Aravar Eveningfall's page

As a DM, one thing that bugs me is when you have a setting and ideas about the campaign, whether it be an adventure path or a custom made game, and a player shows up with this whole back story that doesn't fit with that. Mr. Real Roleplayer has his brilliant concept and lengthy back story and he doesn't care that it doesn't work with your plans. He's such a brilliant thespian that of course you'll alter your campaign so his character can have his epic arc. And then he'll have the spotlight and all the other players will be second stage to him.

I'd almost rather have the casual players without much background who just go along with your game because that's what the game is. If the players can be a little more invested, work out a short back story that fits your game, and go from there, that's the ideal.

I was very happy that level adjustments were taken out of Pathfinder. In 3.0 a player took the celestial template for one level and was vastly more powerful than the group. On the other hand you had races like the tiefling where the base race was barely more powerful than a standard race and took the level hit. Advanced Race Guide is much better balanced than anything Wizards did back in the day.

Going completely off topic, how did we come up with the term "theory crafting?" There are theories, and the people who develop theories and theorists. How did we get theory craft? Is that for people who post builds they never play?

I think with a new player you want to get them interested more than you want to make them plug a perceived hole in the party. Like others have said I would keep it simple. A melee class or a spontaneous caster without many spells to keep track of.

There's a couple factors here. First off, 3rd edition came out with Wealth by Level. While I think it was a good idea to have an idea of balance and to work out CRs for monsters, they really standardized magical items. With the charts for buying and customizing magical weapons, armor, etc it really hit home that this is not special treasure you find but gear.

Apart from that though is the fact that a lot of us have been playing for a long time. Getting a +1 dagger is not as impressive as it was the first or even the third time. It takes better and more unique items to really excite experienced players.

If you don't mind converting from 3.5 I liked Conquest of the Bloodsworn Vale a great deal. There are a lot of missions to go after monsters, you can roleplay in the little town as there are a lot of npcs to interact with and a few encounters that you can talk through if you're not into hacking through everything. The end is a pretty good little dungeon. My group seemed to like it a great deal.

Why does this bother people so much? It's been part of the game since day one. In Original D&D you rolled 3d6 six times and took what you got, so there were a lot of bad stats. When it was 4d6 arrange to taste you still prioritized stats and could still have bad ones. All of the sudden with point buy being standard it's some kind of sin to have low stats rather than choosing to be well rounded in all six abilities. The system already penalizes you, if you dump intelligence you suck in the skill category. If you dump charisma you aren't good in social encounters and you won't be able to get a good cohort. It's the player's choice if they want to penalize themselves and get that extra bit of strength.

I think while I am an opinionated person and I rarely agree with a DM 100% of the time, there have only been three I would say were actually bad GMs to where I didn't want to play with them.

1) The straight up killer GM. Had an actual adversarial relationship with the players. He maxed out encounters, rerolled stats for monsters so they'd be higher, and misinterpreted spell descriptions to further hurt the players, all while saying the fights were fair because before he tweaked them they were within the CR of the party. When he was a player he was also a power gamer who would whine when he didn't get his way.

2) The obnoxious guy who would get off topic and lecture us about his views about politics, sports, whatever since we were a captive audience. He also fought with his wife at the table, made our characters act like stereotypes "Your cleric is healing the peasants"and showed blatant favoritism towards his friends and family members that played over the people he brought through online postings.

3) The DM who just didn't know what he was doing. He was a very nice guy and the whole group was nice. He just didn't have a clear idea of how to set up an adventure and let the players have victories as part of his larger story. I think he was trying too hard to be original.

Well, nothing to say we can't use beholders and mind flayers in our own games

One thing I never liked from 3.5 was weapon size rules. I liked that a halfling would use a human short sword, and that was basically his longsword in every other version of D&D. Now you have to find separate category weapons if you have gnomes and halflings in the party. It's really pointless.

I had thought of that, but as the race background charts are not terribly different from one another I don't think it would be too hard to homebrew one for your chosen race. Shorter lifespans probably get more siblings. Planetouched races probably could just use humans.

