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Shard of Pride: Select one of the following three abilities, crossing the others off the Chronicle sheet. When active, this shard’s influence grants you the selected ability, and imparts upon you the listed penalty.
• Gain a +2 insight bonus on saves versus illusion spells and spell-like abilities.
• Gain major image as a spell-like ability usable 1/day.
• Gain a +2 insight bonus on all skill checks.
Penalty: You suffer delusions of grandeur, and are sickened whenever you must serve another creature as a subordinate of any sort for as long as that arrangement persists. You can neither gain the benefit of the aid another action, nor take the aid another action.
EDIT: Spoilered
Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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I suppose it mainly depends on two things:
- If the GM is being mean, he can rule that you serve as a subordinate. But maybe such a GM should read the "don't be a jerk" part of the rules again. It's on a chronicle sheet, so it should be usable by PFS character without permanently suffering the penalties.
- The character can handle being a Pathfinder in different ways. If he willingly does whatever the Venture-Captain tells him to do at every time of day (we all know that Drendle Dreng loves waking the PCs up late at night) without arguing, I'd definitely say he acts as a subordinate.
If, on the other hand, he sees the Venture-Captain merely as the person who comes crawling and offers interesting adventuring opportunities, and if he then quickly establishes himself as the party leader, I don't see any reason to describe his behavior as being a subordinate.
I actually think it's a fun roleplaying opportunity. There are not many characters who, after the mission briefing, will say things like "Well, thanks for the expedition data, Ambrus. You may leave now."
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I suppose it mainly depends on two things:
- If the GM is being mean, he can rule that you serve as a subordinate. But maybe such a GM should read the "don't be a jerk" part of the rules again. It's on a chronicle sheet, so it should be usable by PFS character without permanently suffering the penalties.
Trust me, the other threads bore out that campaign management intended for these curses to be unavoidable, and it was pretty much universally agreed that Pathfinders are by their very nature subordinates. As someone who has a shard, I wish it wasn't so, but they were deemed too powerful otherwise. I guess +2 to all skills is pretty hugely powerful though if you can just get that for free on a low level chronicle sheet, plus not being able to accept aid anothers and RPing the Pride Shard accurately leads to selfish play that makes the other characters feel useless: "Oh, sorry, my +30 Diplomacy is the highest, and in fact I cannot accept your Aid Another on Diplomacy, so I'll do all the talking", so it's possible that's part of the reason as well.
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Really? I'd say that you could wait till you're 'on the job' to activate it.
Otherwise why offer any of the shards. (In my opinion it's the only one playable as it is)
You are still a subordinate who is still doing a mission you were sent on by your superior. I love the Pride Shard, and my fairly-arrogant wizard in campaign mode had it on at all times (with the Int ioun stone in it to eliminate the curse), but in PFS, sadly, it's just basically a useless item unless you can get a ruling to revoke the older ones. I've tried a few times and accepted the decision, but I'll be happy to support you if you can come up with a better attempt, like when Jiggy got that one trait unbanned.
Anyway, the Greed one is pretty easy to deal with other than if you need to split a raise or something, you just pay some gold each level.
Also, if you agree that several of the other shards are definitely unplayable (which I agree, by the way), that isn't good evidence that the Pride Shard then must be playable, since other examples of unplayable shards give precedent that other chronicle sheets are willing to print unplayable shards.
I wonder what the diplomacy check for "Lick my boots and beg me to do you a favor, you unruly worm!" against a venture captain is...
Can I roll bluff to convince him I'm his commanding officer? Will a 57 suffice?
No robot with a stone face is my CO...I wonder what the diplomacy check for "Lick my boots and beg me to do you a favor, you unruly worm!" against a venture captain is...Can I roll bluff to convince him I'm his commanding officer? Will a 57 suffice?
You know I've never actually used that. Never seen someone act in character with the whole monotone thing either, though I've always wanted to.
No robot with a stone face is my CO...I wonder what the diplomacy check for "Lick my boots and beg me to do you a favor, you unruly worm!" against a venture captain is...Can I roll bluff to convince him I'm his commanding officer? Will a 57 suffice?
I almost fell out of my chair.
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No robot with a stone face is my CO...I wonder what the diplomacy check for "Lick my boots and beg me to do you a favor, you unruly worm!" against a venture captain is...Can I roll bluff to convince him I'm his commanding officer? Will a 57 suffice?
[soundwave] CO SUPPERIOR. VENTURE CAPTAIN....INFERIOR[/soundwave]
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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To get back to the original topic, first, if the boon was really intended to make a character permanently sickened, then it would be far worse than every other shard. I twould basically give you a drawback that not only counters the bonus but also gives the character additional penalties.
Also, they could have written it differently, like "since as a Pathfinder, you are a subordinate, you are permanently sickened."
