This is the discussion thread for two campaigns:

Navior's We Be Goblins / Jade Regent OOC


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Generally you 100% there. But "light" is readily accessible with mundane means. And there is a strong case to be made for message, mage hand, ghost sound, and acid splash/ray of frost. >Personally< I like mending a lot - and in terms of swamp traversal it can arguably be as useful for appearances as prestidigitation - the mending can actually fix the wear and tear from swamp traversal, where prestidigitation merely helps clean it.

Now I just have to wait for Navior to start adding little tears to Corinna's leggings from the thorny vines, a pulled button on her top, a squelchy leak in her left boot, and maybe some acidic swamp dweller droppings that leave unsightly holes in her scarf.


And that's when she learns mending the next time she can prepare spells, once she's back in safety and not going to re-tear something that has already been torn and mended. Little tears and pulled buttons aren't near as unpleasant to put up with as heavy, smelly mud and filth. And Corinna doesn't have a torch or a flint & steel or a lantern, so she doesn't have a ready means of mundane light. Magical light can't be put out by the dampness of the swamp or a rainstorm, nor is it required to be held in a hand that is otherwise needed for climbing a rope or holding a weapon or casting a spell. It's infinitely renewable, unlike torches or flasks of oil which run out so you have to carry lots of extras, and it doesn't take a full-round action and two free hands to turn on. She can't send torches or lanterns down the tunnel in front of her or behind her to light up danger before she's too near it. Magical light is superior to mundane light in every way, save the ability to provide heat.

Once again, only three cantrips. I have absolutely no second thoughts about the utility of her choices and wouldn't trade any of them out for mending. Particularly not so that you guys can pocket what you just swore all up and down you had no intentions of keeping for yourself. ;P

You want to have some say in what spells are available, you play a spellcaster. ;)


Male Human Traveler / 8

Yeah, I agree with Joana on this. Mending is a spell for comfort, not when you're traipsing through the wilderness.


Prestidigitation is a spell for comfort too; in fact that is explicitly why Corinna has it. Not that I mind, it makes plenty of sense for her to have it. I'm not saying that Corinna should prepare mending, just that I think its odd that none of the four casters have it - because I think it is a good cantrip. You don't have to agree, it's just my opinion :P

Quote:
Magical light is superior to mundane light in every way, save the ability to provide heat.

Yes. This is why there's handy magically lit items. Including a 50gp ioun stone that is hands-free and will even work in magical darkness where light cantrips are snuffed out.

Quote:
Particularly not so that you guys can pocket what you just swore all up and down you had no intentions of keeping for yourself. ;P

Save it for when we actually do pocket the stuff. Not all of the characters come from wealthy minor nobility and had to suffer through the humiliation of having to go through costly arcane tuition paid for by their strict but well-meaning uncles. ;)


Male Human Traveler / 8
LoreKeeper wrote:


Yes. This is why there's handy magically lit items. Including a 50gp ioun stone that is hands-free and will even work in magical darkness where light cantrips are snuffed out.

I have never bought that for a beginning character and I probably never will. Talk about taking all the fun out of being a poor 1st level character who has to do things the hard way! The availability of that item at so low a cost actually kind of offends me.


It's a perfectly fine cantrip. Just not in the top three for the situation, in my opinion. And I don't like being equipment-dependent. Besides, I'm a wizard. I don't have to rely on magical items like all you mundane classes; I am magic. ;)


Male Humanly Awesome 'n Totally Rockin' Paladin of Greatness

Mending? You people are going on and on about mending? Seriously?

You guys(and gal) make me laugh. Lol! :)


Of course, it won't be that long before Corinna has 4 cantrips per day. Maybe you can convince her to prepare mending then. :)

Happy belated birthday, Joana!


Male Humanly Awesome 'n Totally Rockin' Paladin of Greatness

Lol! I'm still laughing over here!

(I'm dead serious, by the way. I click over here and I can't help but just chuckle and chuckle) :)

You people are greatness. :)


LoreKeeper wrote:

Not all of the characters come from wealthy minor nobility and had to suffer through the humiliation of having to go through costly arcane tuition paid for by their strict but well-meaning uncles. ;)

See? Another reason for her not to learn mending. Valdemars don't mend a thing when it gets broken; they just throw it away and buy a new one. ;P

Thanks, all, for the birthday wishes. :)


Navior wrote:
I completely forgot about the pony.

The correct Evil-DM answer would have been, "What pony? The one you left all by itself and undefended outside the cave half an hour ago? Mwahahahaha!" ;)


Joana wrote:
Navior wrote:
I completely forgot about the pony.
The correct Evil-DM answer would have been, "What pony? The one you left all by itself and undefended outside the cave half an hour ago? Mwahahahaha!" ;)

I played with a DM in university who did that kind of thing all the time. He utterly despised party animals of any kind, including horses, animal companions, and familiars. If our characters turned their backs for even a moment, we could pretty much guarantee our animals would die. We learned pretty quickly that if we left horses tied up outside a building or cave or wherever, the animals would be gone when we returned. If we searched for them, we'd generally find their slaughtered bodies not far away. We soon learned to not bother with horses. Wizards would just not summon a familiar (this was back in the day when you gained a familiar via the spell, call familiar), and nobody bothered playing a druid.

