Aldath's page

Hello guys. I've been a GM for long, pretty new to Pathfinder tho.

I am currently running a Kingmaker and also Curse of the Crimson Throne game with friends, however I've always had a problem: the encounters I run usually become Final Fantasy in a couple rounds; I hit you, you hit me, rinse and repeat. Even when knowing the monster statblocks and tactics, I feel there's always a way for the PCs to lock them down and make me lose interest on narrating what goes on.

An example was last night's Kingmaker session, where they found a fey that could become invisible by standing still for 1 round, then to reapear and use sneak attacks on the PCs. Tho they had to retire, our Cavalier used Call Out to lock him in combat for about 4 rounds. Since all the party was badly injured, he distracted him, however it became boring since both sides kept rolling 1s and low numbers, the Fey couldn't disengage because of Call Out, and it turned into 4 rounds of dice rolling.

Last night I finished reading Curse of the Crimson Throne, and the last battle against Ileosa makes me cringe, since it seems instead of a heated up battle, I have to roleplay an enemy that would rather tell the PCs to drop their weapons and go away, hard to imagine this tactic on a final battle, maybe because I am afraid I won't be able to roleplay said encounter.

What I mean is, I have problems looking at the game table as anything but a tactic minis game, and I haven't found a way to make battles interesting enough to roleplay while keeping the tactical aspect alive.

Any tips?

"In this system, magic weapons, armor, and shields never have enhancement bonuses of their own; those bonuses are granted only through attunement. Any weapon, armor, or shield special abilities on attuned items count against a character's enhancement bonus from attunement. To determine an attuned magic item's enhancement bonus, subtract the cost of its special ability from the enhancement bonus granted by attunement. (This applies only to special abilities whose cost is equivalent to an enhancement bonus, not to those that cost a flat amount of gold pieces.) For example, if a character with a +3 enhancement bonus from weapon attunement wields a keen scimitar, she subtracts 1 point of her enhancement bonus (for the cost of keen), leaving her with a +2 keen scimitar. If a character doesn't have enough of an enhancement bonus to afford the special ability (such as a 4th-level character with a vorpal longsword), she can still use the weapon's power on its own, but the weapon gains no enhancement bonus."

This paragraph lost me...

So, a character with a +5 attunement bonus using a Vorpal Blade would have 0 attack bonus anyways? I mean, if I have to subtract the cost of the enchantment from the attunement, It would be 0.

Doesn't this makes magic items significantly weaker? Or am I missing something?

What I mean is, at least for me, there's less flavor to be found on 5e classes as of now. As I mentioned, 5e seems to take out much of the "cool" stuff 3.5 and PF had ruled.

The ranger, again, why do I have to sacrifice the cool things i, as a character, can do, in order to tell a CR 1/2 boring creature to attack every round? Why can't a ranger have an awesome T-rex or Wollyped? All that has to be houseruled and in the end it brings more work on the shoulders of the GM; at least I am the sort of GM that likes to have a rule for everything instead of making up stuff as we play.

Tho it's true most of the "options" on PF are things no one will ever use, when you do it's extremely fun. Ok, so, you could have a Fighter in 5e that looks, talks, moves, and fights like a Samurai, but he has the same stats and attacks as a Gladiator; it's just re skinning stuff for the sake of flavor.

But in PF I can have a Samurai that fights like a Samurai, acts like a samurai and moves like a Samurai, and that is mechanically different from the Fighter that also wears Samurai Armor, fights and moves like one. Who cares if some feats ore skills are "sub par"? PF gives me and my group what we need for most cases and there's no need to make things optimized as long as they're fun, and for me that's why some of those rules exist.

I have a Cavalier 4 that will take a Sorcerer 1 and Dragon Disciple from there, who has been using the opportunities presented to roleplay his background and how he slowly discovers his heritage. I can't so all that cool stuff with my group in 5E without houseruling all of that.

To be honest, 5e is what made me jump into the Pathfinder boat.

I know 5e just got released last year, but after playing some adventures with it, I noticed it has even less variety regarding classes, and even the core ones are bland and boring.

I played Princes of Apocalypse with friends, one of them a ranger, and he felt down looking at how weak and boring the Animal Companion options were, and how he had to trade the fighting potential of the ranger in order to have one; same, our wizard was unhappy on how her character couldn't get the summons she could on Pathfinder.

I didn't wanted to get into Pathfinder, it seemed way too complex (and it can be...), but I ended up reading it, studying PF about a month, grabbed Kingmaker, and now we're having a blast, as we've never had in any other role playing game.

While I think 5e does a lot of things way better than PF regarding simplicity and cutting some slack for the GM (Well, after PF Unchained this is arguable, since the Revised Action Economy is a lot of fun), PF just seems to have everything a GM and player would want, from short adventures to lengthy campaigns, lots of free material thanks to the OGL, and of course, customization options.

