Experience points are stupid, encourages murder hoboism. Use milestones based on the story unfolding.
Rolling for HP has got to be the dumbest game design decision, I know, lets roll for spells learned- feats too! Skill points could also use some dice rolling!
1, 1, 2, 1, 4, 1, 1
*tears up character sheet*
"Bobby kills himself. He's Chaotic nuteral; thats what he'd do."
And finally, never use monsters that inflict permanent negatives because people throw a big sook just because they got a -6 str -4 con and blindness.
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Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?
Not only that, but the kill must be verified by no fewer than three observers, one of whom must be a member of the Pathfinder Society and one of whom must be independent. And god help you if you failed to file a Notice of Intent to Kill for Experience form before the deed was done. Back of the line!
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Personally I think roleplaying without any sense of urgency is wrong.
My personal irritation.
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I think you need an appropriate sense of urgency. If you're being serious in an obviously easy fight, that isn't really appropriate unless it can get serious. Some of the best encounters are ones with banter and buffoonery. Now, when the fit hits the shan, that's when you get that serious, pucker-factor attention to detail.
Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?
Naaah!
You get XP for defeating the monsters/NPCs. As many AP episodes show, that can even mean a successful diplomacy situation. You still get the XP.Plus, many of us give XP for specific objectives and milestones in a campaign. Here again, many AP episodes do the same thing.
I know some folks don't bother with XP at all. But my players love it, and would really miss not keeping track of their various XP accumulations. I also think of it as a way of keeping track of incremental level advancement. I often ask my players, at the beginning of a session, how far they are away from the next level. It helps me give out the right doses.
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Another pet peeve, regarded masterwork weapons/armor. It grated on me that it cost the same (300 GP)to make a masterwork dagger, as it did for a masterwork great-sword. Same goes for masterwork buckler or full plate armor (150gp for either). So I scaled the cost thereLight Armor: +100gp
Medium Armor: +200gp
Heavy Armor: +300gp
Bklr/Lt. Shields: +50gp
Hvy. /Twr Shields: +100gp
Light Weapon: +50gp
One-Hand Weapon: +100gp
Two-Hand Weapon: +150gp
Martial Weapon: +100gp
Exotic Weapon: +200gp*Weapon cost is cumulative: A one-handed, martial weapon will cost an additional 200gp.
*Adding the masterwork quality to a double weapon costs twice the normal amount.
I like this may I borrow it for my game?
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Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?Naaah!
You get XP for defeating the monsters/NPCs. As many AP episodes show, that can even mean a successful diplomacy situation. You still get the XP.Plus, many of us give XP for specific objectives and milestones in a campaign. Here again, many AP episodes do the same thing.
I know some folks don't bother with XP at all. But my players love it, and would really miss not keeping track of their various XP accumulations. I also think of it as a way of keeping track of incremental level advancement. I often ask my players, at the beginning of a session, how far they are away from the next level. It helps me give out the right doses.
No, I know that's how APs do it, and all of my GM's that use XP do it.
My question was in response to various posters distaste of XP for the stated reason I've brought up.
Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?
Monsters are the thing that it's easiest to ascribe XP values to (they're in the bestiary). XP awards for things like "you resolved a situation diplomatically" or "you found an important clue" tend to be arbitrary even in published material.
So in practice I've found that it's easier to remember to give XP for fighting (since it's spelled out for you) and easier to forget to give XP for other things. I don't think it's intentional, I think it's just a "it requires mental energy to figure 'was that social encounter XP-worthy' and 'how much'" thing and when sessions run late and people are tired stuff like that is really easy to miss.
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"You gain experience as if you had defeated it in combat"
The best thing I learned from Pathfinder Adventure Paths. :-)
Well just to interrupt the "we don't use xp" parade
We do use XP.
You gain XP for over coming a challenge not just for defeating monsters.
In fact we still require spending Xp to craft permanent magic items.
(anything other then wand, potions and scrolls)
And Undead drain XP.
We view XP more as a measure of personal power then an accumulation of experiences.
"You gain experience as if you had defeated it in combat"
The best thing I learned from Pathfinder Adventure Paths. :-)
But there's a lot of situations where there's no real chance of combat, but the PCs could still succeed or fail at a given task. If you're petitioning the queen to issue a pardon on behalf of a smuggler who promises to show a route to the PCs if they get him out of prison, it's not like they're going to fight the queen and her army if they don't get what they want diplomatically.
