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Grand Lodge 2/5

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The Fox wrote:
Any place with dinosaurs. Lots of dinosaurs.

This, ladies and gentlemen. This a thousand times!

Grand Lodge 2/5

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**Warning, Spoilers about Rise of the Goblin Guild lie ahead!**

Chases can be tricky due to the high level of abstraction in the rules and the fact that some of them require a high amount of creativity on part of the GM.

I believe there are several issues with the chase rules. These are things I had to consider when thinking about how to "fix" chases:
1) Obstacles that are too precise and don't explain why everybody has to do them break believability.
2) The "double step" thing breaks believability.
3) The fact that you know ahead of time where the chase will lead and the hunters can "overtake" their quarry breaks believability.

There is also one important advantage of a chase scene:
1) The only things written in stone are the nature and DC of the checks and the layout of the obstacles.
Everything else I can cange. So if that rearing horse is not believable anymore, I have another challenge come up that results in the same checks.

It's all in the presentation.

First I try to bring the players on board, warn them about some abstractness ahead and ask them to help me bring it to life:

"The Goblin leaps out of the window and runs for it. This is a chase and you gotta catch the little thief! Now, the chase rules in Pathfinder are abstract, so what I need you to do is to focus on what I describe, picture it in your head, and help me make it cinematic! The rules are there so we get to roll some dice. Rolling dice is fun! Here's how the rules work: <explain chase rules>."

From the moment the chase starts, I have two main jobs:
1) Make sure to paint the scene vividly and make it fun, so the players are too distracted to notice any breach in versimilitude. Smoke and Mirrors.
2) Reduce, as much as possible, any infringement on believability.

The first is relatively easy.

  • Describe each situation in fun detail.
  • Have the baddies say/do flavourful things.
  • Make sure you give the players room to be creative and reward them for creative solutions with something like a +2 to their roll.
  • Be fast about it. Make it hectic. Don't give them time to analyse the rules. Chase, not chess!
  • Make sure you don't allow the players to break or "win" the chase. (fly, anyone?)

The second can be more tricky, especially with the way chases are written. Some things I found helpful:

  • Don't lay out the entire chase flowchart. Turn each obstacle into an index card and only lay them out as they actually get to them. (one or two ahead so they can plan which they would rather bypass by a double check)
  • Ask the players what they want to do in rules terms, then describe what it looks like.
  • Don't think about why it isn't believable. Think about how it could be believable.
  • Picture it in your head. If you can't see it, how can you tell the players?
  • Think of chase scenes in movies. Try to recreate that chaos and hectic feeling.
  • Think outside the box. Just because one obstacle reads "rearing horse" doesn't mean it HAS to be a horse. Turn it into something else if that makes more sense for the situation. The only thing you have to stick to is the nature and DC of the checks and the order of the obstacles.

Now for some examples of how I would/did deal with certain situations, spoilered as this post is already too long. :)

Examples:

The regenerating door
Find a reason why the obstacle is still there after the first person solved it or explain why they can't just use the same way the first person did. Maybe the guy who picked the lock allowed the door to slam shut again or the fighter who broke it down also made half the doorframe/wall come down and the way is now unusable. Guess you'll have to unlock/break the heavy wooden shutters on the window now, sorry.
As that gets weird soon, you can then move on to presenting a different obstacle (flavor-wise) to the remaining players. Okay, they're all out of the house and in the alleyway, but those who haven't done the obstacle yet see a (supposed) shortcut that they decide to take, a shortcut that just so happens to have the same kind of obstacle.
This is the one that needs the most good-will from the group and you should try to pass by this kind of obstacle fast, with lots of Smoke and Mirrors.

If I cook one pack of noodles twice as long as I should, why are my two packs of noodles now both al dente?
Don't present it that way. Instead of offering two options, offer them three:
- Climb over the wall to get to the Busy Street.
- Squeeze through the hole in the wall to get to the Busy Street.
- Climb onto the tree that grows so close to that neighbouring building, climb onto said building, run over the flat roof, and escape the grabbing arms of the shocked party guests on said roof. If you do it, you can run down the fire escape on the other side and bypass the busy street entirely. LOOK, there's the goblin right down there! You caugth up to her somewhat!
This is the main reason why I ask players to first tell me what check(s) they want to make and only then describe it in detail. Why come up with a fancy third option if nobody takes it?

