Aducan's page

Count Varian Jeggare

Thanks for the input. Just knowing there is one such case really helps out. I'll do more reading about this character.

And I agree that if obligations to a government and the Society came into conflict, it would be more likely for the government to request the agent's resignation from the Pathfinders, rather than the Society doing so. They seem to value a wide range of backgrounds within their organisation.

That being said, I'd have thought the Shadow Wars would have made them hesistent to allow membership to legitimate nobility. But again, they seem pretty forward thinking, so I can also accept that they'd just dismantle the political factions but allow nobility to join as individuals.

Hi all,

How does being a member of the Pathfinder Society affect one's ability to inherit lands, titles, and manors (or be granted the former by potential liege lords, as say a reward for service in battle or bringing a treacherous vassal to justice)?

Does a recruit to the Pathfinders forfeit potential claims on initiation? If not, assuming they accept their inheritance, are they required to leave the Society when they accept, or are they allowed to retain their membership?

Can a landed lord join the Pathfinders?

tl;dr Potential and/or current Barons/Counts/Dukes as Pathfinders. Yay or nay? What does the cannon say?

I've heard in passing that the Pathfinders had troubles in the past with geopolitical factions within the organisation causing some Bad Stuff™ to happen. I'd imagine that that would make them sceptical of allowing landed lords and nobility into their ranks (although I recall them having plenty of dispossed nobles among them).

If anyone has any examples of characters I can look up on the wiki, or books (1st ed is welcome) that I could read about anything/anyone that might be relevant to the topic, let me know!

Any speculations y'all might have are also welcome.

Thanks!

So, I think this is a place where you have to accept that the mechanical text isn't neccessarily going to represent the fiction with as much accuraccy as, well, the mechanics.

The way I've understood it is that, if after 4 days you've successfully made the item, one of two things happen.

1) If you decide to finish the item, we retroactively retcon that you bought the full materials 4 days ago and have therefore had enough materials all along to complete the item, or

2) If you decide to work another 4 days, then you only ever bought half the materials of the item and have been working longer in order to make do with what you have and stretch your resources.

So even thought the text says that you only gather half your materials in the initial 4 day crafting period, I think you can't take that mechanical text as 100% representative of the fiction, unless you can find a way to justify using up the other half of the materials in one day (spending the other half of material cost to finish the item on day 4).

However, now that I think about it, you probably can!

If you wanted to be more faithful to the rules text, you could probably just say that the character uses the other half of the materials as part of the 4th day finalization of the item; just beacuse it took 4 days to use up half of the materials doesn't mean it would take 4 days to use up the other half. Two reasons for this:

1) It's only half the materials in the monetary sense, not pure weight sense. So yes, the first half of materials might be 4 iron ignots, to make a sword, but the other half of materials might be the leather of a rare beast and a strange gem to be used for the handle wrapping and pommel respectively. Applying these componeants wouldn't take as long as forging the ignots, but they would still account for half the item's price. Speaking of time,

2) It takes less time to apply the second half of materials than the first half. So, we might use 4 ignots to make the frame work of the shield, which takes 4 days and involves ardous work, but when we're done with the shield's skeleton, we can either spend 4 more days scavenging the scrap left over from the first 4 day process to finalize the shield, or we can buy 4 more ignots worth of iron sheets to quickly finalize the process. (It's just an example, I'm not a shieldsmith!)

The examples are meh, but I think the principles still make sense and hopefuly that comes across.

But that's just my opinion. Both justifications make sense to me, but that doesn't mean they have to make sense to you, if you disagree. :)

Are you sure?

Saw this in the "If it bleeds" thread:

Another special type of physical damage is bleed damage. This is persistent damage that represents loss of blood. As such, it has no effect on nonliving creatures or living creatures that don’t need blood to live. Weaknesses and resistances to physical damage apply.

That last sentence is key, imo.

I'm still new to the system, but that language seems pretty definitive to me.

Ah, Venture Officers, got it.

Thanks everyone. I feel I now have a much better understanding of how to handle intergrating into Society play.

I'll run a game or two with one of my regular players to get more familiar with the system, and then try to jump in PbP as a player. See how it goes from there.

Maybe I'll try a PbP with the rest of my regulars. Do forums allow for non-society games, or does every game need to be a society game?

EDIT: Never mind that, they probably wouldn't be comfortable having the game be public.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to respond!

P.S. One thing thought: What's a VO?

Hi all,

I'm new to Pathfinder. I'd like to play Pathfinder.

Gasp

But I've never played it as a player. This hasn't stopped me with systems I've run in the past, but when it comes to Society Play (the thing that's catching my attention), things feel different, probably because I haven't run public "convention style" games before, where you could have a whole table full of players who you haven't interacted with before and who you have to run for "rules as written".

My question(s) to y'all: How much knowledge of the game system is expected of a Society GM, and are new players even welcome to jump straight into GMing?

(Feel free to just answer what questions you feel like, I'm mainly interested in that first one above me. The rest are just details.)

...

How many of you that have GM'd for Society games did so before playing in one? How about before playing a PC in Pathfinder period?

How many of you had prior GMing experience in Pathfinder? What was the biggest change you had to make in how you approach Society games from your regular games?

What turns a new player into someone who's ready to GM a Society game?

Face to face and play by post, does one style lend itself better to a new GM?

And, lastly, how did y'all fare running your first Society game?

...

Bit wordy this, sorry, but I'm interested in hearing people's thoughts.

Sincerely yours,
Some guy who just wants a star

Huh. I see what I did there. Oops. I'll flag this post, thanks for pointing it out!