This makes me wonder, will 5e ever make it to be close to what PF is now in terms of options? Because even the previews of the new class archetypes seem boring, and as I said before, some of the core classes like the ranger, wizard and druid got wrecked by the 5e rulings.

Hello guys, I'm quite a new Pathfinder GM. My group and I have longed for a game such as Kingmaker, so when I saw a Pathfinder Core Rulebook on my local store I decided to learn it, despite I found learing PF impossible years ago.

Since 5e is a more steamlined (and severely limited...) version of 3.5/PF, It was way easier to learn this game after playing 5e for about a year.

My 3 players picked a Cavalier (plans to make him Dragon Disciple by multiclassing), a Trapper Archetype Ranger, a Summoner, and an alchemist (Mindchemist) I made myself since guys wanted me to add another female character to the group.

However since we started playing, the group has been breezing thru all of the challenges. The first bandit attack was a succesful ambush, with the Ranger ending Hapss' life with a confirmed critical, followed by the Eidolon pouncing on a surprised Bandit and the Cavalier arresting the last.

Since that point, the party has been murdering everything they find without losing much HP. No matter if I try to use tactics, I either forget them, get confused, or they fail anyways. I remember a Warg they found who lost because he made a critical miss against the horse, then they surrounded the Warg and proceeded to rip his life out.

The rest of the encounters, they've solved with Dicplomacy or sheer luck. They're level 2, almost level 3, and yesterday they breezed thru the Tatzlwyrm encounter without even trying, since the only 2 attacks the monster could pull were misses against the tanky monster the Cavalier is.

The only time a character was abut to die was my Alchemist, since she's not optimized and is built for roleplay purposes (based her on Elizabeth from Bioshock, so she's got both Charisma and Intelligence balanced, not much of a threat), but it was on the Temple of Erastil Encounter, so after the bear died being a piñata, they just washed her wounds on the fresh water they discovered was blessed.

So, here I am, about finishing book 1, and my PCs have been making every single encounter explode, be it random or planned, without even trying.

Any tips? As I mentioned, luck has been on their side, they like to see my rolls for creatures (we play online, roll20), and also I forget a lot about certain tactics despite using the SRD site and having the Unchained Action Economy broad open for me to see.

...Yeah I know, I know what you're thinking about me and you might be right.

The truth is, I have Borderline Personality Disorder, I'm a Game Master, I love Game Mastering in general and I spent the whole month of July spending some of my money on PF and learning to play what I consider the most fun but hard to learn RPG I've ever laid my hands on.

I play mostly using roll20 since my friends and I are quite busy with college and to be honest, I'm a balance-loving, rules-first GM, and they have known this for the 5 years I've been Game Mastering to them.

However I have always indirect clashes with a friend that loves to be the Mary Sue of the group, and he's too much of a good guy with me to just kick him out of the game table, however wit ha disorder like mine sometimes I can't really keep out of mind I hate him when playing, and the guys like him so i haven't been able to keep him out of my games.

So, we were going to start Kingmaker, and he asked me to have a Dragon Disciple later on. I said yes, because I didn't noticed how strong actually the class becomes once it gets Form of the Dragon, and he would over shadow my best friend's Trapper Ranger and maybe the PC of the girl we play with... So even tho I allowed it, I hated how he bragged every day he would become "over powered", thus tu pester him I asked the girl to become a summoner and design her Eidolon in the most broken way possible.

After a week of daily play, I noticed the combination would make them a two-PC party, but I couldn't back down, since either of them wanted and I was being too nice just to cover I wanted to punch them in the face for my mistake.

So, I talked to my Best friend, I exploded, and he told me I should stay away from GMing for the rest of the year since I'm gonna start doing Professional Practices this semester, which will keep me away from 7am to 9pm every day save weekends, and he fears I could get a breakdown.

I feel kinda sad because well, I spent time and money, a lot, to get the current Kingmaker as it is, and the guys got really hyped about it, made a cake, they did awesome character artworks, etc. But they do fear I'm too unstable to keep on playing.

So I just was thinking I should go and play with myself.

I thought to get a group online, but actually my english sucks and most of people on groups are older than me which is sorta intimidating.

Sorry for the long story :/

Also... summoner and gunslinger.

Well, I'm pretty much a New DM, and practically what drove me to play this was the Bestiary... Really :/

I'm planning to run a levels 1 to 20 campaign with a couple pals, Summoner and Wizard. Our fist session was AWESOME; however I've read on the forums that levels 7+ start becoming just unplayable.

