How to Avoid Becoming a Murder Hobo


Advice

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1)Get a quest from the GM, or maybe sandbox one yourselves. These usually involve helping some unfortunate people who are being taken advantage of.

2)Investigate, problem solve, chase in order to kill (the bad) people and take their stuff.Enjoy the story and hanging out with friends.

3)Consume, barter, trade said stuff so that you can be prepared for the next adventure.

I'm just left feeling cold after reading the guide and most of the posts. Maybe my roleplaying group and our expectations are different? It seems that people resent players not having a back story and the typical(?) adventure formula is criticized. Meh.


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I read posts on this thread, and what I see a lot of is "You other guys just aren't very good roleplayers because you are obsessed with gold gear and experience, and pursue it first and foremost."

Now some people don't really care about leveling or gear and they just want to roleplay, and have a few challenging fights here or there. These people are rare. I'm not saying that most people are munchkins, I'm just saying that the mechanics are something that most people who play pathfinder enjoy. If they didn't they would probably be more comfortable in simpler systems that don't have thousands of pages of rules that you need to be at least passingly familiar with.

And if you like a part of a game you want to improve in that area. This encourages people to pursue options that yeild them levels and gear. In pathfinder the way to gain those things is by killing in the vanilla rules.

You see it's not that people automatically make murder hobo's it is that pathfinder mechanically conditions us to pursue that option. This is a flaw of the game. If you don't kill you don't level.

In my opinion the best way to encourage people to make more interesting characters is first and foremost change that rule. An easy way is to make leveling more like gaining mythic teirs you need to accomplish a significant challenge to level. This could be anything sufficiently epic for the level not necessarily combat. It could be as an example a skillful political maneuver, or closer to traditional adventuring finally discovering a lost city, or breaking an enchantment, or figuring out how to exorcise the high priest. Of course killing the dragon is acceptable too. However this is only half the problem.

How to deal with gear. You cant really make magic items rare, that would require a massive overhaul of the rules. So what needs to change is the way you give out gold. Instead of the spoils of war being the primary source of gear you could make it that the rewards the king gives are actually 90% of what the pcs earn on the adventure, loot being a token gesture rarely given except against humanoids and at very appropriate times like a dragon hoard. Fewer biger story significant payments. This also makes those buy-sell sessions fewer, this is nice as those can drag.

I think you will find that without constant positive re-enforcement PCs will look at killing as an option, but not the automatic answer, and not necessarily the most common choice.

This is enough of a change, but if you want to take it one step further you can speed up certain parts of the game and skip meaningless battles like random encounters (maybe roaming monsters just aren't that common?). Make encounters each significant in other ways as the pc gain nothing in and of itself from fights. One way to make fights that aren't plot important fights interesting is an appeal to emotion or mystery. For instance you have found the hidden cult temple, and every encounter tells the PCs something about the final encounter and what is actually going on. Let PC's catch fragments of conversation. Or let them witness torture and appeal to their emotions (if you think that would work for them). Or the room has weird properties that are relevant to the fight that suggest something of what is going on like there are invisible walls all around that the cultists can traverse but the PC's cant (no reason to be fair right?).

Just some thoughts I've had on the subject.


Of course that is not to say I don't like murder hoboing, though I don't. I love it.


Saldiven wrote:

If your character truly does have a defined and played out personality that is interesting and entertaining, nobody's going to complain.

The problem is that the vast majority of "murderhobos" (in my experience, and based on opinions posted on threads here) consist of characters with no particular personality, motivation or backstory being played by people who only want to roll dice and see how much damage they did. While that may be tons of fun for that player, it's not terribly interesting for the rest of the group, hence the complaints.

Which is one thing... and not at all what the article says. I think you miss at least one of the core points I'm trying to make (admittedly, this has something to do with the fact that the article author apparently just stopped responding so I haven't had the point to articulate them fully).

The article poses three questions that are supposed to stop a character from being a murderhobo. They fail. Epically. Fantastically. Because I can do two things with those three points I made.

#1. Make a well-written, interesting, fun character that is, by his logic, a murderhobo.

#2. Make a terribly-written boring character that is, by his logic, not a murderhobo.