He was a fairly decent DM otherwise; he just had this strange thing against animals.


That's because an animals only valuable contribution is meat! Muahahaha!

Grand Lodge

Navior wrote:
Dax Thura wrote:
Navior, would it be ok if I changed Malan over to the Blackblade archetype. At this point all that would change is the number of arcane pool points.

I actually thought you had already done that, as you mentioned in this post from waaaaay back in August:

Dax Thura wrote:
Navior, I should let you know that I plan on going Black Blade.
So, seeing as I thought you already were that archetype, I have no problem with you changing to it. :)

I hadn't made the note or changes to my character sheet, so thought I hadn't asked.


Male Human Traveler / 8

In regards to Corinna's question about taking a shortcut back to the road, that sounds right to me. Navior, would Tevyn be able to answer in the affirmative about that?

Also, as Joana pointed out in OOC, Melon was going to spend half an hour at least fussing around with skeletons. Tevyn left that part of the cavern pretty much as soon as he started, so Corinna and Tevyn definitely should be able to converse to their hearts content without interference from the otherwise occupied Monk. :) And I've been assuming that Tevyn can't hear any of the conversation, or make out words used in voices are raised.


Melon just can't stand the thought that somewhere there's a conversation going on she can't be a part of. I'm waiting for the revelation that she's actually identical twins or triplets and that's how she keeps popping up everywhere at once. ;)


Wander Weir wrote:
In regards to Corinna's question about taking a shortcut back to the road, that sounds right to me. Navior, would Tevyn be able to answer in the affirmative about that?

As I mentioned in the game thread, it will only work if you can manage to climb the 50-ft cliff that separates the marsh from the moors (this cave system you're in right now is at the base of that cliff, although that hasn't been mentioned for several pages in the game thread, so most of you had probably forgotten about that). I'm not sure the group has the right equipment to get the pony up the cliff.


Joana wrote:
Melon just can't stand the thought that somewhere there's a conversation going on she can't be a part of. I'm waiting for the revelation that she's actually identical twins or triplets and that's how she keeps popping up everywhere at once. ;)

Is cause we on different timelines. In my perception Melon had already finished the burial and was wondering why it took people so long to get the chest onto the pony. Hence the "Not sure if this we at the chest-on-pony situation already". Joana and Tevyn are just waaaay slow.


Gilfroy Fezziwig wrote:
Good grief! I take an afternoon off, and there are so many posts, i figure the campaign must be half over! Then I see it's just Corinna having an existential crisis. :P

Hey, it's not my fault Wander switched characters after she'd already told her life story to the group, forcing her to repeat it. I'm surprised you didn't comment on the Great Cantrip Debate rampaging through the OOC thread.


Other than prestidigitation, I'm more of an orison guy, myself.

Message is fun, though, for making people think they've gone schizo. "Are you hearing voices?"


Male Human Traveler / 8

The ironic thing is that I didn't read Corinna's story the first time when I was playing Aago for some reason. So this was actually new to me. I just assumed, though, that you'd copied and pasted it.

Quote:
Message is fun, though, for making people think they've gone schizo. "Are you hearing voices?"

Yeah, Joana did that to my Serpent's Skull character with pretty much the same effect.


Wander Weir wrote:
The ironic thing is that I didn't read Corinna's story the first time when I was playing Aago for some reason. So this was actually new to me. I just assumed, though, that you'd copied and pasted it.

Hey, this isn't some video game, where every time you click on someone you get the same dialogue choices. This is prime, grade-A roleplay, customized to the specific situation. No copy-paste laziness here! ;P

Wander Weir wrote:
Nazard wrote:
Message is fun, though, for making people think they've gone schizo. "Are you hearing voices?"
Yeah, Joana did that to my Serpent's Skull character with pretty much the same effect.

Loved the way Lorenz accidentally replied to Douena out loud and to the ongoing group conversation in a whisper! That was classic. :D

Orisons ... meh. Useful, but not flashy enough. Although Douena did get quite a bit of mileage out of create water where we were newly stranded. But there's lots of versatility in arcane mark, dancing lights, mage hand, message, spark...


Have I missed any indication, other than LoreKeeper's meta assumptions, that any of this stuff we've found is Tien or has anything to do with Ameiko?


Joana wrote:
Have I missed any indication, other than LoreKeeper's meta assumptions, that any of this stuff we've found is Tien or has anything to do with Ameiko?

