Keeping numbers to that chart, like level +2. Less fiddling with the sheets, but keeps power level.
Similar to River of Sticks, I'm fine with a million gp cap on the item.
I find the GP cap idea rather amusing, since I went for... I think it's a feat? Items are definitely good, but immunity to poison lets me use the Atomic Adept stuff a lot more. XD Although my character will occasionally explode - maybe don't stand too close to her in combat.
I do have one other idea to bounce off of you guys. All blues for a given level would still be an extremely powerful character, and arguably too much so. An alternative is to treat the green numbers as the cap (green is perfectly viable at any given level, and not a bad place to be), but you can buy up to blue in one area (treating saves as separate areas) by being limited to orange in another. In other words, you could be good or you could be great with a flaw. (You could, for example, have really high AC - but have a low Reflex save to balance it out.) I think that might keep numbers at a good level while still allowing flexibility and diversity in builds. Too much "I need to be at blue to keep up with others" might make the numbers more important than the concept of what you want to play, y'know? Thoughts?
Rednal, I don't really think that's necessary... The total power balance doesn't really matter so long as we are all on the same (relative) page.
Keeping to the concept is important, but I think that's what we are sort of doing already by agreeing on what the number targets should be - really, with the creation rules laid out, it shouldn't be hard at all to hit Blue in every category, which is fine. It just means the challenging encounters might be CR + 3 or 4 instead. Not going over that Blue number means that we CAN have challenging encounters, without one person being immune and another being insta-killed.
I'm not too worried about sameness between characters, unless everyone else is going for a two-handed glaive type build as well!
EDIT: On the 15 Race Points / +3 Template, are those single caps or cumulative caps? Taking Advanced 3x would be pretty boring, but being able to "buy off" a stat drop with Advanced would be nice... Personally, I think up to 15 (and can freely spend the difference from a pre-built race) and a single template will be the most "even" and simplistic, though I've found a couple +1 templates I wouldn't mind stacking!
Yup. ^^ Just thought I'd throw out the idea. As noted, the actual numbers matter much less than players being close to each other. XD
As far as races and templates, I had imagined just using one rather than stacking, but we can do what we want. I don't think that the goal should be to squeeze everything you can possibly get out of the build so much as to make a coherent, fun build to play (so the stacking advanced 3 times sounds like a terrible idea to me, for example,) but whatever, if others have preferences they should speak up.
I know that I'm going with a 9 RP race (or is it 8?) and a +2 template and I don't really have a desire to add other things just because I could there; The Destined Attendant is already what she's supposed to be, a former Vanara who's been made into some sort of Celestial messenger/warrior and let lose for a reason that she needs to figure out before she can even decide if she's willing to follow through with it.
As far as sublime goes, if it fits your build and concept well, we should be able to make it work even with the HP stuff. I think that the template should add some wounds probably as the healthiness is a big deal for it, but Twice CHA modifier instead of twice CHA would feel like a fine middle ground. If the build wasn't a great fit for your idea and you want to look elsewhere that's fine, but it'd be a shame to scrap it over the one part.
An alternative is to treat the green numbers as the cap (green is perfectly viable at any given level, and not a bad place to be), but you can buy up to blue in one area (treating saves as separate areas) by being limited to orange in another.
I strongly support this idea!
@Sublime: Cha mod once to wounds and once to vigor seems like a good idea to me. Still really strong and better than toughness, but kinda ok powerwise.
I also went for Sublime... mostly, admittedly, for the fast healing. It makes it a lot easier to survive the occasional self-caused explosion. XD Atomic Adepts are not what I'd call a safe class.
I originally picked Sublime because of the fast healing,Variant Cleric Channeling Darkness, and the CON and CHA bonuses, since this campaign looks to start with limited resources. It also didn't have many fiddly bits and I was not interested in the other templates I found first.
I've looked through a lot more templates in the last few days, and I still like Sublime, though there's a few others that are nice too. But most have some fiddly bits. Archon Graced, Angelic Vessel, Genie Bound all have some RP requirements and "template-removal" clauses. I like Timebreaker, but permanent Haste seems to be a little overpowered as one of the better buffs that's normally round / level. Eldritch Creature and Augmented are both really cool, but VERY fiddly.