Let's pull some pieces from the article. For the purposes of my example, Player 1 is following the concept I enumerated earlier (and that thorin labeled as the Great White Hunter. I don't like the name but it is pretty accurate).

Player 2 is a stereotypical murderhobo, but has a (thinly developed) romance with another PC that never really shows up until it's time to buy rooms at the local inn though.

Going through the three questions:

Quote:
Who Are They Connected To?

Player 1's answer is 'nobody', Player 2's answer is their fellow PC.

Quote:


Why Are They Adventuring?

Both of them answer "to kill things"

Quote:
Why Are They In The Party?

Player 1's answer is "because they help kill things". Player 2 can point to this romance.

Already, despite (By your own admission) Player 1 having an interesting character, Player 2 is ahead by the arbitrary nature of this article.

Quote:
Their only motivations seem to be blood letting and collecting resources, but without any motivation for either. They are violent forces of destruction who take as much loot as they can for no purpose other than to upgrade their murder tools to take on bigger and bigger targets.

True of both characters.

I could go on, but I hope the point has been established. These questions are pretty close to useless. Way back when I started playing RPGs, I tried to follow things like them, and came across some characters that were... well. The systems I was playing on didn't really allow for the classic murderhobo setup but they were about as close as one could get.

If we want to talk about "How to not make a Murderhobo, or How to make Murderhobos Interesting", that's an entirely different conversation. You'll note that even what you mention and what this article mentions are the same thing (search for the word "personality" in that thread. It's the single most important thing a character can have, something you explicitly called out, and not in the article there).


Murderhobo is a term that describes a character that exists in a system that mechanically encourages murder and that controls wealth in a way that encourages certain purchases over others in such a way that you have don't have the freedom to save money or invest in the setting or plot without limiting your character in some way. Such as a system with experience for killing and wealth by level. We CAN play 20 questions and solve the issue at the table, but it certainly doesn't address the cause of murderhobos.


kestral287 wrote:
Saldiven wrote:

If your character truly does have a defined and played out personality that is interesting and entertaining, nobody's going to complain.

The problem is that the vast majority of "murderhobos" (in my experience, and based on opinions posted on threads here) consist of characters with no particular personality, motivation or backstory being played by people who only want to roll dice and see how much damage they did. While that may be tons of fun for that player, it's not terribly interesting for the rest of the group, hence the complaints.

Which is one thing... and not at all what the article says. I think you miss at least one of the core points I'm trying to make (admittedly, this has something to do with the fact that the article author apparently just stopped responding so I haven't had the point to articulate them fully).

The article poses three questions that are supposed to stop a character from being a murderhobo. They fail. Epically. Fantastically. Because I can do two things with those three points I made.

#1. Make a well-written, interesting, fun character that is, by his logic, a murderhobo.

#2. Make a terribly-written boring character that is, by his logic, not a murderhobo.

Let's pull some pieces from the article. For the purposes of my example, Player 1 is following the concept I enumerated earlier (and that thorin labeled as the Great White Hunter. I don't like the name but it is pretty accurate).

Player 2 is a stereotypical murderhobo, but has a (thinly developed) romance with another PC that never really shows up until it's time to buy rooms at the local inn though.

Going through the three questions:

Quote:
Who Are They Connected To?

Player 1's answer is 'nobody', Player 2's answer is their fellow PC.

Quote:


Why Are They Adventuring?

Both of them answer "to kill things"

Quote:
Why Are They In The Party?
Player 1's answer is "because they help kill things". Player 2 can point to this romance....

I suspect, in practice, they don't fail. Yes, it's possible to subvert them and make an interesting character with bad answers who is technically a murderhobo. The real purpose of the questions is to make a player who might not otherwise do so, think about the answers. Your Player 1 has obviously done so, even though he's come up with stereotypical murderhobo answers, he's got reasons behind them. Player 2 hasn't done such a great job. I'd actually push on his reason for adventuring. Well, both of theirs, but Player 1 has an answer. Player 2 apparently doesn't. I'd push on the 3rd question as well, unless the other party in the romance has a good reason, in which case "I'm with her" makes sense.

The other point is the Great White Hunter really isn't that interesting of a character. When used in literature, the point is often to subvert the trope - He becomes interesting when he has to care about something other than killing animals.