You really haven't missed anything. Some of the items found are undoubtedly exotic, but the only party member with the right skills to possibly identify their source is Corinna, and she hasn't actually examined them or paid any attention to them, really. :)

There's a lot of assumption (to be truthful, correct assumption) that the items must be of Tien origin since the AP centres around a journey to Tian Xia (well, that and the fact that Lorekeeper has already read the adventure), but your characters don't actually have any reason to know this yet. Ameiko doesn't dress in Tien fashions. She doesn't have Tien artefacts adorning the walls of the Rusty Dragon. So there's little to link her with the items at the moment.

Now, once you start examining them more closely and start to look for who their rightful owner might be, then things may become clearer. Until then, there's no reason to associate them with Ameiko. Now, that said, Ameiko is a knowledgeable person, so for that reason, one might ask her if she knows anything about their make, but that's quite a bit different from automatically assuming they're Tien. :)

Grand Lodge

I base my decision to ask Ameiko mainly on these posts.

Melon wrote:
Melon grins as she suddenly appears next to Corinna after her 4th drink, "Hear hear" she adds companionably to Corinna's recollection of the day's events, and on the quiet helps her cup stay filled up. "I'm surprised, Ameiko, that you can stand all this excitement happening just hours away from the Rusty Dragon. You'd have loved it! Did you see the strange fan we found? I'm sure its a bit like those of your family. Very Tian!"

I believe Lorekeeper embellished here because of his character's great familiariy with the town and Ameiko in particular. However, Navior did not correct him in his assumptions.

Ameiko wrote:
Ameiko seems a bit surprised by the mention of the fan seeming Tian. She pauses in her moving about and looks back at Melon. "No, I haven't seen this fan. Tian, you say? That's unusual in these parts, though not unheard of. I wonder if it belonged to my family and was taken in some earlier goblin raid."

Even if the chest's contents aren't hers, from this I take it that Ameiko can possibly help to identify their source.

Malan has no problem with taking the stuff to the sheriff. He just thinks that it makes more sense to show it to Ameiko first.


As Navior points out, I do know Jade Regent fairly well as I GM it for my IRL group. I base Melon's "Tien" assumptions on a bit of text in the AP that says that people that have the "Ameiko" trait will have spent some time in Ameiko's family's mansion (though personal backgrounds may disagree). Unlike the tavern, and specifically while Ameiko's dad is still alive, I expect the place to contain enough Tien items to instill a sense of "yes, this is Tien".

Given that exposure, I consider that a DC 10 anybody can do it knowledge check to just be able to say, "yea, these could be from Tian Xia". Similar to how it is a DC 10 knowledge check to identify major religions. (We're talking about identifying an item as having its cultural roots on a continent, not about whether it was crafted by moon maidens during the spring of the Mung dynasty's inauguration in Kokyuto to celebrate the appearance of a celestial omen.) Though of course that is just my word on it. :)

Knowledge (if relevant) 1d20 ⇒ 16


Male Human Traveler / 8

I was always under the impression that Tian Xia is so distant and exotic that very few people from Sandpoint, even knowing Ameiko, would ever have an idea of what a Tian object would look like.

It doesn't matter to me if Melon has all this mysterious knowledge based on seeing Ameiko's home. As far as Tevyn is concerned, she just makes stuff up all the time anyway. :)


Dax Thura wrote:

I base my decision to ask Ameiko mainly on these posts.

Melon wrote:
Melon grins as she suddenly appears next to Corinna after her 4th drink, "Hear hear" she adds companionably to Corinna's recollection of the day's events, and on the quiet helps her cup stay filled up. "I'm surprised, Ameiko, that you can stand all this excitement happening just hours away from the Rusty Dragon. You'd have loved it! Did you see the strange fan we found? I'm sure its a bit like those of your family. Very Tian!"
I believe Lorekeeper embellished here because of his character's great familiariy with the town and Ameiko in particular. However, Navior did not correct him in his assumptions.

Actually, Navior did.

Ameiko Kaijitsu aka Navior wrote:
Quick note: Melon is massively embellishing the "Tian goods". Old Foofelah told you the goblins found treasure and the skeletons took that treasure back. There were virtually no details of what that treasure was. Certainly no mention of "Tian" as the goblins wouldn't know how to tell the difference between something from Tian Xia or anywhere else. The fan with the map on the back is the only thing Tian-like encountered by the party and even there, Melon has jumped to conclusions as no one has actually identified it as Tian in origin. :)
Dax Thura wrote:
Ameiko wrote:
Ameiko seems a bit surprised by the mention of the fan seeming Tian. She pauses in her moving about and looks back at Melon. "No, I haven't seen this fan. Tian, you say? That's unusual in these parts, though not unheard of. I wonder if it belonged to my family and was taken in some earlier goblin raid."
Even if the chest's contents aren't hers, from this I take it that Ameiko can possibly help to identify their source.

She said this without seeing the fan, just based on Melon's erroneous statement that we knew the fan was Tien.

Corinna is the only one with the right Knowledge skill, and she didn't make her roll with a 13:

Navior wrote:
Corinna is unable to notice any features that would definitively identify this as Tien or any other nationality; however, there's nothing that would definitively state it isn't Tien either.

