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I liked a fair amount of this volume, but the stuff about how you get into the society was way too organised and monastic for my liking. Years of training cleaning floors, etc? Having to stay as a "member in good standing"? Was this so strongly implied in the Campaign Guide? I had felt that they were more loosely bound than that; this feels more like joining the Benedictine Order Of Eagle Scouts.
I also wondered why there were no evil characters at all amongst the members who were sketched in the book. Or did I miss an alignment restriction (possible, I was reading it late at night)?
I do like the crunch, particularly the Wayfinders and the Boon Companion feat. I haven't really looked closely enough at the PrCs.
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Heh, I guess I'll have to tell one of my players that she can't be a member any more.
The PrC requirements in the Campaign Guide don't seem that harsh.
Oh, this isn't crunch to join the PrC, it's the fluff about joining the Society (which doesn't require being in a Pathfinder PrC). There's some stuff about exceptional people being able to get in anyhow if they turn up with a bunch of cool stuff, but the whole thing just didn't hang together very well for me.
Chief Creative Officer, Publisher
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There are definitely evil characters in the Pathfinder Society.
If you'd prefer to put more action in the "how to join" specifics, I encourage you to do so. I imagine the Society is very open to field-promotions of fitting qualifications, allowing them to completely skip the boring floor-washing bits.
There are definitely evil characters in the Pathfinder Society.
If you'd prefer to put more action in the "how to join" specifics, I encourage you to do so. I imagine the Society is very open to field-promotions of fitting qualifications, allowing them to completely skip the boring floor-washing bits.
Yep, see the sidebar on page 7. Remember that while the PFS may have thousands of members, YOUR campaign's PCs are in the spotlight, and if your PCs all happen to get field commissions, it's still really rare overall in the organization--a handful of people out of thousands.
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Yep, see the sidebar on page 7. Remember that while the PFS may have thousands of members, YOUR campaign's PCs are in the spotlight, and if your PCs all happen to get field commissions, it's still really rare overall in the organization--a handful of people out of thousands.
Well, that was my issue; of course I can give my PCs membership for any reason, but the idea of this monastic-style training period and the need to remain a "member in good standing" is just way too organised and with too many strictures for my tastes. I thought they were a lot looser than that back when I read the campaign guide, but that may have been my misinterpretation. I understand that the need for lodges requires organisation but it seemed to go a bit too far (for my liking), and raise the good of the organisation further above the interests of the individual than I'd have liked.
Still, it's going be amenable to changing in my own instance of the world and given that we don't roleplay through years of cleaning the floors it's not mechanically limiting. It's just an opinion about how I don't much like the fluff, I guess.
At least if you join a college fraternity you only have to scrub the toilets for a year and then it's all hookers and blow. This is years before you can go out and do anything and the trade-off, in Lodge support and so on, doesn't seem big enough to me, plus although the library would obviously be great for research there are going to be other places to research (and magic, of course, helps with that too).
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At least if you join a college fraternity you only have to scrub the toilets for a year and then it's all hookers and blow. This is years before you can go out and do anything and the trade-off, in Lodge support and so on, doesn't seem big enough to me, plus although the library would obviously be great for research there are going to be other places to research (and magic, of course, helps with that too).
I don't think of it like a fraternity... I think of it like a plumers or electrical union, you're an apprentice for a few years, a journeyman for a few after that, and them become a full member, and you have to pay member dues and such ... the Society is the explorer's union...
Kirstov's on the right track, in my opinion.
As has been stated before, the Pathfinder Society is whatever you want it to be. Yes, the official method for joining is through training and scholarship under the tutelage of other members - with a big organization like the PFS, there's not a whole lot of incentive for them to spend time, effort, and funds on any ol' adventurer who fancies himself a Pathfinder. That said, there are definitely field commissions and folks whose discoveries count against most of their training. The point of the training in the Grand Lodge is that, while individual Pathfinders are all about doing their own thing, the organization is going to be more interested in control. I suspect that for every toe-the-line Pathfinder, there's an Eando Kline or Belzig who does more or less what he or she wants and just barely stays in the Society's good graces, or a Varian Jeggare who treats it almost as a hobby. Certainly, the initiation stuff shouldn't be used as a straightjacket for the various Pathfinder prestige classes - unless, of course, you want to make a game out of it - any more than someone with a level in cleric needs to subscribe to all the tenets of an organized religion.
But long story short - we just didn't think the organization would be as realistic, fun, or interesting if it was just a mob of loose-knit adventurers (which, incidentally, is how the Society started out historically). But philosophies among GMs - and the Pathfinders themselves - will vary. Heck, the very first lodge established outside of Absalom almost broke ties and created an entirely separate Society, and I bet they're not the last Pathfinders to think that they could do a better job than the Decemvirate...