Hogeyhead wrote:

Now some people don't really care about leveling or gear and they just want to roleplay, and have a few challenging fights here or there. These people are rare. I'm not saying that most people are munchkins, I'm just saying that the mechanics are something that most people who play pathfinder enjoy. If they didn't they would probably be more comfortable in simpler systems that don't have thousands of pages of rules that you need to be at least passingly familiar with.

And if you like a part of a game you want to improve in that area. This encourages people to pursue options that yeild them levels and gear. In pathfinder the way to gain those things is by killing in the vanilla rules.

You see it's not that people automatically make murder hobo's it is that pathfinder mechanically conditions us to pursue that option. This is a flaw of the game. If you don't kill you don't level.

I'd just like to point out that even in Core, experience is given for overcoming challenges, killing is not necessary though it is the most common approach. Story awards are also discussed.


Quote:
I suspect, in practice, they don't fail. Yes, it's possible to subvert them and make an interesting character with bad answers who is technically a murderhobo. The real purpose of the questions is to make a player who might not otherwise do so, think about the answers. Your Player 1 has obviously done so, even though he's come up with stereotypical murderhobo answers, he's got reasons behind them. Player 2 hasn't done such a great job. I'd actually push on his reason for adventuring. Well, both of theirs, but Player 1 has an answer. Player 2 apparently doesn't. I'd push on the 3rd question as well, unless the other party in the romance has a good reason, in which case "I'm with her" makes sense.

My experience with 'guides' just like this says the exact opposite. I've made both of those characters, in fact (several years apart, mind, but hey). The first had a fairly long and intricate backstory detailing, in effect, how he got to be what he was-- where he got his skills from, why he was what he was, etc., etc. (also it was the kind of game where the average PC was a couple hundred years old and I hate having 'empty' years of backstory). The second had like two paragraphs that basically answered the required questions.

*Shrug* Admittedly you can call me an outlier if you like, but that's my experiences in practice. The tipping point, for me, into building real characters was when a certain (utterly broken) power that I wanted had a minor personality requirement attached to it, and I started thinking about why she'd act like that and finally got a real person.

Quote:
The other point is the Great White Hunter really isn't that interesting of a character. When used in literature, the point is often to subvert the trope - He becomes interesting when he has to care about something other than killing animals.

Again... my experience differs. He might not have been a dynamic character, but dynamic and interesting are not the same thing.


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murderhobo
/mərdərhōbō/
noun
noun: murderhobo; plural noun: murderhobos

1. a character whose motivations essentially match the game system's most basic and practical goals (defeat enemies, gain power, gain wealth), paying no regard to less obvious needs, such as the owning of real estate or the keeping of a nutritional diet.
"S!&#, here come those adventurers. Choose five things you love and we'll feed them to the pig so the murderhobos can't get them."
synonyms: mercenary, adventurer, greedy bastard, pirate, freelancer

2. a homeless warrior
"someone tell the party murderhobo to take a g!**@%n shower."
synonyms: serial killer

3. a character who is not roleplayed beyond his or her player's out-of-character desires.
"I'm sick of all my players playing murderhobos."
synonyms: metagamer related terms: powergamer, minmaxer, paladin

A lot of the anti-"murderhobos" crowd seem to run with #3, but I believe the majority of us run with the similar but more flexible first definition. This is likely the source of a good deal of disconnect.

Murderhobos, like paladins, can be played in an entertaining manner or an obnoxious one. At their core, paladins are righteous, lawful, and well-intentioned. Meanwhile, murderhobos at the core are greedy, extremely practical and self-serving, and extremely prone to killing things to solve their problems.

People need to stop mashing all of these roles together like they're the same thing. Murderhobos are not powergamers are not rollplayers are not milk thieves are not entitled are not cheaters are not Leeroy Jenkinses. A murderhobo is not inherently optimized, against RP, obnoxious, or stupid. Hell, a murderhobo is more likely to be fairly clever, since his entire life is based around this job and he's probably wise to a lot of the popular pitfalls.