Haha, I cast win the entire chase!
If the players find a way to reduce the difficulty of an obstacle, that's fine. Give them a bonus on the rolls. (First guy on the wall drops a rope for the rest)
If they find a way not to have to take a check and they expended some resources for it, that's fine. (fly over the wall so you don't have to climb)
But if they find a way that "wins" the entire chase, then you gotta do something about it. Just because the guy can fly now doesn't mean he gets to ignore every obstacle. Move the chase below ground, make the quarry enter buildings or covered alleyways so the flying person will lose them if they stay in the air. If movie heroes can do it when chased by bad guys in helicopters, then so can your baddies.

I don't need to be a Diviner, the map is right there!
Don't put the map there if you believe the players will find it stupid to know everything in advance. They need at most three squares in advance, as a double check lets them skip one square and get to the one after that. That's all the info they need for an informed decision.
Also give them an in-game reason to know it. "You look through the small hole in the wall and see a street full of people, probably some kind of parade. A bit further down, you hear a horse scream in surprise. Somehow you feel like that little ankle-biter is the reason for that!"

Some of these ideas take quite a lot of control away from the players, but if you keep the pace brisk and remind them that it's abstract and that a chase is supposed to be chaotic, they'll usually appreciate it.

If nothing else helps, remind the players that it's their decision whether they want to focus on the fun of the scene and have a good time or bemoan the abstract nature of the rules and kill their own fun.

Grand Lodge

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Cyrad wrote:

1) I really hate over-multiclassing. I honestly would just gunslinger/wizard or gunslinger/alchemist, not gunslinger/alchemist/wizard. You'll be really lackluster by spreading yourself so thin.

2) Tanglefoot bomb is good, but your save will be pretty bad. Maybe infusion? Explosive Missile is cool, but it doesnt' work with muskets.

3) Feather Fall is too situational. What about Vanish? Why have a Mage Armor wand when you can cast it on yourself?

4) No. Most creatures will have 100+ hitpoints at 10th level. 2d6 damage is really weak, never mind if they fail their saves. You're better off just shooting people.

5) I'm not sure if it really matters as if your character's that high of level, you'll probably stop playing them soon (either they're dead or you're too bored of them). I'm not sure how far PFS characters tend to get. Either way, you're better off just leveling up a class you already have.

6) True Strike is fantastic for attacking at long range or if you have a lot of obstructions in your way. Remember, you can't target touch AC out of your first range increment.

7) I'm not a fan of snap shot for this build. The whole point of using muskets is to target touch AC while being as far from danger as possible. Running into the middle of close-range combat negates this advantage. If you were, say...a pure gunslinger with pistols, this would work. A standard gunslinger has a lot of health and good armor. However, you mixed with spellcasting classes and deliberately choose not to wear armor.

Thanks a lot for your input! Some thoughts/comments of mine:

1) All my characters so far have Zero multiclassing. This is the first one where I wanna do it. The idea was to synergise. But that's out the window, now that...

2) Explosive Missile doesn't work. Oh. Okay. Thanks a lot for the pointer! I completely missed that. So I can load my heavy crossbow, longbow and pistol with it, but not my musket? Makes total sense. -.- Of course that makes Alchemist highly questionable for this build as it now adds nothing to my Boom.

3) Feather Fall is USELESS on a wand, as you don't have time to draw it. Vanish is pretty useless at 1 round duration anyway. Mage armor always lasts an hour, whether I cast it off the wand or not. And it can easily be cast out of combat, then the wand is put away and then I do other stuff. It's better to use in-combat-spells like Shield "naturally", as that saves you the actions of drawing and sheathing a wand. Methinks. Of course some things change if you take more than one level of Wizard, but even then Mage Armor is the second best wand you can get. (CLW being the best)

4) Well, the idea was to add the 2d6 to my shots via explosive missile. Not an option now.

5) PFS goes up to level 12 so that's why I plan that far. I don't need to think about stuff past that. As a VC, I get a lot of GM credit to level my characters, so they tend to get a bit further than most, I guess.