If they don't get their way diplomatically, there's lots of ways they could potentially spring the smuggler, and how do you decide the different XP awards for "sneaking into the prison to let him out" versus "going behind the queen's back to appeal to a different member of the royal family" versus "bribing a bureaucrat to get the smuggler transferred to a different facility and liberating him en route" versus just "mind probing the smuggler to get what they want and leaving him to rot."
At some point, you're going to have to make up a number and at the point where you're making up a lot of numbers, the printed XP values don't seem all that relevant.
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Some of the house rules I tend to run with:
Level up at the speed of plot. Makes for smoother game play I find.
If you qualify for Combat Expertise (i.e. - you have Int 13+), you gain the feat automatically; similarly for Power Attack (i.e. - you have Str 13+ ... forget about BAB +1), you gain the feat automatically. I don't see the reasoning behind needing a feat to basically fight defensively in an intelligent fashion (CE) or hit harder but leave an opening in your defenses (PA).
For raise dead, it does not need to a a single 5000gp diamond, just 5000gp worth of diamonds (or diamond dust). A single 5000gp rock should be exceedingly rare; if it isn't, then the value of diamonds should plummet, making the needed stone even bigger in size in order to fulfill a gp requirement.
As GM, I roll your Craft Item checks if you make a magic item. This has been a point of contention in some groups, but if you mess up the roll and get a cursed item, you should not have the meta knowledge that it is a cursed item.
You can resize magic armor and weapons down one size category with a successful Craft Magical Arms and Armor check. And no, you don't end up with extra mithral from reducing the size of the elven chain. Chalk it up to the crafting cost.
I avoid rolling Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, or Sense Motive whenever possible because I believe they hinder roleplaying. The PCs are also strictly forbidden from using any of the above skills on one another unless they are attempting to demoralize, feint, or otherwise create a purely mechanical effect.
I avoid rolling Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, or Sense Motive whenever possible because I believe they hinder roleplaying. The PCs are also strictly forbidden from using any of the above skills on one another unless they are attempting to demoralize, feint, or otherwise create a purely mechanical effect.
Along these lines, I generally ask the player to RP (or at least describe) the Diplomacy/Bluff/Intimidate/etc. conversation and set the DC largely on how well that went (or just fiat they don't need to roll if it went especially well.)
"Roll Diplomacy to convince the person to help you" is by far the least interesting way to do those sorts of scenes.
While I know that a lot of people don't play with that rule, aren't you supposed to get XP for any sort of challenge you beat whether or not you use violence and/or the brute force method? So you should get the same XP for sneaking past the guards to the objective as you would for slicing them all up on your way in to get the objective.Part of the issue is that I always wanted to award more XP for Oceans 11/Leverage style heists than I do for wanton violence, so I had to make up a number for the bonus XP for "you did it the subtle way" regardless.
Just award full xp for every opponent that they avoided, negotiated with, tricked etc. and deduct the full value of the ones that they killed.
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Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?Not only that, but the kill must be verified by no fewer than three observers, one of whom must be a member of the Pathfinder Society and one of whom must be independent. And god help you if you failed to file a Notice of Intent to Kill for Experience form before the deed was done. Back of the line!
I really just need to set some sort of bot up to follow your posts and favorite all of them it would be way more efficient.
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How am I playing it wrong.
I have a Dwarven Oracle for Iron Gods.
Hold on, it gets better, he has the heavens mystery, but has the Stargazer archetype, so no color spray shenanigans, which I guess is a big thing. Did I mention his charisma is 14.
And now to put the frosting on my wrongdoing. When I started the character creation process, I started out with "Doctor Who for Pathfinder"
My players run my combats, keep track of all bookkeeping, and look up rules in a pinch.
I just do the NPCs and the metaplot.
That.. That actually sounds awesome how do I sign up for that?
My players run my combats, keep track of all bookkeeping, and look up rules in a pinch.
I just do the NPCs and the metaplot.
I have one or two players keep track of initiative and timers on spells and effects. This makes it easier for me as the GM. It also helps keep one particular player focused because his mind will wander and we have to keep repeating what's happening. This has really helped.