Honestly, I'm a little annoyed with the metagaming when we have zero evidence that anything has to with Tian Xia, especially as it makes the person with ranks in Knowledge (geography) end up looking like an idiot in comparison to the person with no ranks in Knowledge (geography) based on out-of-game information. It's like a cleric with max ranks in Knowledge (religion) not making a roll to identify the weaknesses of a particular undead creature, only to have the PC with no Knowledge (religion) shout out what its DR is based on 'something my character saw as a kid' that they didn't want to spend skill points on. I can already read the "See, Corinna, I told you" from Melon when she "turns out" to be right, at which point you guys can go over the Crown of the World with Melon's' knowledge skills while Corinna goes to Magnimar. I'm sure she'll be able to tell you exactly what to do at every point, no matter what she rolls.

Yes, obviously, the AP is about Tian Xia. LoreKeeper has already run this part for his RL group. We all, OOC, know that the stuff is Tien and belongs to the Kaijitsu family. But there is no way the PCs know any of this.


Male Human Traveler / 8

Hear hear, Joana. That's been my take on it too.

Grand Lodge

I have been corrected. In light of this, Malan's first stop would be to the sheriff then he'd try to arrange for a meeting with a sage.


LoreKeeper wrote:
As Navior points out, I do know Jade Regent fairly well as I GM it for my IRL group. I base Melon's "Tien" assumptions on a bit of text in the AP that says that people that have the "Ameiko" trait will have spent some time in Ameiko's family's mansion (though personal backgrounds may disagree). Unlike the tavern, and specifically while Ameiko's dad is still alive, I expect the place to contain enough Tien items to instill a sense of "yes, this is Tien".

Ah, I see the problem. You're making assumptions about the Kaijitsu family mansion that may be true in your campaign but aren't in mine. I probably should have made them clearer earlier on. By the time the Kaijitsus set up in Sandpoint, they had very little of their old life left as they had left it all behind. Ameiko's father was born and raised in Magnimar. The family manor in Sandpoint was built by hired locals in a local style. The family was totally assimilated into local culture. They would have had one or two small relics from the olden days (thus Ameiko's conjecture that a Tien fan could have come from her home), but very little. Certainly not enough for someone with no knowledge of the land to get a feel for that land's style.

I also wouldn't consider a DC 10 check sufficient enough to determine cultural roots, not from a place as far away as Tian Xia, thus Corinna's fail on a 13. Sure, one could say it might come from Tian Xia, but it could just as easily come from a score of other "exotic" places and there's no reason to believe Tian Xia any more likely than the others.


Fair enough. :)


Come to think of the details: although Corinna ignored looking at the contents of the chest - does the chest itself look like a mundane chest or could it be identified as Tien. Given that Corinna would have had some time to see it while we were on our way back to Sandpoint, perhaps she can get a roll for it. Likewise with the strange short sword, that Melon showed to Tevyn and her.


Do you think if we don't make a Knowledge (geography) roll we're going to miss out on the adventure? What's the hurry with identifying this stuff as Tien? I'm sure the AP doesn't turn on a PC having Knowledge (geography) trained; there has to be a way to make the necessary connections without it.

It feels like you're trying to "fast-forward" us to "the good part."


hmmm... I think you're right, I'm probably a little bit guilty of that. Not that there's really a specific "good part" to get forward to (well, other than that the adventure is great!) - but I do get excited about every little bit of success we achieve, and I do not like when things meander about aimlessly for too long.

Along that line I love getting {spoiler=Skill DC} type things to try and roll for - particularly for knowledge checks which I otherwise find to be underutilized. Not specifically for my character (Melon's not overly knowledgeable), but for anybody. That - and knowledge rolls on behalf of players - help reflect the investments that PCs do. Having frequent skill-spoilers also help encourage players to invest and use their skills; even if the DC is entirely out of reach it still helps players to realize that a particular skill is relevant and worth putting resources into.

On a different angle, I need to constantly readjust my worldview in the game, there's a much greater range of things I'd expect to fall under common knowledge. Identifying anything vague and generic is a DC 10 check in my personal perception of things.

For example, the fan we found, yes the DC to determine that this specific fan comes from Tian Xia should be above 10. The examiner needs to determine the various bits and pieces that make up the fan, cross-reference the art work that is on it with the styles typical of various regions, liken the type of wood and its crafting to the trees found in various regions, be knowledgeable enough to know that there's no maker of similar replica items that could be a more likely candidate of origin, and so forth. And even then, the result cannot be absolutely certain - it is always a "likely this item comes from [bla]".

But... on the other hand, to determine if the fan with its drawing as a class of objects reflects the cultural representation and styles associated with a continent. That's a given. It's not automatic (hence the DC 10 check), but anybody will typically have been exposed to traveling curio shops, peddlers of strange wares, bards' tales of exotica, artist renditions, and societal stereotyping that could have left them with enough knowledge to make an educated guess.