I don't know why anyone would have a problem with different races. "Oh, I have to fit them into my campaign world." Yeah, I'm sure you also drew an ecosystem with all one thousand monsters from the bestiaries. "The character is trying to be a special snowflake." Why is that terrible that someone would want a unique character? If people don't play the game the same way as you they are doing it wrong?

That is pretty sweet. Hopefully next year I can get my group to go.

I agree with the player. If a battle is obviously suicidal I don't see why a paladin would have to fight. Honestly, if the paladin is not doing anything outright evil I would not treat them differently than any other good character.

Pathfinder's version of a samurai is a cavalier variant, while Ishi is not shown having a mount. I would make her a fighter.

Not sure if it's worth it with 8 charisma, you might want to look up the stonelord archetype. But yes, that is how multiclassing works.

A small character with a strength penalty is not going to do a lot of melee damage. Coupled with the monk class, yeah, there's no way he's hanging with the barbarian. Maybe you can drop an agile monk's belt for him.

So if I play a high level fighter and get four attacks per round, then statistically I drop my weapon or stab my friend or something moronic every five rounds? Or once every thirty seconds once I'm in melee range? Yeah, I'm not playing with that DM.

I like most of the classes Paizo has released. I don't understand the complaint that "you don't need these classes, you can make them from existing classes." First off, that's not 100% true, and second, we've always gone on the side of more options. You could argue that a fighter/rogue with wilderness skills could replace the ranger, but you don't get the exact flavor of the ranger.

In 3.0 and 3.5 you would buy splatbooks and get a thousand prestige classes. You would want to play one, and build a character from level one with that prestige class in mind, hoping the campaign would last that long. In Pathfinder there are some prestige classes, but with the archetypes and new base classes you are much more likely to be able to play the character you want from the beginning. Instead of "first level fighter, next five wizard, eldritch knight, abjurant champion," you just play a magus.

Tabletop rpgs are a hobby, a past time we engage in for fun. If a group of people like to crunch numbers and work on making powerful characters, but the whole group including the GM is on the same page, why is that wrong? Why is another group that likes to be more like improvisational theater somehow morally superior? "Roleplay not rollplay" implies that one is better than the other.

I think not only is the Stormwind Fallacy a good point but you also have to consider how casual or serious the group is. I know some people who don't roleplay heavily or optimize, because the game is just a fun thing to do one night a week. Then there are people who really get into the game, and both optimize and roleplay. I honestly think both are fine.

You know what really makes me, as a player, roleplay more? The GM and the adventure. I had a GM who made us all have back stories for our characters, but then he just ran fights in caves. Never did a lot of talking in character there. On the other hand, one person in our group is running Skull and Shackles. There are a lot of NPCs, and dealing with them rather than monster fights to get things accomplished, so our characters have shown more personality than in the first group. It's not the system, it's the GM.

I am 32, started with a couple friends with a boxed D&D set that I got at a toy store for five bucks in middle school, but soon moved onto 2e. I played 3.0 and 3.5 with a group I met while in college, and played with them until around 2007 when they moved onto WoW. I played that for two years but didn't have the stamina for that grind and missed the social interaction and roleplay. I tried a few times but finally found a good group of reasonably well adjusted adults to play with last year. I really like Pathfinder and find it to be a nice upgrade to 3.5.

I enjoy a lot of science fiction and fantasy but have never read John Carter. I liked the first few Tarzan novels before Tarzan and Jane had the kid and he acted like baby Tarzan, that was lame. I read a bunch of Howard a couple years ago, I like Lord of the Rings, and I am currently rereading Wheel of Time. Harry Potter is okay but I get irritated when people act like Rowling invented fantasy.

Thaco sucked, btw. No matter how well you explain it, it will never be as easy as adding a number to your roll.

That was an interesting twist. You are not a bad writer at all. Someone told me once at art school, "Never apologize for your work," and it's still good advice.