Hi All
Our group has only recently started playing PF after a 3.5 campaign finished. Some players have been playing 3.5 for a long long time, others are very new to RPGs.
I'm a player in our main campaign and occasional GM for short side games and I'm trying to get the rules really well known in my own head. I'd like to get confident enough to run some convention games at some point too.
I'm thinking that I might volunteer a short 5 min 'spotlight' on a small section of the rules each session for our current game as this might help me get the rules down (by explaining them) and may also remind players of a few bits and pieces they didn't know about and could use. For example I have never seen anyone in our group use fighting defensively or total defence.
Clearly I need to ask the main GM of our group and the players if they would find this useful but I wanted to ask you, a cross section of the PF community if you had tried something similar in your groups and how this had gone?
Anyone tried this?
I haven't, but it sounds like a great idea. There are a lot of differences between 3.5 and PF that, if you don't read thoroughly, you could keep playing the old way for quite a while before you notice.
If you have a lot of 3.5 players, you might want to download
http://paizo.com/products/btpy89m6?Pathfinder-Roleplaying-Game-Conversion-G uide
It's free, and has some useful tips as to some of the changes.
|
One of the more difficult aspects of moving between the two rulesets, particularly if you know one of them well, is that there are lots of small changes that make it difficult to assume what is the same. We're i to provide advice:
1) let yourself be willing to make the character changes first without worrying as much about the other changes immediately.
2) there is a very long thread that focused on things about PF players tend to not know. I did the summary of that thread through the active and more productive early portion. There is a link in my profile to the last summary. While there are a few gems after that summary, the noise to signal ratio rises dramatically after the last summary. It quickly became apparent on that thread that a lot of the suggested topics were due to 3.5 to PF changes. The summary is organized to reflect that. I hope you find it helpful.
3) when I first started playing PF, I went through the 1st level wizard and cantrip lists. That's roughly 45-spells. Of them, IIRC, 18 of them had changes to some degree. Be prepared for this and a constant refrain of "that's different now" as you strive for mastery if the new ruleset.
I say go for it. If you want it to be more topical, go for a sticky rule that came up in the previous session, or one that you think will pop up in the current. Even after playing a system for years, there will always be situations that pop up and require examination.
Some other things that came up a lot during my past few years running and playing that might slip past the conversion guide.
-Natural 1s on skill checks aren't automatic failures (with a couple exceptions)
-Many spells that you might be intimately familiar with from 3.5 have subtle differences that might assumptively go unnoticed, like Haste, Death Ward, Hero's Feast, Mind Blank, Shapechange
-Some class features are very different from previous incarnations (like Smite).
I'll try and think of others..
Jiggy, you have shared with us a glimpse of your sadistic side (which is a fine quality in GMs).
|
I've done this with my groups. I always keep it brief, fun, and to the point. For example, I teach about AoOs over two brief sessions. First session we watch this video. Second session, usually the same day, we play with reach weapons and AoOs.