Why don't we consider it odd that everybody is educated enough to be able to read and write (vast majority of characters at least) - but hardly anybody has the basic insight to guess that a given strange wooden fetish comes out of the Mwangi jungles, or the mural on a wall is Tien inspired?

So yes,


  • "this fan is quite likely of Tien origin" is a DC 10 check to identify the continent
  • "fans of this nature are common in Minkai" (DC 15)
  • "the cedar used on this fan grows predominantly in western Minkai" (DC 20)
  • "the image on this fan is a wonderful example of the Musashi school of minimalist colors and shades, which makes it likely that the fan was crafted in or near the quaint village of Kanto in western Minkai; birthplace of Musashi, the warrior artist" (DC 25)

I agree with Joana that it is important to value the investment a character makes into skills; but there's also a world of distinction between what a DC 10 knowledge check reveals over an "educated" knowledge check. The DC 10 check allows a character to be "real" and even have false "layman's" impressions of things: in the first few levels of a characters life there's often not a rank to spare to cover all the things that a character has been exposed to. Especially the first level is rarely enough to cover half of the supposed expertise and experiences of a character.

In Melon's case, for example, there are an average of 5.5 skill points per level (alternative favored class bonus). At level 1 she's still missing out on: climb, knowledge (local), linguistics (tien), profession, ride, sleight of hand, stealth, and survival. All things that are part of her background (from my perspective) and when I do put ranks in them in future levels they would not reflect new knowledge gained and experiences, but instead round-off the character's background as I have it in my head.

Given that the mechanics don't allow a character to fully represent their concept from the start, the DC 10 check mechanic is essentially the equalizer that ensures that "this character is real, look, she knows something".


I disagree that any commoner ought to be able to say "This fan is quite likely of Tien origin." In my mind, the vast majority of the population of Varisia doesn't even know about the existence of the other continents. Why should they? They're farmers and shopkeepers and peasants who never travel more than twenty miles from their place of birth. I would be shocked if more than 50% of the population has even heard of Tian Xia.

And I don't think that any first-level character's background should include more knowledge and skills than are available to that PC at first level. There's a reason we all have zero XPs. Because we haven't experienced that much. If we're just pretending to be first-level but acting like we have all the skills we'll have at fifth level, well, what's the point of being first level? I want to be the wide-eyed newbie who has to learn as she goes along, not a jaded world traveler. All that comes as the PCs gain actual experience. Which is why I hate 1st-level character backgrounds that assume a PC is an "expert" this, that, or the other, or has somehow fought various monsters on previous occasions without having gained a point of experience from it.

TL;DR: If your character concept "can't be fully represented from the start," that's because your concept isn't for a 1st-level character. Pretending like you have all the skills you intend to take at a later level discriminates against people who take the combat-weaker but higher-skill-point classes.


Quote:
I disagree that any commoner ought to be able to say "This fan is quite likely of Tien origin."

Sure, make it a PC's prerogative, rather than a NPC's. PCs have that whole going-out-there-and-doing-it-all-mind-wide-open mentality.

Quote:
There's a reason we all have zero XPs.

And that reason is arbitrary. Some other roleplaying games represent first level characters as 5000xp; where the xp is used to buy the starting characters features. How can you have 0xp but have learned to swing a sword well? Or cast a spell? Philosophically speaking I think one could argue the characters start with negative xp and gain xp all their lives in various ways up to the point where they achieve level 1 (by reaching 0 xp).

...

I've played 14-Int rogues that couldn't represent all their intended starting skills at level 1. I don't think there's discrimination happening with respect to high skill point classes. Before the magus became available a proper "fighter-wizard" character would require 2 levels to realize - so the availability of new material changes what can be represented at level 1 (or at least how well it can be represented). But I don't think the presence (or absence) of supporting material should dictate what kind of character background I devise.

Allow me to apologize if I slighted your character(s); it's not my intention: I'm just stating how I perceive the game and how I enjoy playing it for myself. I like to take a concept and fit it back onto the mechanics - sometimes the mechanics simply don't encompass enough to fit it all into level 1. Perhaps the difference is that you like to take the mechanics and fit them forward onto a concept? :)


Male Human Traveler / 8

I can see where an argument can be made that starting at 0 xp for first level is an arbitrary decision, but I don't think it really is. 1st level is for beginners, 0 xp represents a lack of adventuring experience. The skill points that are assigned at first level along with the feat and other first level abilities represent the training that has been completed up to the point where a PC becomes an adventurer (or whatever you want to call it).

On the other hand, many people have different ways of viewing these things, which is where the arbitrary bit comes in. The problem (in my mind) doesn't come from the different perspectives as much as from not everyone in a given group approaching a game from similar viewpoints. Technically we're all playing the same game in that we use the same core rules but the core rules are not enough to place everyone in the same game. Interpretation is everything.

There's nothing wrong with interpreting things in different ways but unless there's a discussion that allows for a group to understand those various ways of interpreting things, there's always a difficulty with communication. I've always thought that's the biggest impediment to pbps.


