slimming and hide the weight you put on since you left the monastery? Do you wear worn gray robes because you believe hiding your power is more important than showing off and inviting unwanted attention? Do you wear sparkling jewels and garish colors to make a splash wherever you roam? Do you favor the dress of your people, or scorn it? Why?
11. How do you talk? Do you stutter? Do you speak slowly, careful to phrase every sentence perfectly? Are you eloquent? Do you favor strange syntax, such as always referring to yourself in the third person? Do you speak softly, or are you especially boisterous? Do you have an accent? Do you grumble? Mutter? Prattle? Do you speak in a high pitch? A low growl? Do you only speak when spoken to?
12. What are your goals in life? Do you want to restore your family honor? Do you want to impress the woman of your dreams? Find your lost child? Find the secret of immortality? Write a poetic masterpiece worthy of passing down through the ages? Find your mother’s long lost sword?
Now for the most important question: Why did you join the Pathfinder Society? The life of a Pathfinder is not one commonly chosen. Why did you choose it? Was it your destiny? Are you trying to prove something? Do you have a burning obsession with the past? A burning obsession with money? Do you do it because it drives the tavern wenches mad? Because it drives your parents crazy? Because somebody has to? Because life is the gods’ biggest joke and you plan to laugh your way through it?
I imagine that, if more people looked through that list, we'd get fewer PC that were little more than an assemblage of class, race, and faction.
For example: This looks a lot like near-home, but damn, an encounter on that walkway and cabin in a true swamp would be awesome.
** spoiler omitted **
Adam, why is that? I'm from Arkansas, and we have our share of swamps, sloughs, bogs, and bayous. Is it that people don't seem to know how in the world to describe them?
I have no idea, but it seems most of the time what is described and mapped always feels like northern marshes, more like wetlands in Wisconsin than wetlands in Louisiana. *shrug*
I of course, as a result of my Cajun upbringing, always flavor it otherwise.
I agree, Battering Blast is rather confusing, but I appreciate the help. Again, I was hoping to try and understand if I'm interpreting the spell correctly.
Anyways though, regarding Magic Mace, it seems to imply that it 'replaces' the missiles from 'Magic Missile' with a touch attack (and the only explict change is changing d4s into d8s). Again, this leads me to believe that the damage of the 'Magic Mace' scales in damage the same way Magic Missile does (but again, looking for more clarification is all).
And yes, Molten Glass is confusing. I really am hoping that someone can come forward and explain it a little better, but I appreciate you looking at it all the same.
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