If any player wanted to use that boon at my table, I'd definitely allow the character to be un-sickened as long as he is sufficiently distracted from the fact that he has superiors whom he has to answer to. (Unless, of course, the player wants his character to be just miserable.)
This means that the sickened conditions would surely return in encounters that wouldn't have happened if the characters weren't members of the Pathfinder Society, because such situation grimly remind the character of him running errants for the Decemvirate.
What the drawback means is that the character becomes so self-obsessed that he actually thinks he deserves to be boss of everything. This feeling is so strong that it physically pains him to do the bidding of others.
It's definitely not some magic effect that checks if there's some contract that says the character is a subordinate.
If I say a character has to suffer from the drawback just because there are superiors, the only person that would not suffer from this drawback would be the ruler of Rahadoum (no mortal or divine superior or sovereign).
And lastly, I never said it would be easy to overcome the Shard of Pride as a Pathfinder. Even if manage to shape your mission to your will, there are still other PCs and sometimes even NPCs that will remind you that you're only doing all this because the Venture-Captain told you to.
oh, and btw:
RPing the Pride Shard accurately leads to selfish play that makes the other characters feel useless: "Oh, sorry, my +30 Diplomacy is the highest, and in fact I cannot accept your Aid Another on Diplomacy, so I'll do all the talking", so it's possible that's part of the reason as well.
I don't see much difference between "My Diplomacy is +30, so I'll do the talking and can't accept help from you." and "My Diplomacy is +28, so I'll do the talking and I expect you to stand there and nod so you can assist me for a bonus of up to +10." (+10 when 5 characters successfully assist)
And while I'm at it, gaining +2 to every skill check seems like a very good bonus at first, but having to sacrifice aid another actually results in potentially lower skill modifiers, expcept when aiding isn't possible anyway (which doesn't happen much).
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I don't see much difference between "My Diplomacy is +30, so I'll do the talking and can't accept help from you." and "My Diplomacy is +28, so I'll do the talking and I expect you to stand there and nod so you can assist me for a bonus of up to +10." (+10 when 5 characters successfully assist)
It's because we don't run assists the same way. In my games, and I've seen this opinion from other GMs too, if you want to assist, you must RP or describe something that you are adding to the situation, so in that case everyone talks, and it makes the game more cooperative for the players.
If any player wanted to use that boon at my table, I'd definitely allow the character to be un-sickened as long as he is sufficiently distracted from the fact that he has superiors whom he has to answer to. (Unless, of course, the player wants his character to be just miserable.)
This means that the sickened conditions would surely return in encounters that wouldn't have happened if the characters weren't members of the Pathfinder Society, because such situation grimly remind the character of him running errants for the Decemvirate...And lastly, I never said it would be easy to overcome the Shard of Pride as a Pathfinder. Even if manage to shape your mission to your will, there are still other PCs and sometimes even NPCs that will remind you that you're only doing all this because the Venture-Captain told you to.
That's actually a clever way around it. In some ways, I like it a lot. I worry about two facets of it though:
1) It breaks a rule of design that we don't want to give mechanical advantages to someone for choosing a lower ability score (other than the opportunity cost advantage in point buy to buy up something else), and it seems like you would need a pretty negative wisdom to forget something like that (I've seen a lot of 7 Wis character in the Society who would fit the bill, though).
2) The player with the shard might easily bully the other players out of character with "If you ever mention that we have a job from the Venture Captain or are members of the Society in-character to me, it nerfs my character, so that's PvP and being a jerk. You better never say it."
1) It breaks a rule of design that we don't want to give mechanical advantages to someone for choosing a lower ability score (other than the opportunity cost advantage in point buy to buy up something else), and it seems like you would need a pretty negative wisdom to forget something like that (I've seen a lot of 7 Wis character in the Society who would fit the bill, though).
Pfft, I don't need to dump wisdom to tell you how arrogant I am! I'm so awesome I don't even need to tell you how arrogant I am, you should just know. In fact, I radiate awesomeness, can't you see it!
Roleplaying pride can be a lot of fun at the table. Lots of ways to handle it.
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1) It breaks a rule of design that we don't want to give mechanical advantages to someone for choosing a lower ability score (other than the opportunity cost advantage in point buy to buy up something else), and it seems like you would need a pretty negative wisdom to forget something like that (I've seen a lot of 7 Wis character in the Society who would fit the bill, though).Pfft, I don't need to dump wisdom to tell you how arrogant I am! I'm so awesome I don't even need to tell you how arrogant I am, you should just know. In fact, I radiate awesomeness, can't you see it!
Roleplaying pride can be a lot of fun at the table. Lots of ways to handle it.
Oh you can be arrogant, but that's not enough. Andreas was talking about delusionally forgetting that you are even a Pathfinder, which I agree would make you OK on the shard but would require huge Wis dump or Int dump.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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I didn't talk about actually forgetting as if you were afflicted with amnesia or altzheimers.