Iterations of D&D/Pathfinder are all I've ever played. And I enjoy starting from nothing and working my way up to competence. It's why I like lower-level play more than higher. I'd rather die repeatedly on the steps of the Friendly Arms Inn than fight Sarevok, or whatever the endgame of Baldur's Gate was. (I never finished.) In D&D/Pathfinder, if you're building a character that has a great deal of life experience, you're not building a first-level character.

To me, the difference between pre-adventuring career and level one is the difference between training and being on the job, or between theory and practice. You've taken fencing lessons and fought training dummies and sparred with blunted foils; now you get to see how you measure up against the real world. Or you've summoned a fire beetle in a laboratory under controlled conditions; can you hold it together enough to keep your concentration when you're casting in real danger?

EDIT:

LoreKeeper wrote:
Allow me to apologize if I slighted your character(s); it's not my intention: I'm just stating how I perceive the game and how I enjoy playing it for myself. I like to take a concept and fit it back onto the mechanics - sometimes the mechanics simply don't encompass enough to fit it all into level 1. Perhaps the difference is that you like to take the mechanics and fit them forward onto a concept? :)

The problem is, that if you're playing based on your concept, which is greater than the mechanics of level 1, and I'm playing based on what's on my character sheet, your character has an obvious advantage over mine. It's not a level playing field. I think everyone wishes they had more skills at first level, but in Pathfinder, you have to actually wait until another level to get them, instead of assuming you can speak Tien or are good at climbing because you intend to put a rank into it later on. I mean, Corinna just spent ten years in a wizard school. I could argue based on the fluff of her background that she ought to autopass any Knowledge (arcana) check under twenty. But you still have to roll the dice and take your chance. That's what makes it a game of numbers rather than freeform roleplay.


Quote:
The problem is, that if you're playing based on your concept, which is greater than the mechanics of level 1, and I'm playing based on what's on my character sheet, your character has an obvious advantage over mine

Well, this isn't strictly true. In my concept Melon should have Knowledge (local) (among other things) at level 1. Since she doesn't have a rank in it, she cannot use it - so obviously I play Melon without using it. For the sake of argument, in chat, she might mention her various travels throughout Varisia (which represents where the knowledge comes from) - but if required to know any specific thing where that skill applies... well she just happens not to know that specific thing. Similarly, her Climb skill (which is decent without a rank) should be higher in my concept - so for now I need to present her as being a distracted or off-her-game climber.

I still have to play by the same rules, and those are enforced by Navior not me.

I'm not saying that Melon is a master or expert at a great number of skills. Most of the skills she'll only ever have 1 rank in - to represent her having dabbled in many things. The emphasis of her story as she levels is how she becomes more focused.

Keep in mind that in 3.5 Melon would've had 20 skill points to create her initial skill layout. I love me some Pathfinder skill system, but in this case it makes it harder to represent at level 1 the kind of background I intended for Melon.


LoreKeeper wrote:
Keep in mind that in 3.5 Melon would've had 20 skill points to create her initial skill layout.

Point. I suppose in this case, you have to consider PfRPG vs. 3.5 like a D&D system vs. one of those games you're talking about where you start with 5000 xp: they're just different games in that respect, and a level one character means something slightly different in each one. 3.5 made it possible to build a dilettante 1st-level character who was a sort of jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none, as well as one who was focussed in fewer skills but better at each of them, and that sort of PC just isn't achievable in PfRPG at first level.

From your description of Melon's background, all the traveling she's done and the exploits she's been involved in, she feels more like a third- or fourth-level character. She ought to have been, as you say, dabbling in many things and picking up skills as she did so. The disconnect arises between her demeanor -- the been-there-done-that, have-I-ever-mentioned-that-time-in-Riddleport attitude of an experienced adventurer -- and her mechanics which indicate she shouldn't really know that much more than the rest of us.

To jump backwards a little...

LoreKeeper wrote:
hmmm... I think you're right, I'm probably a little bit guilty of that. Not that there's really a specific "good part" to get forward to (well, other than that the adventure is great!) - but I do get excited about every little bit of success we achieve, and I do not like when things meander about aimlessly for too long.

I don't at all consider the beginning of an adventure when the party is meeting and negotiating the group dynamics they're going to be part of for a very long time "aimless meandering." Look at the repercussions of Douena teasing Gelik about being tidy and getting cross with Lorenz for not bringing rope and how they've affected the way the group has or hasn't gotten along four levels later. And this group isn't shipwrecked on an island with no choice but to work together. If the caravan's about to leave at this point, Corinna has absolutely no IC reason to go along. This whole thing's been a nightmare to her and she is quite ready to write it off as a strange and unpleasant interlude in her life. The group hasn't gelled at all, and just because "we're all PCs so we'll pretend we're friends" is no reason for her to want to travel with them. Thanks to the dice, Corinna's failed at virtually every chance she's had to feel like a contributing member of the party; the only other PC she's made any kind of positive personal connection with is Tevyn; and the group's already split into two halves that snipe at one another at every opportunity.