GM: "Before you you see a fifteen-by-fifteen foot room. There is a treasure chest in the center of it."
Barbarian (exiled prince who longs one day to return home, cast out his treacherous brother, and reclaim the throne in time for the centennial diplomatic visit to the xenophobic elf kingdom so he can meet up with the princess, his true love): "Ooh! Shiny! I run out and—"
Ranger (likes killing things and getting paid for it): "Wait! Wait, my barbarian friend, for you are inexperienced in the subterranean mind games which we must now play. I must perform the ancient Rite of Caedis Erro!" To GM: "I check the ceiling."


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No no, BadWrongFun must be stopped, punished, and made fun of.

Meanwhile, I end up playing a character who secretly cross-dresses to avoid being recognized and has a long, elaborate backstory. But he still calls himself "a wandering murderhobo" has no real goal beyond the immediate ones before him in the form of whatever plot hooks the GM throws his way. It's not that he has no desires, dreams, or personality; he simply isn't in a hurry to complete a major goal (elf, long lifespan) and keeps seeing injustices or evils that his conscience can't ignore.


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Purple Dragon Knight wrote:
Bah! if you think keeping the gold stolen by orcs is morally reprehensible once the orcs have been dispatched (as a fee for the dispatching) then you have a problem with every governments that ever existed in the history of all time (crown lands, taxation, right of way, tolls, etc.)

What if I told you I do?


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Undone wrote:
Purple Dragon Knight wrote:
Bah! if you think keeping the gold stolen by orcs is morally reprehensible once the orcs have been dispatched (as a fee for the dispatching) then you have a problem with every governments that ever existed in the history of all time (crown lands, taxation, right of way, tolls, etc.)
What if I told you I do?

Then I'd tell you to do your political preaching somewhere besides the gaming table, if I wanted to listen to people b@&@# about real life problems I wouldn't be playing a fantasy game now would I?

Sovereign Court

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I dress in the finest clothes bedecked in a plethora of jewelry, I ensure all of it is cleaned regularly via magical means. Hobo indeed...


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"Hey guys, I feel kinda bad just taking all this stolen money. It doesn't feel right. I mean GoodFolks village probably really needs this money to make it through the winter. Should we really be taking it as our own?"


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"Did they ask for it back? You can give them your portion if you want but they also said something about a Dragon. I'd rather have a sword that can hurt it and see the village NOT burned to the ground."


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"Didn't realize you had to ask someone to do the right thing. Guess they thought we'd act like the heroes that we are instead of simply being the bandits that loot the other bandits. Yeah you guys go fight the Dragon, I'm gonna go help the village and find some adventurers with morals."

This conversation showed why many good characters might have trouble adventuring with neutral sociopaths (often, but not always a Murderhobo). Sure it's legal, but it's slimy.


Insain Dragoon wrote:

"Didn't realize you had to ask someone to do the right thing. Guess they thought we'd act like the heroes that we are instead of simply being the bandits that loot the other bandits. Yeah you guys go fight the Dragon, I'm gonna go help the village and find some adventurers with morals."

This conversation showed why many good characters might have trouble adventuring with neutral sociopaths (often, but not always a Murderhobo). Sure it's legal, but it's slimy.

The party dies to the dragon without ID. ID and the villagers are killed by the dragon afterwards.


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But at least I didn't die a theif.


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Insain Dragoon wrote:
But at least I didn't die a theif.

You either die low level or you level up enough to see yourself become the villain.


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I'm sure it's a comfort to all those dead villagers that you get to keep feeling good about yourself.

I have bigger problems to worry about than tracking down every individual villager and trying to work out who owned what (they aren't a hivemind, y'know, they're capable of lying). So you have fun with your delivery quest.

Insain Dragoon wrote:
But at least I didn't die a theif.

Okay, so instead you die a traitor who abandoned his allies so they could fight and die on a village's behalf...because they didn't go out of their way to get every last tin pan back to its rightful owner within that village. At least you die with honor?


Hey man, if they wanted me to spend their gold on weapons and armor they would have said so. Who am I to steal their money assuming it's paymemt?


Insain Dragoon wrote:
Hey man, if they wanted me to spend there gold on weapons and armor they would have said so. Who am I to steal their money assuming it's paymemt?

What the villagers get is the peace of mind of knowing those bandits who stole their s*$% originally aren't coming back to terrorize them anymore. If they wanted their money back as well they should have manned up and got PC class levels like the rest of us.