You don't need low Wisdom to actively distract yourself from certain unpleasant facts. Lots of people do that more than enough in real life.
The player with the shard might easily bully the other players out of character with "If you ever mention that we have a job from the Venture Captain or are members of the Society in-character to me, it nerfs my character, so that's PvP and being a jerk. You better never say it."
Have him do that in-character, then he has great opportunity to roleplay his character's inner conflict.
Also, it won't save him from NPCs coming around the corner and saying "We wouldn't harm any normal passers-by, but since you are Pathfinders sent by your Venture-Captain, we're going to beat you up." (There are actually encounters that work that way. They don't use these exact words, but those are their reasons for attacking.)In my games, and I've seen this opinion from other GMs too, if you want to assist, you must RP or describe something that you are adding to the situation, so in that case everyone talks, and it makes the game more cooperative for the players.
First, I don't like "just nodding and rolling the assist" either, but there are a lot of players who do that.
Second, if there's a character with a Shard of Pride and a +30 Diplomacy, would you just let him do the talking without any in-character discussion? The characters don't know that his arrogance is caused by a thassilonian artifact. They might even try to assist, which can be roleplayed. In that case, I expect the character with the shard will either just ignore what they're saying or tell them to be quiet and let him do the talking (the character, not the player) which might lead to more discussion among the characters.This all encourages roleplaying instead of shutting it down.
All the player has to do is shift his bullying/demanding/etc. from out-of-character to in-character, and he will turn from jerk to good roleplayer.
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The player with the shard might easily bully the other players out of character with "If you ever mention that we have a job from the Venture Captain or are members of the Society in-character to me, it nerfs my character, so that's PvP and being a jerk. You better never say it."
If someone said that to me, every single statement out of my mouth would start with "Well, for the greater glory of the Pathfinder Society and the continuance of our assigned mission, I think we should ..."
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The player with the shard might easily bully the other players out of character with "If you ever mention that we have a job from the Venture Captain or are members of the Society in-character to me, it nerfs my character, so that's PvP and being a jerk. You better never say it."If someone said that to me, every single statement out of my mouth would start with "Well, for the greater glory of the Pathfinder Society and the continuance of our assigned mission, I think we should ..."
And I would think that's hilarious, personally, but I've seen enough other people post on the boards to know that many people (or at least the majority of vocal people on the boards) would consider that falling under "don't be a jerk" and violating "cooperate" (in the same way that paladins have to put up with undead because it nerfs the necromancer's abilities, we be forced to not mention being Pathfinders on a mission and even to tiptoe around it).
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Making something PFS legal, but also making it impossible to play, is pretty terrible game design. Having just acquired the chronicle sheet with the Shard of Pride, and trying to do the mental gymnastics necessary to justify it to myself, much less some random GM and players out there, it's just incredulous.
And I'm one of those people who thinks Paladins should be banned from Society. In my experience, it's a class that attracts jerks who want to tell other players what to do, but it's OK, because "I'm Lawful Good and I can tell you what to do."
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8
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I didn't talk about actually forgetting as if you were afflicted with amnesia or altzheimers.
You don't need low Wisdom to actively distract yourself from certain unpleasant facts. Lots of people do that more than enough in real life.
Distracting yourself from the facts doesn't change those facts. Facts are objective, not subjective and the magic of the shard doesn't work on the character's perception of his station, but on his actual station. As long as you are a Pathfinder, you are subordinate to Venture Captains and the Decemvirate.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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Distracting yourself from the facts doesn't change those facts. Facts are objective, not subjective and the magic of the shard doesn't work on the character's perception of his station, but on his actual station.
The magic of the shard doesn't make you sickened. It heightens your illusions of grandeur in such a way that serving as a subordinate will physically sicken you.
Making something PFS legal, but also making it impossible to play, is pretty terrible game design.
That's the one reason I even consider arguing about it in the first place. It just doesn't make any sense to give players a boon that basically says you get -2 on everything except skill checks and you can't aid another or be aided.
It's a big ol' excuse to act like a jerk, too.
And basically it makes the character ignore the Society's rule to cooperate.
While getting +2 on all skill checks seems good at first, the drawbacks just make this shard bad (even if a GM lets you get around the sickened condition).It would be good on day jobs, though. You can't aid another on day jobs anyway, and while earning money with a day job, the character doesn't act as the Society's subordinate. But it would still not be very good.
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There are other aspects of the Shard that are troubling as well. It's a big ol' excuse to act like a jerk, too.
There are ways to ameliorate the sickened condition. (The other thread listed some Barbarian and Oracle class features, if I recall correctly.)
Barbarian Rage Power Internal Fortitude makes you immune to the sickened condition when raging. You need to be a level 8 Barbarian. The Oracle Wasting Curse makes you immune to the sickened condition at level 5. There is also the Internal Fortitude Defensive Power of the Stalwart Defender.
Not all options are good options.