My players run my combats, keep track of all bookkeeping, and look up rules in a pinch.
I just do the NPCs and the metaplot.
That sounds like a good idea. Can you elaborate on how that actually works?
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I really just need to set some sort of bot up to follow your posts and favorite all of them it would be way more efficient.Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?Not only that, but the kill must be verified by no fewer than three observers, one of whom must be a member of the Pathfinder Society and one of whom must be independent. And god help you if you failed to file a Notice of Intent to Kill for Experience form before the deed was done. Back of the line!
SECRET: My posts are all written by bot. If you followed them by bot, the resulting closed system might achieve sentience. Fortunately, it would be a sentience capable only of ridiculous jokes and pop culture references, so it probably wouldn't burn the sky...
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SECRET: My posts are all written by bot. If you followed them by bot, the resulting closed system might achieve sentience. Fortunately, it would be a sentience capable only of ridiculous jokes and pop culture references, so it probably wouldn't burn the sky...I really just need to set some sort of bot up to follow your posts and favorite all of them it would be way more efficient.Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?Not only that, but the kill must be verified by no fewer than three observers, one of whom must be a member of the Pathfinder Society and one of whom must be independent. And god help you if you failed to file a Notice of Intent to Kill for Experience form before the deed was done. Back of the line!
Probably.
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My posts are all written by a room full of chimpanzees which secretly crowd source it all from Twitter and the only serviceable dialogue from Michael Bay movies.
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My posts are all written by a room full of chimpanzees which secretly crowd source it all from Twitter and the only serviceable dialogue from Michael Bay movies.
"It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times? That's Charles Dickens, you stupid monkey!"
As GM, I roll your Craft Item checks if you make a magic item.
Wait, there are people who craft magic items without taking 10?
lets all mount the druid's dog!
Too much information!!!
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That sounds like a good idea. Can you elaborate on how that actually works?My players run my combats, keep track of all bookkeeping, and look up rules in a pinch.
I just do the NPCs and the metaplot.
Sure!
Just assign explicit roles for what you need. Tell them it's as essential to the game as having a character.
I bought one of those magnetized initiative trackers and tell them one of them must use it to track initiative for combats. Since it's magnets it fun, see? Next, when I announce treasure or other things, I tell them "somebody write this down because I'll forget" because it's true. Then, I ask that player to keep track of things between sessions and give us periodic updates. I find that folks who are drawn to Pathfinder are more likely to have a proclivity for minutiae, and chances are good such a person will end up in your group. Finally, I require that the folks at the table who have the most complex characters must do their own rules homework. And since that means they tend to become more familiar for the book, they become a shoe-in for the rules checker position.
But overall, I am just transparent with them in saying that if they help me do all the "other" DM stuff that that frees me up to think about the NPCs and metaplot.
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My posts are all written by a room full of chimpanzees which secretly crowd source it all from Twitter and the only serviceable dialogue from Michael Bay movies."It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times? That's Charles Dickens, you stupid monkey!"
I got that reference!
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That sounds like a good idea. Can you elaborate on how that actually works?My players run my combats, keep track of all bookkeeping, and look up rules in a pinch.
I just do the NPCs and the metaplot.
Sure!
Just assign explicit roles for what you need. Tell them it's as essential to the game as having a character.
I bought one of those magnetized initiative trackers and tell them one of them must use it to track initiative for combats. Since it's magnets it fun, see? Next, when I announce treasure or other things, I tell them "somebody write this down because I'll forget" because it's true. Then, I ask that player to keep track of things between sessions and give us periodic updates. I find that folks who are drawn to Pathfinder are more likely to have a proclivity for minutiae, and chances are good such a person will end up in your group. Finally, I require that the folks at the table who have the most complex characters must do their own rules homework. And since that means they tend to become more familiar for the book, they become a shoe-in for the rules checker position.
But overall, I am just transparent with them in saying that if they help me do all the "other" DM stuff that that frees me up to think about the NPCs and metaplot.
The folks in our groups just do this automatically, no need to assign it to a specific person. We usually have two or three copies of the loot list, which is good in case someone missed something or misunderstood what the item was. I write summaries of the game sessions and post them in my blog for the other players to read, because I like writing, but I'm not the only player who takes notes. We look up rules minutiae for the GM during sessions, too, so he doesn't have to be a walking Rules Cyclopedia.