I really like animal lord, but assuming that the animal base needs to be CR 1 (to keep the CR + 2 adjustment under +3 total) there's not a lot of choices... most snakes, crocodiles, dinosaurs, sharks, bears, and big cats are CR 2 or higher. I could go with a wolf or hyena, though I wasn't really thinking a werewolf when I started looking at it. . Maybe higher CR (and correspondingly higher stats) would be ok so long as I kept below the blue numbers for attack /damage?
I'm not really sure where to go with things, though if we go CHA mod to vigor once and once to wounds and call Sublime good that may be the simplest for me.
Question on being self-limiting; are we talking about the base character abilities being at blue stats, or buffed abilities? For example, if a couple rounds of spellcasting to get haste/heroism/divine favor in place for a big battle is feasible for the character, should it be included towards the blue numbers? If you always use power attack / combat expertise, should those penalize attack and add to damage/defenses for the purposes of limiting? Admittedly there's a smaller range of variation with only a few buffs, so it shouldn't sway too far one way or the other, but still.
EDIT: Just re-re-read the Animal Lord template and realized that even though it's inherited, it's only viable for 10 HD or higher base creatures. So it's fiddly too.
In general, the chart only accounts for permanent and frequently-used effects. For example, if you're playing a Magus and you're practically always enchanting your weapon with your arcane pool, you should count that towards the chart. If you're always using Power Attack, you'd count that for both to-hit and estimated damage value.
However, temporary buffs you don't use very often don't count towards the numbers. The occasional Protection From Evil from a Cleric is a nice buff, not something counted towards the chart.
To explain in a little more detail - because I'm bored at the moment and want to - the chart I linked is designed to represent a 'normal' amount of power for a character. Let's use the EDV column, 'cuz it's a good source for examples. That is your estimated damage - taking your average damage rolls and accuracy into account to see how much you'll do per-round when it's all averaged out. If you're attacking foes, you can and often will do more than that amount (sometimes much more). Characters who roll lots of damage dice, for example, might get a bunch of 5's and 6's one round instead of 3's and 4's, shooting way over their EDV with that attack. That doesn't make them stronger overall, it just means they got lucky one round.
Powers with very limited uses generally don't apply to the table. Maybe I get a power that lets me reroll my damage dice with a blast three times a day. That's neat, but most days have far more than three rounds of combat I'd be throwing that blast out, so it doesn't count towards the chart (even if I save it for dramatic moments where I can go nova and unleash everything on a BBEG, becoming much stronger than usual in that scene).
Deciding what should count and what shouldn't requires a bit of judgement, and personal playstyle comes into it. Basically, if your character is likely to be using something in any given fight, it should count. The chart isn't for describing the peak of your power - it's for putting numbers to your regular, everyday strength (however you acquire said strength).
Is this still going on?
I am still interested in running this but I'm in a bit of a crunch time right now with school, so it will be a slow start -- I'm not clear where we are with character generation -- did we resolve the issues?
We found a common ground and agreed one something, so you could say we resolved it.
Results are pending still though.
The capped version of The Horned Helm would add +10 charisma and no other effect.
I assumed we would just read off the table for usual attack bonus etc.
I have to back out, unfortunately. Real life has been getting busier.
Anybody still interested here?
Very much so.
I talked about this with HK over PM -- did we ever finish character creation? What else needs to be sorted out?
Maybe we can repost the current rules again, it's very hard to track in this thread.
That would be helpful. I'd like to know exactly what I have left to change, if anything.
I know I have a few things to update depending on final rulings, though it’s 95% of the way there. I’d like to possibly use a 3rd party race similar to changelings (The Immicker), if they can also take changeling racial feats. There might be another way for me to get the feat I’m eyeing though.
+1 to having the character creation guidelines re-summarized.
There are a couple pages of discussion on which we could probably use some DM opinion.
I'm not sure that we've got settled character creation options that we've had a consensus on just yet. I know that I find a Major Artifact like the Crown of Infernal Majesty to be overboard for the one unique item, for example, but we haven't fully settled on what the limits for that should be.
Having said that, I'm probably going to bow out of the campaign at this point. I've got enough other games going now (certainly more than when the recruitment started,) and I'm not feeling the desire to be a brake on the power to try to shape this game into the balance that I had in mind coming in (especially when it's not actually my game to balance in the first place.)