Who are you to judge me for not pausing my actual quest to go back and hope the villagers operate on the honor system when I show them the orcs' hordes and ask them to point out what belonged to them?

I'm sure they'll tell me if there's anything they need from the bandits that got stolen. If they don't mention it, it's probably not that big a deal to them and not worth wasting time on.

chaoseffect wrote:
If they wanted their money back as well they should have manned up and got PC class levels like the rest of us.

Or, y'know, given the PCs a list of the stuff they lost so the PCs can return it.

You can't expect PCs to go out of their way to do stuff nobody asked them to do. And if they're gonna do that, it should be intuitive stuff, like "save that duke from the dragon". Adventurers aren't always that smart, especially the paladins.


chaoseffect wrote:
Insain Dragoon wrote:
Hey man, if they wanted me to spend there gold on weapons and armor they would have said so. Who am I to steal their money assuming it's paymemt?
What the villagers get is the peace of mind of knowing those bandits who stole their s+$@ originally aren't coming back to terrorize them anymore. If they wanted their money back as well they should have manned up and got PC class levels like the rest of us.

Justified like a true murder hobo or bandit of bandits.


Also, I missed this before—if the paladin is the one abandoning the party because he's non-compatible with the entire group, that's not on the neutral/chaotic PCs. That's on him. He was a crappy PC made for the wrong campaign. :P


Or he's just a good guy Greg of the neutral good allignment and the rest of the party wrote the wrong allignments down on their character sheets.

Nothing wrong with being a bandot of bandits as long as everyones happy with the moral grey area.

Edit: I've seen a good PC steal the entire coffers of a Castle they were breaking into to kill the Lord. Those coffers had all the tax money for that year.... He didn't Robin Hood it btw, just kept it.

He had Chaotic Good on his sheet.


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What difference does it make if he's Neutral Good? A PC who is incompatible with the entire party is a crappy PC whether he's a paladin, a gunslinger, a murderhobo, or a chicken.


Kobold Cleaver wrote:
What difference does it make if he's Neutral Good? A PC who is incompatible with the entire party is a crappy PC whether he's a paladin, a gunslinger, a murderhobo, or a chicken.

Re read my post. Sometimes other party members are the fault. "yeah we're gonna do a hero campaign! Oh sweet jesus what are you doing?"


Insain Dragoon wrote:


Edit: I've seen a good PC steal the entire coffers of a Castle they were breaking into to kill the Lord. Those coffers had all the tax money for that year.... He didn't Robin Hood it btw, just kept it.

He had Chaotic Good on his sheet.

Sounds like a Chaotic Neutral act. He's not really hurting anyone (except the dead lord), he's just not helping anyone, either (except for killing the lord, which, assuming it doesn't cause massive societal upheaval, should be fine since it sounds like he's evil). The taxes were already taken from the poor, so it's not as if they're going to get any poorer. So what's the problem? Good guys can commit Neutral acts from time to time.

Insain Dragoon wrote:
and the rest of the party wrote the wrong allignments down on their character sheets.

By the way, this isn't a "reread". This is a "read". It would be a "reread" if this had been there from the start, rather than something you edited in. ;P

Yeah, that's another story. Literally, since this is the first time you brought in the "inaccurate alignment" angle. Before, you explicitly called them:

Insain Dragoon wrote:
neutral sociopaths


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It doesn't matter if you "kept your honor", everyone in the village (and the party) died because you didn't help.


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I honestly feel this is more of a morale or alignment based argument rather than an argument about "murder hobos"


ShroudedInLight wrote:
I honestly feel this is more of a morale or alignment based argument rather than an argument about "murder hobos"

This. Let's get the paladin thread vibes off the murderhobo thread. They mix about as well as you'd expect.

And I know this is me speaking as someone who's been drawn into it. It was instinct! I'm protective of my murderhobos!


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ShroudedInLight wrote:
I honestly feel this is more of a morale or alignment based argument rather than an argument about "murder hobos"

That's actually why I dropped the argument, I realized I was letting this become an alignment thread.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
DominusMegadeus wrote:
It doesn't matter if you "kept your honor", everyone in the village (and the party) died because you didn't help.

wouldn't it be a kick in the pants if that rumor about that dragon was false/it was actually a gold dragon, doing gold dragon things?


