A personal favorite and often overlooked tactic of mine is the delay initiative action. Players in general tend to have a desire to rush into combat to get there first and do all the damage. In PFS, this escalates into almost a player against player race to the combat. But if you are fighting melee foes, and you wait for them to approach you, you have the advantage. Maybe it is indicative of something that so many enemies have a single salvo of ranged attacks or round of buffs at their disposal. Maybe its a good idea not to be there first to get beat on by the enemy thugs. Maybe its just me.
Another one that I personally like is the drag maneuver or reposition to pull the squishy caster out of the way from an enemy without provoking attacks of opportunity. In my home KM game, it has become a foregone conclusion that if our Sorcerer gets pinned down in melee, my Ranger will yank him out to a safer distance.
Or instead of shuffling ties back to the deck, both get just 1/2 vote (as opposed to 1 vote for the winner and 0 for the loser). That way, the overall number of votes is the same regardless of which button you click, and you don't have to view the same items over and over again.
That isn't how Condorcet voting works though. Condorcet voting creates a set of A>B values and uses those values as its mathematical input. Though it seems like it would be easy to also apply A=B, the system doesn't work that way. Voting for Item A does not give it a +1, and voting against Item A does not give it a -1. It only establishes a relationship of A>B or B>A. Voting neither is like saying "These are too close to tell. It is beyond me to compare them, and I need someone else to do it."
To be entirely honest, I think that including the tie button has only led to confusion and less optimized sorting.
Keep in mind that if an item loses in future pairings, that means that every item it beat gets bumped down the list with it. And if an item wins in future pairings, every item it lost to gets bumped up on the list with it. If we were voting initially on items that had made a cut and were all good, then this would become gritty fast, and one bad vote could make things ugly. But we have enough filler and junk items in there, that any links we form are only going to help pull the great things to the top.
Condorcet voting is a wonderful system for developing a chain of good to bad. With Condorcet voting, you are basically able to chain vote for an item, such that if item fail already lost to item mediocre, then voting for item nice over item mediocre functionally votes item nice as better than item fail automatically. The more votes that go into it, the stronger the beatpath is confirmed.
When two terrible items get paired up, voting for either one establishes that any future losses for the 'winner' also count as losses for the loser.
At the other end of the spectrum, when two awesome items get paired, it establishes that the any time the "loser" wins from there on out, it counts as a win for the winner too.
Basically, we have a chain of strength in these items, and Condorcet voting is a method of pulling the chain from both ends, to determine the flow of awesome to awful.
Followed by thoughts for the future:
After completing a certain number of matches per item, we should have some obvious chaff at the bottom. There are formulas that tournament organizers use for this stuff, and I don't know the specifics on the numbers, but at a certain point, you can safely cut off the bottom half of the emerging chain, and while yes, you can accidentally snip something in the top 25%, you can be certain that the padding has kept the top 10% safe (mathematically speaking).
I am in no way shape or form recommending a change in the current course of this round, but i do believe that in future years, we can utilize some sort of "trim as we go" system that will not only improve the quality of our votes (top 128 items matched up is significant for ranking, but once we hit the low end, does it matter which is worst?), but it will also increase the excitement and entertainment value for the voters as we see more and more of the good stuff while we continue voting.
I know the importance of giving all the items a fair chance, but at a certain point, we are just hitting ourselves in the face with the bad stuff to prove its still bad. That disheartens us, gets a little boring, and honestly, promises that there will be more negative threads like this one.
Next year, lets get some sort of "trim as we go" system in place. I am proud to help bear the burden once placed on the shoulders of the judges alone, but lets do it efficiently according to the strengths of our mass capacity.
And finally...:
I blame the bulk of bad items that I was seeing on the way people were abusing the "neither" button. Since the change in labeling, and the discussion about how that just recycles, I have seen less of those items which just made me groan, and a LOT more interesting stuff.
Okay, I will leave with this final statement of intent and vision:
The murder of innocents is almost always evil, but the purpose for doing so will greatly influence the severity of this action. Killing an innocent because a superior told you to is meaningfully less evil than doing so for the lulz, as some have implied characters are doing. Killing an innocent on orders is still evil, but its a different caliber of evil entirely, and the argument against evil seems to ignore this completely. Not to mention the fact that these evil missions to not target innocent people at all. They targets may not have committed any crimes directly against the PCs, or at all, but they are not wonderful and wholesome people in the least. I am greatly bothered that these specific cases of 'bad guy says to be evil to other jerk' is somehow being misconstrued as torture an innocent man.
Furthermore, I believe that the cry against this evil is actually a cry against non-good. Though I will cede that the poison example is clearly evil, and likewise the Sewer Dragons mission for Sczarni, I will stand by my claim the typical kill quest is not evil.