Our group has a house rule that if someone can get to a dying character with a healing potion in the same round that the PC bleeds out, that PC doesn't die. We tend to be attached to our characters and generally dislike having to roll up a new character mid-session, so this house rule works well for us.
See this thread wasn't so bad despite my weird naming conventions.
edit: typo
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I haven't read half the rules, and I am the GM.
My regular players don't care because they are having fun being pirates, and the minutiae of the grappling rules isn't in the pirate code.
I have a few.
Undead are immune to criticals. Because they don't need kidneys to function.
If you roll two twenties in a row, you roll to confirm a second time. This confirmation causes you to deal max damage with the crit.
I handwave carry weight to "You cannot carry a house, no."
XP isn't a thing. You level up when I say so. (Usually as the AP says.)
You can't roll most "social skills" against other players.
You roll for HP. If you get less than half, you get half. Same for healing, for I am a kind and merciful goddess.
That pretty much covers my thingies.
I have a few.
Undead are immune to criticals. Because they don't need kidneys to function.
If you roll two twenties in a row, you roll to confirm a second time. This confirmation causes you to deal max damage with the crit.
I handwave carry weight to "You cannot carry a house, no."
XP isn't a thing. You level up when I say so. (Usually as the AP says.)
You can't roll most "social skills" against other players.
You roll for HP. If you get less than half, you get half. Same for healing, for I am a kind and merciful goddess.That pretty much covers my thingies.
You know I do the crit one too I feel like I got it from somewhere but can't remember where.
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I have a few.
Undead are immune to criticals. Because they don't need kidneys to function.
Well how about all the memes about killing zombies etc with head shots? And vampires with heart shots?
I like the ability to send party members in and away would be a useful tool.The player has no control over it. It's 100% the GM's purview. I've done similar things in that past. I've had PCs trapped inside of figurines of wondrous power, trapped in genie bottles, tattooed on another PC, brought forth and sent away with wild magic, etc. I like to come up with creative ways to deal with a real world issue of us having to be adults once in a while.
I have an alternate system on handling this, though I like your method a lot as it means we can continue with the story at hand.
I have everyone make a main character and then one or two side characters. So if someone cannot make it to the game, we run a quick adventure with the B Team. Works out well enough and no one gets left out.
Some of my house rules:
1: I use Adventurer, Conqueror, King for a lot of my stuff. Prices of equipment, wilderness rules, rules for retreating combat, hirelings and followers, and the domain/venture/war rules. I like a lot of the rules, though I still prefer a 3.5 chassis for most of my stuff (ascending AC, BAB, demihumans as races not classes, feats).
2. I give experience for meeting an obstacle and overcoming it. Not just for kills and not just for collecting gold and not just for roleplaying. I find players simply prefer being able to see the progress they are making to the next level. I find it encourages ingenuity and lateral thinking when you just tie XP to essentially defeating an obstacle.
3. I don't give out XP for 'good roleplaying'. Some people just aren't good at it, and some don't have the mental energy to essentially do public speaking in front of your close friends (or strangers). So I don't do it.
4. I'm actually really transparent on a lot of things. I make attack and damage rolls out in the open. Most skill rolls. I don't really hide AC or HP. I simply don't like fudging rolls, and being open encourages that.
5. No alignments, and no always evil/good/chaotic.
6. No leadership. Instead, people gain allies by roleplaying and gain followers naturally by level 7. I generally follow the ACKS rules for hirelings and followers, and have adjusted certain martial characters to be naturally better at gathering people. So fighters don't have to worry about their charisma being low.
7. I use firearms. I run a game based on the Early Modern Period, so there are arquebuses and muskets and flintlock.
8. I do point buy but roll HP. However, I also have rules for training your stats to be better. I'll have to post them another time.
That's kinda my list of playing Pathfinder wrong.
Is "you only get XP for killing monsters" still a major philosophy for GMs in Pathfinder?Monsters are the thing that it's easiest to ascribe XP values to (they're in the bestiary). XP awards for things like "you resolved a situation diplomatically" or "you found an important clue" tend to be arbitrary even in published material.