6) Yeah, but does that happen? It's so rare to have long-range encounters at all and I guess I'd rather move into the first increment (or point-blank-range) than waste expensive ammo at long-range shots that don't hit. True Strike costs me a full turn! I never understood who would ever want to use that spell, eeeever.

7) I don't know... The sweet spot for me is 30 feet away, just as for any other ranged character, no? I get to use Point Blank Shot and that's nice. Ten foot more doesn't make me all that more safe but costs me +1 hit and +1 damage. Also, with Mage Armor and Shield, I'm at +8 to armor class. What Gunslinger runs around in heavy armor? :) Snap Shot potentially gives me a lot of free attacks. But Vital Strike would be nice too for the cases where I have to move and can't full attack, now that Explosive Missile is out the window.

My main question is: What would you do differently? I really don't see any benefit to going past level 5 on Gunslinger. Multiclassing would give me a lot more options, even if it's just Fighter for more feats.
I'm also wondering whether I should get more Wizard levels for better buffs/spellcasts. But that'd lose me a lot of BAB and potentially require me to get higher INT, not something I'd like too much as I don't enjoy characters with dumped stats. 7s make me cringe...

john sweeney 328 wrote:
Drop the wizard level, take the perk to get UMD as a class skill and just put points into it and get wands of mage armor and shield. If there is a sorcerer or wizard in your group at early levels you can have them use the wand on you (at least the mage armor). Don't like alchemists personally and gunslingers destroy at higher levels, I would just go straight gunslinger and that's it.

You're probably right that that would be the most efficient option, but it's not really an option for flavor reasons. I'd have built a spellslinger or gunmagus if that was possible, but it isn't. So I'll take some spellcasting even if it doesn't really interact with the main class.

Can you explain what it is about gunslingers that makes the higher levels so great? I just don't see it. You don't really get anything all that strong after level 5 for musket master. Am I missing something?

Musket Master is a must if you want to use muskets, as it's the only way to get full attacks on them. And I want to use a musket, as the character is inspired by the image I linked. That's also the reason for the must-be-arcane-in-some-way condition.
Under these constraints, I want to build an efficient character.

Grand Lodge

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Hello!

I've encountered a few hickups trying to grapple my way to victory. Maybe somebody can clear things up for me?

1) On the turn when I initiated a grapple, do I get to perfom one of the actions (Move, Damage, Pin) already or do I have to spend one turn initiating the grapple, give my opponent one chance of breaking free, and then confirm the grapple with +5 before I finally get to pick one of those options?

2) Multiple grapplers. If an opponent is grappling an ally, can I grapple that opponent or do I have to first help my ally escape/turn around the grapple via aid another before I can become the active grappler?
In other words: can a creature ever be part of more than one grapple at a time?

3) Moving the active grappler. A is grappling B. C (not grappled) now pushes A away from B via Magic, a Bull Rush or whatever. Does the Grapple between A and B break? Does B get moved along with A? Can A not be moved while grappling?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Grand Lodge

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I love the Pathfinder Pawns. Amazing product line!
Can't wait to get my hands on these!

Grand Lodge 2/5

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kinevon wrote:
Marcus Gföller wrote:
So, are flip-maps like the map from the Beginner's Box? Because that thing does NOT stay flat. -.-

If it is a plastic-coated map that has two folds both vertically & horizontally, that is a flip-mat.

To make it lie flat, just fold it the other way on the folds.

Oh dammit, I should not have asked! That works perfectly well!

Now I don't have any excuses not to buy flip-maps. Goodbye, money, it was nice to briefly have you!

Grand Lodge

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Stefan Hill wrote:
I agree with you completely, but we are talking a specific kind of horror, that portrayed by Lovecraft. That feeling of hopelessness is, I would suggest, counter to the design of Pathfinder. So horror, yes in Pathfinder can be done very well, Lovecraftian horror, that is what I question. Any high level Cleric or Mage can open a gate to the nether-realms, so where is the horror of things from beyond? Summoners have what in CoC would be a "horror from beyond" as a pet!

It's weird, the next line I wrote, right after you stopped quoting is where I tried to answer just this concern. :)

"TerrorTigr wrote:
Make the Mythos be something that defies the order of the planar cosmology.