Also, I've read that Gunslinger and Summoner are classes that shouldn't even exist... I've read that weird quote "stay away from the Summoner" many times before.

Aldath wrote:

1.- Zombie Cactus from D&D 4E... it was a riddiculous monster but it was pretty fun to ambush your players with living cacti using zombie thralls.

2.- MORE Kami

3.- MORE golems and Aeons

4.- More info on spawns of Rovagug for an epic final campaign battle.

5.- Golems from previous editions (Doll, Origami, etc)

6.- Noppera-Bou, a faceless Yokai who hauns peopledoing crary, uncanny stuff and then mocking them by turning into their loved ones.

7.- More lovecraftian horrors.

8.- Weird looking stuff

9.- Cute looking stuff :)

BUT somehow I doubt there will be Bestiary 4...

Zombie Cactus is copyrighted by D&D so not possible, If you like such thrall taking plants you might like the Yellow Musk Creeper.

I agree on the cactus part, of all plants cacti are the most fun to monsterize.

You are the first to ask for more Aeons, more golems are always welcome of course as you can create them from everything.

I'm sure there will be a bestiary 4, because Wesley asked us to come up with 5 new dragons a while back, those are signs they are working on bestiary 4.

Question: How many lovecraftian monsters are there still to paizonize? Because i've seen so many already in the AP's and the Bestiaries, so which ones still need som paizo love?

Hmmm well, shame on the Zombie Cactus, loved that thing :(

Well yeah, I just liked some of the old 3E and 2E golems. I liked how Aeons were portrayed on Bestiary. Well, allways been a fan of bizarre monsters (Wold in a Sheep's Cloth F.E.)

Well about the Lovecraft lore, maybe something "bigger" and "badder", I don't know if the Mi-Go are already on the roster, or some entity such as Hastur or Nyarlathotep.

Well, time to think of a Dragon I guess.

1.- Zombie Cactus from D&D 4E... it was a riddiculous monster but it was pretty fun to ambush your players with living cacti using zombie thralls.

2.- MORE Kami

3.- MORE golems and Aeons

4.- More info on spawns of Rovagug for an epic final campaign battle.

5.- Golems from previous editions (Doll, Origami, etc)

6.- Noppera-Bou, a faceless Yokai who hauns peopledoing crary, uncanny stuff and then mocking them by turning into their loved ones.

7.- More lovecraftian horrors.

8.- Weird looking stuff

9.- Cute looking stuff :)

BUT somehow I doubt there will be Bestiary 4...

Ok, well, gettign ready is not much of a problem for me since I LOVE the monsters, and I try to use them only once per campaign; or at least sometimes I use the same things but with different name and appareance to make a change :/ I'll try to deal with it, love learning more about creatures.

However, I still feel too many rules are overwhelming me... and the group.

I've been thinking as well to eliminate the concentrarion rule: If they hit you while casting, you stop the casting, but don't lose the spell.

Another rule I've been thinking about was letting the characters gain full health after an extended rest, just as in 4E; we roleplay 2-3 times a week, 3 hours, so I want to make things more agile... sometimes an encoutner takes us 2 hours.

Well well guys, I'm new to Pathfinder, I got my Begginer Box not so much time ago, then I started buying used books on my local book market; Advanced Players Guide, Core Book, Bestiary 3 and Dragon Empires Gazeteer.

BUT I've found myself struggling to learn the rules even after Begginers Box.

We are ALL 4E Ex-Players, and we're loving just EVERYTHING about Pathfinder, save it's overwhelming complexity that has turned some battles into rule debates, specially when I have to check every 2 rounds monster Feats...

I've asked my players what they WANT and DO NOT WANT in the campaign... they said: "You pick it e_e". The problem is that we're playing with a summoner in the group, he's happy, and I like the class, but I'm sure I can remove/twak some rules without changing much the core gameplay.

My ideas so far are:

1.- Diagonal movement costs the same, since we're very used to it since 4E and D&D Next Playtest.

2.- Monsters CAN'T HAVE, WILL NEVER HAVE, AND WILL NEVER USE FEATS, it slows down the combat TOO MUCH.

Well, I'm still reviewing the rules but we kinda want to play it "Keep it Simple and Stupid", so, any suggestions?

sounds like a problem with the software.

Yes, you can take martial weapon proficiency... It will only be with one weapon (if I recall).

Geez, So I'll have to make it all over again :/

Well, thanks tough, a shame it's not working.

Well guys, I'm here struggling to make a summoner.

I'm making a 21 year old male Kitsune Summoner, and I already gave the little guy a crossbow to stand up for himself while his eidolon crushes whatever he can't... However I was thinking of Martial Weapons.

