Unfortunately we've never had any organized PFS in the area, closest is 50 miles away, though I & others are working to change that. So even most seasoned players don't have PFS characters. And my 2 most recent players have never played ANY RPG's - D&D, PF, nothing. I don't want to be turning away brand new players just for the sake of gaining PFS XP. Guess I'll just run my weekly game as unsanctioned & save the PFS for cons.
The biggest problem I'm seeing in trying to run home games under PFS is that since we've been running for a couple of months new players won't have a character of the appropriate level to join my game (most won't have any PFS char at all). So once one of my players leaves this August, anyone replacing him will be 3 or 4 levels below the rest of us (having to start at 1st level) unless they play a pregen AND will only get credit as a 1st level char anyway. Or we run other lower level scenarios / modules to allow them to get up to our level, which means constantly rebooting to 1st level anytime someone else joins in, & we never get to higher levels (& have a bunch of low level startups) - this also breaks up the flow of char progression. Or we tell the new players they must be PFS legal but won't get any official PFS XP, just leveling when we do. Or we can just run what we want & ignore PFS. Am I correct that those are the only options?
Thanks for posting this - I picked up a flyer at MegaCon but lost track of when it was. Called up for my hotel reservation the evening of the final day for the event rate & got the last room (they said) for Friday night, plus Saturday night (not the same room either). I've only played the 1st intro, so assume I should try to get #'s 2 and 3 in as the next logical step. Now I just gotta figure out my character & hope some more people sign up for the Friday afternoon intro2 slot.
And here's my case result: 1. Goblin Warrior (red) 2
Complete set (black dragon's on it's way as well), already used the goblins and skelly & will definitely get some use out of these as I begin my DMing journey.
I'm finishing the intro adventure in the Hero's Handbook with one player (rogue) & plan on trying to continue on to Black Fang next. Since it's her first rpg experience I'm going to run a support character (1st level version of my favorite PC from a currently suspended game who happens to be a hafling with a St Bernard riding dog named Horse) who she'll meet in the inn back in town after the intro. But before that on her way back to town I'm planning on having her rescue a wolf or leopard from a trap that will then follow her around (hey, she's 12, she NEEDS an animal companion) & can help in combat, but should be some fun RP as well - "hey, you can't bring an animal into the inn"; pointing at BIG dog "OK, then what do you call that?"
Purple Fluffy CatBunnyGnome wrote: It sounds like they are working on things for you, I know it sounds trite to ask for patience, but things are in the works and they aren't ignoring you completely. Have a little faith :) and you'll be rewarded I've had a month & a half of patience & nothing to show for it. The only time I get updates is when I ask for them and then every one has been "I gotta pass this on to someone else". Now it's supposedly in the lap of someone I have no contact with. I'm sure it's a low priority and I should just forget it & move on, but I've seen posts that this has happened before and had hoped there'd already be procedures in place but I guess not.
Purple Fluffy CatBunnyGnome wrote:
OK that makes sense, I guess. The nearest VC to me is 50 miles away & had gotten involved when I didn't get a response from my 1st email to Mike, but all that happened was that MY session disappeared from my account, leaving only the two earlier ones someone else had run. On Feb 29 she emailed that she would have to contact Mike for assistance. March 14 (same day Mike responded to my post) I asked for an update: she was working with Gary in tech support to make an adjustment on the backend. March 27 I re-emailed Mike the info requested in his post & he responded with the same answer: sent to Gary to fix. So I guess it's all up to Gary now. I'm hoping they don't mean Gary Gygax...
0gre wrote: For what it's worth, your chronicles are a far more important 'piece' than the record in the database. Get a new PFS number and just hang on to those chronicles, having your sessions reported is definitely preferred but so long as you have those chronicles you are legit. Sorry, I'm new to PFS & don't even know what a chronicle is. If it's the paper given to me at the con after the session - do I just keep accumulating those? I'm used to character sheets. I thought I could make my own character & apply the session to that one & had to register my choice online. At this point with nothing on my account corrected I'm ready to throw in the towel on PFS & just try to attend regular PF & DnD sessions if I go to any cons. There's no PFS sessions locally as far as I can tell - thought I'd try it out at MegaCon & if I liked it I might try to get something going locally. Sorry to be so negative but I deal with long delays in correcting errors & mistakes constantly - I know they happen but why does it take months to fix them? Shouldn't fixing mistakes be a top priority to keep from losing those people? They're already disappointed upon finding something was done wrong, and now are doubly frustrated by having to waste time calling, emailing, posting, and continually checking for weeks & months to see if it's been fixed.
Sounds like the original players are running a "Good Old Boys" club with a sense of entitlement and superiority. How the heck do you own the whole town at 5th level? And being there before someone else joins does NOT entitle them to more shares of anything. They sound like selfish jerks & I would walk - PF is supposed to be a GROUP activity, not some megalomaniac's playground. What level are the new PC's starting at? Are they meant to be adventuring with the original PC's? Because, no.