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The gold dragon proceeds to confiscate the party's gold, wagging a claw and telling them they have learned a very valuable lesson today.

Then it takes the gold and flies off, never to be seen again.


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Kobold Cleaver wrote:

The gold dragon proceeds to confiscate the party's gold, wagging a claw and telling them they have learned a very valuable lesson today.

Then it takes the gold and flies off, never to be seen again.

And then in 15 levels the party finishes the genocide of all gold dragons, thus fulfilling the prophecy and acting as harbingers of the end times.


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chaoseffect wrote:
Kobold Cleaver wrote:

The gold dragon proceeds to confiscate the party's gold, wagging a claw and telling them they have learned a very valuable lesson today.

Then it takes the gold and flies off, never to be seen again.

And then in 15 levels the party finishes the genocide of all gold dragons, thus fulfilling the prophecy and acting as harbingers of the end times.

Players murdering heavyhanded GM intervention? That's never happened before.

Liberty's Edge

Can't...keep...quiet...any...longer...

The term 'murderhobo' is a term which 50% of the RPG community finds offensive, 25% proudly admits to being, and the remainder of the beleaguered commoners frantically denies that they are. Therefore, I shall use the term 'angry-PC' instead.

All of my characters (and I have several) have a completely developed backstory, that is deliberately vague on certain features to give it time to develop later. That being said, all of them have at some point slipped into the definition of 'angry-PC'. I had to stop playing my Cleric of Sarenrae because she had an IC developed hatred of the Aspis Consortium, and I can only pay for so many atonements.

Cookie-cutter character personalities are going to strongly depend on the individual playing them. Developed character personalities are going to strongly depend on the person playing them. If that person likes killing and stabbing and slaying, then they're going to do that at some point. If they won't stop, your character can just sit back and enjoy the view of that level-7 barbarian charging the metallic dragon that's looking at it like a cat with an interesting insect. Or you can intervene. It's up to you. Unless you're the GM, you can't put a kibosh on what other people in your party are going to do; they're human and they play a game where they live in a fantasy world, ergo they are crazy and unpredictable. If you consistently don't like how a person plays their characters, don't play with them. If that isn't an option, solve it on an individual basis, or ask your GM to kindly waive the 'no PvP' rule for a session.

'Angry-PC's can come in all forms. My bf's wizard has never killed a thing in his career. He just Charm Person/Monsters everything he comes across and convinces it that all it wants in life is to be his servant forevermore.

All this being said, I was (and am) highly tempted to get a T-shirt saying 'MurderHobos United' on one side, and "If it has stats, We can kill it" on the other, and wear it to PaizoCon.


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"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"


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Insain Dragoon wrote:
But at least I didn't die a theif.

No one does - considering that "theif" isn't a word.


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ShroudedInLight wrote:
"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"

If you stat it we can kill it.


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Undone wrote:
ShroudedInLight wrote:
"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"
If you stat it we can kill it.

Just because it can die, doesn't mean you can kill it.


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thejeff wrote:
Undone wrote:
ShroudedInLight wrote:
"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"
If you stat it we can kill it.
Just because it can die, doesn't mean you can kill it.

If you give me some prep time...


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DominusMegadeus wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Undone wrote:
ShroudedInLight wrote:
"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"
If you stat it we can kill it.
Just because it can die, doesn't mean you can kill it.
If you give me some prep time...

A sufficiently prepared PC is indistinguishable from Batman.


By the definitions I see here, a lot of 1st through 2nd Ed modules make the PCs instant murderhobos. And a lot of 3.5, Pathfinder, 4.0 and I suspect 5.0 as well.

A)Most adventures or campaigns use TWO hooks to motivate players to care about the problem that needs to be solved. One is financial gain (ie reward money, magic items, land and title, stronghold) and the other is a philosophical or emotional appeal to the players as a roleplaying hook. Save the princess from the evil dragon, explore the dungeon in which monsters can boil up and devour everything, reassemble the magic crystals that allow you to free the great evil from its slumber to fight it in person, etc.