I have never made argument that a character should be permitted to wantonly commit evil actions, certainly not in front of the good characters, without repercussions. The specifically horrible missions in question are specifically ones that are designed for subtlety for a reason. As Dennis Baker said, the DC for the task that sparked this debate was intentionally lower so that the character was more able to perform it alone and quietly.
I have however made the argument that the paladin contingent seems intent on holding neutral characters to a lawful good standard. I am not saying that they have no place to oppose evil, but I am saying that for a multitude of valid reasons, they have no place to oppose neutral.
This concern of mine, coupled with the immediate turn around, which instead of addressing the disruptive nature of one group, blames the victims of said disruption, sickens me. Because Cheliax is listed as evil and Sczarni are a crime family, the conclusion seems to be that any mission either of these factions sends a player on is intrinsically more evil than the exact same mission for another faction. Furthermore, it becomes acceptable for a paladin to scrutinize one of these faction members and disrupt play.
My genuine concern is that responses of GMs have indicated that not only would they be happy to ban characters for completing too many faction missions as written, but that they would allow blame to fall on a player of a Sczarni character for the disruption caused by a paladin in the party.
It further infuriates me that there seems as well to be a complete hand-wave to the consequences of mercy. Mercy and justice are great and wonderful things. But the reason that they are supposed to be rare in a fantasy setting is because they aren't easy. If mercy was easy, there would be no neutral characters. Good should be the hardest alignment to play. Then and only then can it be the most rewarding. By allowing characters to ignore the consequences of actually being just and merciful, it shifts the entire tone of the game into a good/not good dynamic, cheapening the entire alignment system, and leaving people who wanted to play neutral characters feeling like they have been morally lectured every time there character does something that is well within the lower end of his alignment.
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On the subject of this hyperbole:
I have had problems at a game table, and when I came to the forums to have my concerns alleviated, instead I got lectured on not playing an evil character, and heard from GMs that they would make effort to have my characters removed from play if I completed faction missions.
The only thing about this thread that keeps me from quitting PFS OP right now is that I know who the GMs are that I will stand up and leave table to get away from.
And with that, I am done with this entire line of discussion.
If people committing Evil acts doesn`t shift their alignment towards Evil SOMEHOW (GMs can and should be precise in saying +1/4 towards next alignment closer to Evil, +1 full step only in stronger situations), then the prohibition on Evil alignment in PFS seems like a joke, since it just means you can`t write Evil on your character sheet from the start, but are free to act as Evil as you want (just no PvP). Since I assume Paizo intends their rules (vs. Evil) to be followed thru on, I can`t see why they don`t expect repercussions for Evil acts. Since there definitely is a hell of alot of gray area about judging aligment, I think it`s good practice for any GM shifting alignment (if only partially) to write down a consise, but informative reason of exactly why the alignment deserved to shift (or partially shift), so that other GMs can see that reasoning down the line.
I DO think that Paizo should address this issue head-on by exactly describing how this works, and how characters who act evil on ocassion (shifting them to Neutral) need to balance that with Good acts if they are to remain PFS-legal... along with guidelines for GMs to indicate Alignment shifts (and partial shifts) on character sheets, since that is a pretty important part of this. Examples/guidelines for what constitutes a full alignment shift, vs. 1/2 or 1/4 for example, would probably be pretty useful as well.
While I think this is a fine idea under most circumstances, it begins to fall apart when you look at factions and faction missions. According to such a ruling, Sczarni would be harder to play than Silver Crusade. You would either have to skip out on Faction awards consistently, or you would have to run around saving orphans with every spare second you had to keep your character from being removed from play by level 5.
Just because Silver Crusade are the good guys, and Andoran were the most good guys previously does not mean that it should be easier to play them. If anything, it should be harder to be good than to be neutral. Creating a rule set that penalizes people for not being good (which is exactly what you described) does the exact opposite of that and establishes tiers of playability among the factions, with Silver Crusade as easiest, since their faction missions are least likely to give you black marks of evil that can eventually make your character unplayable.
And yes, Dragonmoon, I had a headache too, but it had nothing to do with the module.
I like the Max HP/level plus all good saves idea a lot! The speed that a round goes by makes the game flow smoother, but there is no reason that an epic battle should be over in 30 seconds, which is what this covers.
I personally prefer to use terrain and environment to make up for the action gulf between the party and monster. Terrain hits every person on the battlefield the same, so it hits 4 PCs four times harder than the Solo Big Bad, who should exist in environments which he is immune/resistant to, and that give him an edge. If the PC's have to spend half their time just keeping above the water so to speak, you've effectively given the bad guy twice as many actions. Not only does it keep the game from feeling like reality has to bend for the big bad, but it keeps the fight from ending too fast.
A scene where four high level PCs battle a great wyrm is awesome. A scene where four PCs struggle through a hurricane on top of a mountain to battle the same great wyrm (who created the hurricane, mind you) is legendary.