Oddly enough, we got through using their own tactic first - my wizard got higher initiative than their wizard so after most of our group ran up & attacked I used arcane bond to color spray the bad guys - all failed their saves except the wizard who threw a color spray right back at us. Our two rogues were the only ones of our party who saved, but they flanked & sneak-attacked the crap out of her on their turn. I didn't even know it was the planned method of attack of the other wizard, it just seemed to be the best for the situation (which it apparently was).
RP, sure I can see it. But there's no mechanical difference between someone RPing their character as selfish & greedy and someone doing it so their character can be a god compared to the rest. You still end up with one person who can spend his wealth to outclass all the other party members. I agree fairness in the world is not required, but it is surely necessary to some extent for the GAME, or it becomes harder for the DM & other players if one person has a huge advantage in weapons, armor & magic items. And even if they don't spend it on themselves (hoard it, give it away, build an orphanage) wealth is usually a necessary part of players being able to equip themselves to face higher level monsters. So unless the DM is providing the other characters with a means to keep up with him, he can easily create a noticeable disparity, which to me is no fun when I'm the weaker bystander watching him walk through encounters at will, or being killed because the DM has to up the CR.
beamersrq wrote: Or you can handle it like our newest player did, who happens to be a dragon-born. First time we find something, he took the entire treasure chest and dumped it into a bag of holding because he needs it to start his hoard. Ummm, yeah, that's gonna be real fun for us when you do this with EVERY BIT of loot we discover. I've already been shut down when another player pocketed the money he found (and I'm the rogue) with "first to the loot gets whatever he wants". Any suggestions on how to deal with this? Just an update, I spoke with the player this weekend (he's in another campaign I'm in as well) and got his take on it. He confirmed it was a "well, I'm a dragonborn & it's what I would do" RP moment but says it was just for flavor & if we want/need the loot his char will, reluctantly (more RP), share it. He also said he figured my rogue would just find a way to help himself to some for more RP, though my char isn't known for thievery. Who knew all the "talk with the player" advice on every problem player/gm post could actually work? In this case even though I've only known him for less than a year he's a nice guy & has been a good player in the other campaign so I had hopes we could work it out.
Am I correct that Minor Magic gives you ONE 0 level spell you can use 3 times a day? So you pick one and only one spell and are "stuck" with it for all eternity? I'm assuming so as there's no "how to get your daily spell" and it's a spell-like ability. I'd find it much more useful if I could alternate what I want each day, if not each use.
Or you can handle it like our newest player did, who happens to be a dragon-born. First time we find something, he took the entire treasure chest and dumped it into a bag of holding because he needs it to start his hoard. Ummm, yeah, that's gonna be real fun for us when you do this with EVERY BIT of loot we discover. I've already been shut down when another player pocketed the money he found (and I'm the rogue) with "first to the loot gets whatever he wants". Any suggestions on how to deal with this?
Kristie, sorry for the confusion - I was playing a pregen as was most of the table. There were 2 players who brought their own characters - I don't want to get into specifics in this thread due to possible spoilers and to keep it non-personal. I will say the GM also seemed frustrated as the "figure out how to get the item and exit the room" was quickly met with one of the non-pregen characters having & using mage hands to bypass all the traps and simply remove what was needed before any of us had a chance to actually try to solve the puzzle. It was a non-std race/class build & seemed to be able to do a lot more than I thought a first level char can do, but I'm not up on char generation in PFS. As I think back on it, most encounters were dominated by one or 2 characters while the others did little to nothing. I guess that's gonna happen as chars with different skills & abilities run into things they are good at. I even managed to disable all but one of the opponents in the final encounter (rainbow color spray with the assistance of a purloined and very surprised nyan-cat) so I can't complain. Still a great deal of fun & I'll try to attend more of these, though I'm a little unsure about creating a character for keeps.
I was at Megacon Friday & Saturday, my first con. Thanks to Dom for answering my questions & getting me plugged in to several games, and to all who GM'd, played, and put this together (in a non-personal way of course ;-). It was also my first experience with PFS, though I've been playing d&d 3.5 just over a year and Pathfinder a couple of months. There did seem to be a disparity between those with an actual character build and the pre-gens many of us ran. For instance, one person completed most of the puzzle challenge single-handedly by mage-handing everything to get around the actual puzzle. My frustration was more with the fact that I love logic puzzles but had no time to work on it as they simply bypassed the traps (certainly a valid way to accomplish it but it made the challenge pretty much pointless and took the fun out of it for me). As I posted in another thread, I also ran into a problem with the PFS # I was given at the show - when I logged it in under my Paizo account it came up as having already been used at Hurricon last year so now I have credits for games/chars I never played and none for the one I did. Just a heads up to not reuse #'s. Scott
Just got back from Megacon in Orlando & had a go at the PFS intro part I. Received a card with PF # and Conf code upon completion, but when I setup my PFS account using that # it not only lists my session, but also 2 other sessions from Hurricon 9/23/11 and a note on my session that I've already played my scenario before with a different character so get no points. It's apparent that my number had already been given out to someone at Hurricon and then reported as completing 2 scenarios - how can I fix this? |