B) There is nothing wrong with a group that fights and defeats evil via sword and spell. That's the core of the D&D experience and has been since 1st Ed. The other side of that core is how you character interacts with other parts of the world that aren't evil, whether using skills, combat talents, magic, or special twinkling bird songs.

C)If the gamemaster doesn't have a problem with morally gray or evil play (such as murder, arson, slavery, etc) or the AP calls for it (Way of the Wicked, most drow house games, etc), then you are playing the game as you two enjoy it. Now if other players object to your acts because they have different moral codes, then you eventually come to a solution, or the gamemaster should step you aside and say we need to come to a solution so we can continue playing and no one has any major hangups. I have found the best way to take care of this issue is to mandate what alignments are available at the start. If you are running a lawful good game, then don't allow chaotic evil or evil characters period, and cut down on the neutral or chaotic neutral.

D)Chaotic neutral alignment is not an excuse for amorality or sociopathic behavior. I have seen happen all to often, especially amongst younger players, who think that CN is a get out of alignment free card. It's not an excuse for bad roleplaying or pouting.

E) The mostly trumped up battle you are seeing (kind of like the Emu War in Australia) is between roleplayers and combat gamers. One side thinks that people specced for the other are going to destroy their game fun, when in fact neither side is bad. Optimization gets to be a bit tiresome, I agree, but everyone will manipulate a system to give them an edge, especially if they can find a good hook to justify it.


Note- My characters are always based around combat. They usually have their stats spread in such a way that makes them good at combat. Every spell is one that attempts to be useful in a general sense, no useless "flavor" spells for me. Every feat is one that makes me better at doing my role in the group.

Yet I role play, a lot. I have a rank in a profession, I have many ranks in social skills, and my character talks plenty about whatever is up at the time.

There doesn't have to be a difference between roleplayers and combat gamers, it's entirely up to how they and their GM approach the world.

Are they there to grind WoW style in a WoW style game where role playing, back story, and complex motivations don't matter. Which is a perfectly fine type of way to play I might add, as long as everyone there is on the same page. Are they there to create a group narrative with intersecting character interests, goals, and problems? Are they there to just fool around, killing some Orcs and role play hitting on a barmaid.

The conflict only comes when players or DMs have completely separate views on how the game will play out.


stormcrow27 wrote:

By the definitions I see here, a lot of 1st through 2nd Ed modules make the PCs instant murderhobos. And a lot of 3.5, Pathfinder, 4.0 and I suspect 5.0 as well.

A)Most adventures or campaigns use TWO hooks to motivate players to care about the problem that needs to be solved. One is financial gain (ie reward money, magic items, land and title, stronghold) and the other is a philosophical or emotional appeal to the players as a roleplaying hook. Save the princess from the evil dragon, explore the dungeon in which monsters can boil up and devour everything, reassemble the magic crystals that allow you to free the great evil from its slumber to fight it in person, etc.

Most modules rely on the financial gain because it's simple and generic and the authors don't know anything about the actual characters who will play in it. Many also include some other suggestion for hooking characters. Interestingly, 1st level modules and APs, which can assume more of a blank slate, often are much better about providing hooks that aren't just "You get hired to X".

Frankly, I find that kind of hook in a ongoing home game to be lazy GMing, though it's also often just imitation of the examples the GM has seen.
In fairness, for reasons I don't really understand, some people actually like the "We go check the jobs board at the tavern" style of play. It takes all types.


On a tangent.

If I wanted to play Monster Hunter, I'd play monster hunter.

I love Monster Hunter, it's an amazing piece of software that I do play for hours on end.

Myself and my friends go out and kill monsters, then use the loot we got from killing monsters to build better weapons and armor, then we go out and kill bigger monsters! It's a huge blast!

That's probably why I don't like mixing my Monster Hunter with my Pathfinder.


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thejeff wrote:
Undone wrote:
ShroudedInLight wrote:
"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"
If you stat it we can kill it.
Just because it can die, doesn't mean you can kill it.

You can if you are a full caster.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Anzyr wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Undone wrote:
ShroudedInLight wrote:
"If it has stats it has HP, and if it has HP it can die"
If you stat it we can kill it.
Just because it can die, doesn't mean you can kill it.
You can if you are a full caster.

not if your low level which is what was implied...

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