There's plenty of fun to be had from the ideas here, but I think that it's best if the fun had by others at this point. Best wishes to all! It should be a great game, if not quite the one I envisioned when the recruitment started.
Cheers, Destined Attendant, and best of luck in your other games.
That was actually an oversight to still have that in there, but i want to put something to discussion.
Kinda sad to see you go Destined Attendant. Maybe you should communicate what you want or imagine a bit more? Don't just bow out because things have to be negotiated. I think negoating this is a healthy process and will make the game that much more better and stronger and hopefully help keeping it together longer than the average game, since people should be more invested. I'm open to getting the overall powerlevel down, even by a lot and you can see i already did that on my own character actually.
Didn't do the math on the attacks, but everywhere else i'm strictly in the green area for level 6 right now.
So if we go for level 8 i might need to take a look at some points probably.
I would also like to discuss the infernal crown, since i would love to have a weaker version of it, dropping the immunities and at least some of the spell-like abilities.
I'm having some problems with the 3.5 feats and items. Some are extremely strong but senseless at the same time, like "music of the gods", which would be really cool, but a +10 on the save is just too much.
Additionaly, taking "the best available" stat item is kind of a trap, because that would mean that the respective stat is already maxed out somehow.
What's your opinions on all that?
If theres still room i just finished the game and this sounds like it would be a blast, i havent read the whole thread yet so a rules recap that others have mentioned would be helpful.
Note: I've never done a PBP before so a primer on that would be helpful
If theres still room i just finished the game and this sounds like it would be a blast, i havent read the whole thread yet so a rules recap that others have mentioned would be helpful.
Note: I've never done a PBP before so a primer on that would be helpful
Welcome aboard -- honestly we may have to restart the recruitment thread after we hash out some issues, this has been going on intermittently for several months
No worries, if you want to summarize the issues I could help make some suggestions otherwise ill get through the whole thread writing notes as a go but will take longer :D
oh and thx Rednal I'll read through that :D
Also a quick question, whats "Dotting"
Dotting refers to posting in a thread so you can track it and get notified of updates. In many cases, people just make a post with a single period in it, and it gets a dot to the right of the name on the thread lists, hence the nickname.
I PM'd with Hayato Ken about this -- I'm confused what the issues are at this point I need to rule on -- can someone who was pivotal in the discussion summarize where we're at for me?
I picked up we started looking at a chart for BAB/Saves/Damage/AC etc. by level, and we're trying to aim within certain guidelines. Did we come to some kind of decision about that?
I think at this point it's best if we try to finish up some consensus on rules so I can redo the character creation document. I'll then start a new thread with the campaign pitch (i.e., the whole deal about being amnesiacs) and the revised rules, and everyone here can move over to that one.
I think at this point this thread will intimidate most new players from joining, and I think we're going to need to do some re-recruitment at this point.
From what I can see, most people seem to be okay with using the chart as a semi-formal guideline for power. Basically, Level + 2 on the chart shows the place where numbers ought to be capped for balance (this allows some of the benefits from templates). Green on the chart is optimal/viable, and blue should probably be a hard cap (even if your numbers are higher, you don't get the benefit of them beyond that limit). Basically, the idea is to ensure that even with complex characters and templates, our numbers are close enough that we're still playing the same game.
The biggest discussion was on the wide power levels in "pick a template, pick a race, pick an epic "thing"", and no real guideline on what the desired power level is. If you (Sebecloki) could give a guideline on desired power, or give some limits/options on templates/epic items/races and race points, that would help bring everyone to a similar field. A +1 flavor template is very different from some of the +3-5 templates that are basically mini-classes, or bring in high levels of abilities/power. A Grippli is very different from a Drow Noble, etc. That's where the charts came into play- a common reference point we could all look at.
The other discussion was on how fast healing and temporary hit points / bonus hit points should be handled with Wounds and Vigor, but I think that one came to a consensus.
Well i kind of completely changed my character, which is now a Kitsune with a different template as well.
In my opinion we reached consensus in all points:
No high point races (15 max?), 1 million gp item max or epic feat, +1 - +3 templates, nothing that brings forth too much vigor/wounds, immunities etc.
Also aim for the green area between level 6 and 8 on the bench pressing scale.