Male Human Traveler / 8

I don't think the 3.5 version is all that different from the Pathfinder system of skills for first level. 1st level characters in 3.5 still could only have 4 ranks in any one skill. In Pathfinder, the same thing is achieved by training in a class skill. The skill monkeys in 3.5 tended to have trained skills as opposed to BAB or feats and it still, by and large, encompassed the training that takes someone to "ready to head out into the wilderness" mode.

You certainly had a lot more skill points to throw around at 1st level in 3.5 but it took you to essentially the same level of starting capability as the current system does. The essence of 1st level is still the same, so long as all players start with the same assumptions about a PC's life-experience as it pertains to adventuring.

In that sense, I suspect that even if we were playing 3.5 right now rather than Pathfinder, Joana (and I) would still view Melon to be leaps and bounds beyond our own characters by virtue of the way Melon is being roleplayed. Mechanically there's not such a difference but in-character perspective is where the difference really lies. It's all in the role-playing.

It's ultimately, I think, a choice. I prefer to play first level characters as though they haven't done...no, haven't accomplished much. So I choose to play it that way. Lorekeeper plays his as though the PC has accomplished a great deal but is not allowed to express that on a mechanical level due to the limitations of 1st level mechanics. It's just another choice.

By that same virtue, I created Lorenz as though he'd been traveling and in some sense adventuring for quite a long time. Technically he should have been much more advanced than he was. In order to make that work, I chose to play him as though he'd formerly been completely incompetent, and it's the necessities of survival on Smuggler's Shiv that changed that to the degree in which he accrued XP rather than staying at the same level of (in)capability.


Wander Weir wrote:

I don't think the 3.5 version is all that different from the Pathfinder system of skills for first level. 1st level characters in 3.5 still could only have 4 ranks in any one skill. In Pathfinder, the same thing is achieved by training in a class skill. The skill monkeys in 3.5 tended to have trained skills as opposed to BAB or feats and it still, by and large, encompassed the training that takes someone to "ready to head out into the wilderness" mode.

You certainly had a lot more skill points to throw around at 1st level in 3.5 but it took you to essentially the same level of starting capability as the current system does. The essence of 1st level is still the same, so long as all players start with the same assumptions about a PC's life-experience as it pertains to adventuring.

Not necessarily true. In PfRPG, Melon can have 5 skills trained; in 3.5, she could have 20 skills trained, even if she only had a +1 bonus in each of them. That would qualify her to make the rolls for untrained Knowledge skills, for example, even if she didn't have much of a bonus. If you want to reach the same level of competence, PfRPG, by virtue of its steamlined skill list, leaves you better off, but if you just want to indicate width rather than depth of experience, you could do so by dropping one skill point into a lot of different skills in 3.5 without being as good at any of them as you would be in PfRPG.

Wander Weir wrote:
In that sense, I suspect that even if we were playing 3.5 right now rather than Pathfinder, Joana (and I) would still view Melon to be leaps and bounds beyond our own characters by virtue of the way Melon is being roleplayed. Mechanically there's not such a difference but in-character perspective is where the difference really lies. It's all in the role-playing.

This is what I was trying to say. Corinna doesn't know what Melon's character sheet looks like, but she does know that Melon apparently has a great deal more experience with virtually everything than she does.


Okay, let's see if I can actually post now. I had a big long response written for this topic and couldn't post it. I was smart enough to copy and save it, but the conversation has advanced so much now, there's no point. Much of what I wanted to say has already been covered. At any rate... :)

LoreKeeper wrote:
Well, this isn't strictly true. In my concept Melon should have Knowledge (local) (among other things) at level 1. Since she doesn't have a rank in it, she cannot use it - so obviously I play Melon without using it. For the sake of argument, in chat, she might mention her various travels throughout Varisia (which represents where the knowledge comes from) - but if required to know any specific thing where that skill applies... well she just happens not to know that specific thing. Similarly, her Climb skill (which is decent without a rank) should be higher in my concept - so for now I need to present her as being a distracted or off-her-game climber.

The problem is, that only works so far and leads to a lot of potential verisimilitude problems, particularly with trained-only skills. It's one thing to say that she's just distracted or not all there with a skill like Climb, but how do you explain skills like Linguistics, particularly the languages that come from them? You specified in an earlier post that you see speaking Tien as being part of Melon's background. If, upon returning to the Rusty Dragon tonight, Melon were to encounter a person speaking Tien to her, she would not be able to communicate with that person unless they could find another language that they have in common. Is she just choosing to ignore this person? If so, what if it turns out later on that he was saying something important and she then has to explain why she deliberately ignored him?

Even where the "distracted" idea works, it still makes Melon out as a teller of tall tales. Over time, she's going to look like a liar when all her fabled Climbing abilities just aren't there, or her knowledge of the world just isn't right. Of course, if you want her to appear to be, or even actually be a liar, then that's a different matter, I suppose, but it's something that you need to be aware of.