Getting Lovecraftian horror to work in a fantasy environment requires you as the GM to focus on the strangeness and otherness of the creatures, phenomena, etc. involved. Take the star pact warlock from 4e, it goes (albeit slightly) in that direction. She doesn't draw her powers from creatures from a different plane. It's something from the cold depths of space, an area not often dealt with due to the nature of the planes. Just because Pathfinder has the planes all mapped out and people ok with the concept of there being other dimensions doesn't mean there couldn't be something above and beyond that. Imagine a high-level wizard, his special interest being the planes. What if he discovers that there are places beyond the planes, places not reachable from the astral plane, or through magic, places that defy logic in ways none of the planes do! (Afaik, even the weirdest planes adhere to euclidean geometry, for example)

My point is: if you keep everything just normal fantasy flavour and then randomly drop a shoggoth into a dungeon, that won't produce Lovecraftian horror. But if you build a campaign around the concept, you can use the PFRPG rules set to play that campaign. The rules won't kill the (Lovecraftian) horror, but they can't produce it, either. Even the CoC rules can't. The GM has to produce it by making things obscure, strange and horrifying.

Some methods for that have been mentioned here already.

  • Let divination magic not work correctly for matters related to the mythos. Perhaps even the gods don't know this threat, rendering commune useless. Hell, the gods might even be threatened themselves. Perhaps the Great Old Ones, should they ever be awakened/find their way to Golarion, would have the entire Pantheon for breakfast!
  • Let knowledge skills fail, no matter how high the players roll.
  • Make sure they realize at some point that this threat comes neither from the Darklands, nor from another plane, but from a place nobody thought even existed!
  • Let them discover ruins unlike any other. Monolithic, built from materials that don't exist on Golarion, perhaps even with non-euclidian geometry.
  • Use Psionics for Mythos-related things. Something that works like magic but can't be influenced by it. Mythos-spell-like-abilities, -spells and -items can't be dispel magic-ed. They can't be Use Magic Device-d, and so on. Or perhaps they can be, but there is a price to pay. Characters magically interacting with Mythos elements might lose their Sanity as they learn and experience things that defy everything they thought they knew about the nature of magic and its workings.
Not a single one of the key points of Lovecraftian horror contradicts fantasy roleplaying or the PFRPG ruleset. Quite the contrary is true for fantasy roleplaying, especially. One of the main tricks of Lovecraft's stories is the juxtaposition of educated people with supernatural weirdness. Scientists, who know a lot about their world, have it all figured out, know there is no such nonsense as magic and monsters. Then realize they're wrong. Everything they thought was wrong. Wizards are fantasy's scientists!

Thing is, for us, a car is not something that would drive people insane. Neither is a computer. Or the internet. Put one of them into Golarion. "Ah, a magic device!" they will say. Then they cast detect magic. Then it starts getting unpleasant.
Magic and the study of the planes are to Golarion what Physics and Geometry is to Lovecraft's protagonists. Kill it, break it, shatter their belief in it.

You could also go the way of saying that magic and the planes all revolve around the planet Golarion. You can't reach other planets from the planes, Magic doesn't work too far away from the planet, it's all tied to it (as in a certain cyberpunk/fantasy game).

It's the same thing with monsters. Of course, in the educated 1920s with all that science, the sudden realization that monsters do, in fact, exist, is horrifying. But what is a monster? Why don't people who discover dinosaur skeletons lose their mind? Why don't people who discover a new species of animal go insane? Because it fits the broader picture.
Just because a variety of creatures lives in Golarion (and, I'd say, a far greater variety than in our world) doesn't mean any and all creatures will now be considered normal there. Make sure you contrast the otherworldy horror of Mythos creatures with the more "normal" monsters in your campaign. Don't run oozes and mind flayers and other things like that. Run humanoid monsters, leave planar stuff out of that campaign and then hit them with tentacled horrors!

Also, you as the GM decide which creatures are normal. If you decide Aboleths and Mind Flayers are unheard of, utterly alien, then they are. Describe them a little differently, let them react to magic in odd ways and don't go into mechanics details. This way, lots of "normal" 3e Monsters can become Mythos monsters!

God, I really want to write a fantasy-Lovecraft-adventure now... *sigh*