So in practice I've found that it's easier to remember to give XP for fighting (since it's spelled out for you) and easier to forget to give XP for other things. I don't think it's intentional, I think it's just a "it requires mental energy to figure 'was that social encounter XP-worthy' and 'how much'" thing and when sessions run late and people are tired stuff like that is really easy to miss.
I'm actually developing a solution for this, well two actually, one for the rules tight types and one for the rules loose types.
But the idea for the rules tight group is to have a table for the DCs and number of checks to get through an encounter, with modifiers for encounter type (so combats which take more rolls to resolve earn about the same xp per encounter as non-combat checks). Thus, quick reference for any kind of encounter involving rolling checks (even if taking 10, though taking 10/20 reduces xp gain. You learn more from challanging yourself than performing routine tasks).
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Ideally, I don't want to roll a lot of dice in social encounters. As long as the players say the right things and are convincing, I generally don't even ask for checks.
I'd like social encounters to be decided as much on the basis of rhetorical skills and roleplaying as combat is decided on the basis of tactical skills. Most checks in social encounters I run are asked for by the players a la "do I know what the polite thing to say here is?"
Y'know, this thread would be far more interesting if people listed things their group does/did that are widely considered bad gaming, not just house rules (or at least considered 'wrong' by an annoyingly large number of people, judging by the reaction).
That's what I thought it would be when I read the title.
GMPCs
We use them. Not constantly or even often these days, but we see nothing inherently wrong in the concept and they have been used to great effect in various games.GMs telling the players what their characters think and do.
We have all been victims of (and guilty of) the bad kind of GM control, but used sparingly and with a sense of trust between players and GM, it can be a great tool to convey the situation and develop scenarios and stories.
That was sort of what I had in mind but I don't mind the house rules some of them I may even adopt.
Some of the house rules are considered to be playing wrong. Special Critical Hits and Fumbles are a good example. Not rolling for social encounters is another.
Ideally, I don't want to roll a lot of dice in social encounters. As long as the players say the right things and are convincing, I generally don't even ask for checks.
I'd like social encounters to be decided as much on the basis of rhetorical skills and roleplaying as combat is decided on the basis of tactical skills. Most checks in social encounters I run are asked for by the players a la "do I know what the polite thing to say here is?"
Even without actually rolling dice, you likely have an idea how difficult it would be to convince the npc. That can easily be translated to a rough dc. A short conversation can count as a check, while a longer conversation with lots of back and forth can count as 3-5 checks.
That'd be all you need to see on the table how much xp to grant.
Alternatively, set each encounter as a number of checks and a difficulty. Use tgat to roll or just as xp if the pc talks their way through.
I.E. The pc wants to get past a guard into the barracks. The pc can fight, sneak around, or talk their way in. Sneak would thus need a number of checks at a set dc to succeed. If the player talks their way through, award xp the same as if they succeeded at sneaking past.
Ideally, I don't want to roll a lot of dice in social encounters. As long as the players say the right things and are convincing, I generally don't even ask for checks.
I'd like social encounters to be decided as much on the basis of rhetorical skills and roleplaying as combat is decided on the basis of tactical skills. Most checks in social encounters I run are asked for by the players a la "do I know what the polite thing to say here is?"
Even without actually rolling dice, you likely have an idea how difficult it would be to convince the npc. That can easily be translated to a rough dc. A short conversation can count as a check, while a longer conversation with lots of back and forth can count as 3-5 checks.
That'd be all you need to see on the table how much xp to grant.
Alternatively, set each encounter as a number of checks and a difficulty. Use tgat to roll or just as xp if the pc talks their way through.
I.E. The pc wants to get past a guard into the barracks. The pc can fight, sneak around, or talk their way in. Sneak would thus need a number of checks at a set dc to succeed. If the player talks their way through, award xp the same as if they succeeded at sneaking past.
Seems like a lot of work to arbitrarily award XP, why not just get rid of it?
I have a few.
Undead are immune to criticals. Because they don't need kidneys to function.
Well how about all the memes about killing zombies etc with head shots? And vampires with heart shots?
Dropping a zombie with a headshot relies on those zombies being created via a disease (Zombie Survival Guide Zombies) and not magic (Most tabletop zombies).
I do allow crits against vampires with Vorpal weapons and wooden piercing weapons. This is the exception and not the rule.