I am using the YAPCG Excel Sheet to do the math for me, however I noticed there's no such Feat registered... but there IS Simple Weapon Proficency, which as far as I know, the summoner starts with it as well as every other caster.

I tought it was a problem of the sheet so I downloaded Character Excelerator Sheet... turns out it didn't have Martial Proficency either.

Mow, my question is; is the Summoner unable to take said weapons path? (Which I doubt since Advanced Player's Guide doesn't mentions it, PLUS I tried making a fighter with same sheets, no Martial Weapon Proficency Feat either....), or it's just that I'll have to feel in a sheet all by myself? :/

Thanks!

As I said before, and will say again; they need to do a New Player Friendly version of the Core Manuals. I'm not saying the Begginer Box isn't of any help, but making the Core Book EASIER to digest for people who just came from the Beginner Box would be EASIER.

yeah people sometimes talks about what sort of things they would like in a new "edition". I think the one thing I desire most is simply a rewritten core rulebook that made things easier to find and simplified sections. I haven't played 3.5 in over half a decade, and its been slow going for me relearning the rules. I'd be completely lost if there wasn't an online PRD I can search through

Well reading the topic, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who feels the Core Book needs a begginer-friendly edition... specially since I'm LOVING the game.

I'd like to see those "Go to page X" nice pointers, they helped speed up creation, and made it fun.

Well, figuring out how to make a Summoner after making a Wizard with the Begginer Box guidelines wasn't THAT hard, but yes, it's a class you have to read very carefuly first since the Eidolon depends directly on your stat growth; plus you have to be VERY careful when picking your Summoner magic since well, as the summoning guy your role is to run arround buffing your pet once in a while.

The problem here is that I'm not from the USA, and if people have a hard time there finding groups... I have it even harder :/ I've tried finding groups in my cirty, but I confirmed there are NONE, so I've always run adventures with a couple friends. We're pretty young too, and people our age isn't really interested in rolepaying (our youngest member is 15 years old, I'm 20 myself).

So... I've always had to learn by reading.
Thankfully I know all the bases, and I understand CBM and CBD very well.
I just hope next edition of Pathfinder is aimed to new players as well, cuz it's not nice to be on the spot where your only option is to try it for yourself and playtesting with friends... taking more than an hour and half to defeat 6 goblins -.-

And thanks fr the PDF, it will be helpful! ^^

Well, just a suggestion and I wanted to what people feels like.

I just got my copy of the Begginer Box, and I'm VERY happy I own this. I started roleplaying with a sistem by the name Anima: Beyond Fantasy... which is Beyond complex :) I still ade it to deal with it because of one thing: It's presentation made me still awake wile reading the rules, which were always easy to find.

Then I moved on to D&D 4E, which has been my favorite Role Playing Game so far; again, it's simplicity and design made it good for every sort of player and master, and the book was easy to digest, and was very well placed. It took you by the hand and guided you trough it to understan it's nature. I wanted something more fitting for an epic adventure, and I liked Pathfinder's classes and world.

So I got the core Book (dunno which printing), and the bestiary and weeeelll... I noticed it was CLEARLY written for previous 3.5 players and I don't think they had newcomers on mind. I mean, finding some guidelines for character creation beyond the glossary was a pain (like, how to properly calculate total hit points at first level... they made it clear BEYOND the classes section) and the spellcasting part was just overwhelming... a courtain of text, UNNECESARY courtain of text.

I was losing my faith when I got this amazing little pack of awesomeness, and I have to say I'm impressed at it's design and presentation. From the VERY moment you go on with the solo campaign, which as an awesome idea, to the spells, which were presented in colorful ways, explained WELL, and the art made it very attractive... More than the art was the fact that both books were wellcoming you and making you grow more and more extited.... they were leading thr reader step by step, trough some complex rules, but in the simplest way possible, without expecting you to dabble trough everything like if you HAD to know beforehand how to play.

I'm starting to understand the game little by little, and I hope I can master it soon enough... and make a Summoner to try it out later (yup, got Advanded Player's Guide). However I just open the books and I feel I just switched from my nice, understanding teacher, to the old geezer that will yell if I'm wrong and slap me with a ruller.

Well guys, I'm new to Pathfinder. I TRIED to learn 3.5e, but it was way too complex to me; so here I am, challenging my mind and trying to get a hold on this game, since it REALLY seems to be marvelous.

I already know how to generate the basics on a character, such as defenses and attack calculations, class progress, etc... What makes my mind blown are EVERYTHING related to combat.... specially spells which seem over complicated to me.

Is there some kind of recommended order for me to study the rules? I want to have fun without becoming a rule checker... I've heard what made Pathfinder/3.5 so dull was the fact something as fancy as swinging a blade could lead to a half an hour discussion about rulings.

Some kind of study plan? :/