To go way back to the Knowledge skill DCs for recognizing items' points of origin, I would increase all the DCs you listed by about 5. That to me would make more sense. Like Joana, I don't see knowledge of other lands as something even a commoner could make. Most people are only familiar with their own town and its immediate neighbours. They may know a few names of farther off places, but very little about those places (unless that place has a strong presence in their land, such as Cheliax in Sargava). Sure, marketplaces of larger cities will often have items from far-off lands for sale, but most people will categorize all those items in one group of "foreign" or "exotic". They won't remember enough of the details to separate an item from Tian Xia from one from Casmaron or Arcadia. This is mostly because they don't take an interest. They pass by or only look superficially at the items on display. The ones with a bit of skill or understanding are the ones who have taken a bit of time to pay attention.

The skill system in the game is certainly not perfect. It can create some head-scratching moments, particularly the broad reach of Knowledge skills. It's not difficult to get bonuses in the teens after just a couple of levels. Make the DCs too low and characters end up knowing everything about everything before they've even reached level 10.

Unfortunately, the guidelines for deciding Knowledge check DCs are rather vague, so different GMs are obviously going to have different opinions. An interesting thing I came across recently: The Godsmouth Heresy adventure module gives the DC to recognize a symbol of Pharasma painted on the floor as 15, which doesn't quite fit with your idea that recognizing major religions should be DC 10. I should point out that I wouldn't make that check that high in most places (particularly not in an ossuary that's dedicated to Pharasma, where the PCs have to interact with several Pharasmin clerics before entering), but it doesn't illustrate that you can't make assumptions about anything. :)

Edit: Yay, it worked! :)


Your Humble Narrator

Purely related to Navior's post-losing- if you use Firefox download the Lazarus plugin. With this forums unreliability, its a godsend.


Joana wrote:
This is what I was trying to say. Corinna doesn't know what Melon's character sheet looks like, but she does know that Melon apparently has a great deal more experience with virtually everything than she does.

From my perspective, all that Corinna knows is that Melon's a girl that's been around. No claims of expertise, skills or glorious battle, just somebody that's been traveling and has emphasized enjoying herself and perhaps has lived a little bit too much on the wild side. And Melon is of course not shy to talk about it.

If you'd asked me back when I was 10, I could've told you one heck of a lot of adventures that I've been on. They not so relevant now any more for the most part - but I could still tell plenty of stories of back then. Our lives (and that of our characters) are really only limited by how much we want to talk about it.

Seriously, our characters are around 20 years old (don't even let me start on what a level 1 elf could talk about). They've done a lot. A seriously big lot. Corinna has completed a degree at university. So Corinna was perhaps a more withdrawn student - but there's a really big lot of escapades that students get up to in general and she'd bound to know of plenty boisterous and lively students that could tell volumes of stories. Of course not really things that add to your xp tally at the end of the day.

But I don't mind if we don't see eye-to-eye on this; it's not a trainwreck or anything. :)


DM Alexander Kilcoyne wrote:
Purely related to Navior's post-losing- if you use Firefox download the Lazarus plugin. With this forums unreliability, its a godsend.

I do use Firefox, so I'll look into this. I've long since learned to copy everything I write before posting, but if Lazarus makes even that unnecessary, I won't complain! :)


Yeah, no, it's definitely not personal. Just a discussion of game philosophy.

And yes, every character has a backstory. The problem arises when the "fluff" of the backstory runs into the mechanics of the game. For example, "Melon lives on the wild side" is one thing; "Melon speaks Tien and is familiar with many foreign cultures" is another thing entirely, when she doesn't have ranks in Linguistics or Knowledge (geography). It's not backstory then; it's future-story that she hasn't gotten to yet. If your character concept is of someone who has had a lot of experience, then, by definition, your concept is not of a first-level character who has no experience, in the field where it really counts, anyway.

Yes, the game assumption is problematic when applied to the longer-lived races. (What the heck has the elf fighter been doing for the last century?) But I don't think the solution is to just let people arbitrarily decide how skilled their characters are based on the breadth of their backstory.

As Navior says, the natural in-character assumption would that Melon is a blowhard who can't possibly have done everything she says she's done. Except that, due to her on-going insistence on the treasure being Tien with zero in-game evidence that it's so, she's instead going to come across as preternaturally intelligent and wise when she turns out to be right. So you have, in fact, given her the benefit of having Knowledge (geography) trained when it's not, in the eyes of the party, anyway.


Your Humble Narrator
Navior wrote:
DM Alexander Kilcoyne wrote:
Purely related to Navior's post-losing- if you use Firefox download the Lazarus plugin. With this forums unreliability, its a godsend.
I do use Firefox, so I'll look into this. I've long since learned to copy everything I write before posting, but if Lazarus makes even that unnecessary, I won't complain! :)

Same here, but sudden PC crashes and windows update among other offenders, make it extra worth it.


I have never seen a character fail so consistently at everything.

On the plus side, there's a ring of climbing so Melon can have her good Climb skill now. :P

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