So are we restricting the numbers or altering our character sheets? That's what I'm not clear on.
Personally, I'd say just alter character sheets down to the cap as appropriate. That way, you can get the full benefit of whatever the template and your other abilities give you when it's appropriate to have them. You're not losing the power of your choices, you're just... setting them aside until a better time. ^^
That works. I'll have more time to do that over the weekend.
The biggest discussion was on the wide power levels in "pick a template, pick a race, pick an epic "thing"", and no real guideline on what the desired power level is. If you (Sebecloki) could give a guideline on desired power, or give some limits/options on templates/epic items/races and race points, that would help bring everyone to a similar field. A +1 flavor template is very different from some of the +3-5 templates that are basically mini-classes, or bring in high levels of abilities/power. A Grippli is very different from a Drow Noble, etc. That's where the charts came into play- a common reference point we could all look at.
The other discussion was on how fast healing and temporary hit points / bonus hit points should be handled with Wounds and Vigor, but I think that one came to a consensus.
It feels like this summed it up well.
Admittedly, I am suspicious of the chart and the ability to work around it, but if it's agreed on, I'm willing to try it.
I think another thing was someone got the okay to combine 2 epic items and seriously crazy things started popping up.
The latter was my second version, combining cha bonus and resistance. Still not as pricey as the most expensive epic items, but still in the millions of gp. That got revised downward to the current helm.
I'm happy to abide by specific rules, but those need to be pinned down and made clear or we're all going to make assumptions. And who knows what someone new reading this thread will think.
@Sebicloki: Can you give us your definitive set of character creation rules and/or a new thread?
I already posted a pdf file with character creation rules above -- I'm still confused what to add to clarify issues further, it's already a pretty sizable document.
It sounds like we're not agreed about the table, and I could see that being an issue in that it requires a lot more work to try to get values within a certain range.
Sebecloki, the potential areas that could use clarification are race selection, template selection, and the 3.5 epic "thing".
On race, it's mostly fine as long as we don't have some people using Drow Nobles (41 RP) and others using Grippli (6? RP), etc. Templates are a little iffier - some of the +3 or more templates are gamechangers, while many of the +1 templates are basically flavor. I think as a group we decided to self-limit to +3 templates or less, and races of 15 RP or less.
The epic "thing" is wide open, though many of the feats and spells are not that useful since they require 20+ ranks in skills. The effective power of something that gives +10 to an attribute to start shows up as well, though as some have noted it means no progression of that attribute in play - it's already maxed. Just FYI, if you open up the Pathfinder Epic Handbook (3rd party), there's many more items and feats that could be selected by a 6th level party - fewer requirements of 20+ ranks and other such high-level achievements. Again, we have mostly agreed to self-limit to 1 million GP.
Basically, we are trying to find the "correct" power level, or at least be on the same level. If we go the route of maxing out from the Table, that works; or you could give us an idea of where we should be in relation to each other, power level wise. If one person is playing Wolverine and another is playing Sherlock Holmes, there might be some difficulties in combat / physical checks.
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Here's the Updated House Rules again.
I think we should look to be in the greenish area of the table, question is only wether level 6 or level up to 8.
I think my current character is ~level 6 green.
Just to note that I have a bad cold and may not be posting for a bit.
I think at this point this thread will intimidate most new players from joining
I read the fecking whole thread (now I see double) and wouldn't mind to have a go at this if I manage to make the PC before you start. I'm aiming at a very tough character.
This isn't on a fast time line at this point -- I'm going to have to go through this and re-summarize character creation rules and re-post with the campaign synonpsis.
I work entirely on the weekend in the middle of the night in a busy medical lab, so I may not have time to do that until next week.
I'm looking at this and trying to decide on some issues before I repost --
First, I'm wondering if we should simply toss the epic level item/doodad. That seems to be causing some issues. Why don't we select a high tech 'numenera' from the Pathfinder Technology Guide instead?
Did anyone do the 'change out' class features. I'm wondering if that's also going to be an issue -- is it essential to anyone's build, or can we consider eliminating that? I think that will make it easier to get new players, as this seems to have caused some difficulties.
For the race issue, I think we should figure out some race/level conversion. Like RP 20+ counts as a level, what do people think would work? Thus, you can play a Drown Noble if you give up 1-2 levels.