Aurumaer's page

Hama wrote:

A special snowflake is also a player who knowingly designs a character so exotic and 'different' that it pretty much warrants extra special treatment by everyone he sees. And then has the gall to get insulted when guards hassle him more then the band of humans he comes in with, or when criminals wanna capture him and sell him to someone wealthy like an exotic animal..etc...

Gal? That's pretty hateful. Are you sure that's a safe way to think? I've always liked to try and help people fit their ideas in, so I might be a little biased, but I've never tried to sell someone off like an exotic animal, though I might consider it if that was their point. I certainly wouldn't say 'Gal' though. Gotta watch out for thought like those, they can bring some bad karma down and preconceived notions. Worse you might forget to talk to the players about the consequences of your actions and spring it on them to their shock and horror.

Err, Hama said 'gall' as in insolence, not 'gal' as in a derogatory term.

I think there's another angle to this issue. In other roleplaying games there tends to be a very narrow focus in terms of the types of characters people can play. For example I am running an L5R game, and in that no one would suggest playing anything other than a Samurai - because it's a game about playing Samurai.

However in D&D/PF that boundry doesn't exist. Perhaps in the past it was a game about playing 'Tolkien' races, but nowadays (especially if you throw the ARG into the mix) it is far broader than that. The issue is that some people still want a game that is about playing 'Tolkien' races in a pseudo Medieval fantasy setting while others want to explore the new options. When these two mindsets are sitting on opposite sides of the screen you can obviously get conflict.

I think it's an issue of communication. If the only description of the game beforehand was "Pathfinder Game" then of course there'll be disagreements when you show up with your Dwarf Fighter only to learn that the DM is running a Kitsune dominated us-vs-the-sharktopus setting. On the one hand the GM should be clear about the game he wants to run (it's kitsune vs the sharktopus) and on the other hand the players should say beforehand if they aren't interested in that idea. Then when the time comes to sit down and game everyone there is on the same page (or is absent if Kitsune vs the Sharktopus just wasn't for them).

Cthulhu got beaten by a steamboat, and it is canon.

The steamboat allowed the guy to get away from Cthulhu, it didn't kill him. Nothing wrong with running from Cthulhu.

I think Lovecraft created some cool stories that creeped some people out over the years. To some people he's a fantastic writer, to others he's overrated. It's true of any writer.

What captures people's imaginations I suspect is that he was particularly talented with turning a phrase and creating a sense of dread without being truly explicit about the horrors he wrote of.

I think that's exactly what draws people to Lovecraft. Even though many can see he wasn't the most technically skilled writer, his works are still appealing because they can see how the kind of horror he was writing was different and it captures people's imaginiations.

Lovecraft should not be dismissed any more than Tolkien should be dismissed, or any more than any other writer who created enduring works, but they shouldn't be considered sacred either. Some people like the idea of killing Cthulhu, others think that's blasphemy. All that matters is what you and your table enjoys.

While I agree that what your table enjoys is what matters most, I would argue that killing Cthulhu misses the point. One of Cthulhu's core traits is that he's unbeatable. It would be like if you took the Paladin and said that in your game they have no alignment restrictions or code of conduct to follow. Then you've got a class called Paladin but it's fundamentally different from the "Paladin" that other people are using (though perhaps enjoyable in its own right). Similarly, a stat block can be given the name Cthulhu and fighting it might well be fun but at the end of the day you're talking about a very different idea from what most people would consider "Cthulhu"

What hey don't have listed here; hybrid Barbarian/Monk the Pro Wrestler Class!

In all seriousness though this looks to be a great book, I'm particularly excited about the Bloodrager!

or is the low casting of miracle supposed to emulate only a single casting of a sufficiently low level spell?

I think you hit the nail on the head here. You could use miracle to do these things as you could with the low level spell, but not in a single casting. In general you could try to imagine the spell effect you are trying to achieve. Wall of Stone may be a 5th/6th level spell, but Create Citadel would certainly be a 9th level spell if it existed. Therefore it's out of the range of a "free" miracle.

Could I cast Miracle and beseech my god to cripple my enemy's fortitude save, thereby emulating the effect of a bestow curse, but with no save and no SR, so I can follow it up with a good save or suck spell?

There is actually a bit about this in the description for Miracle:

A duplicated spell allows saving throws and spell resistance as normal, but the save DCs are as for a 9th-level spell.

So you could get them to make a saving throw as if the spell were 9th level, but you couldn't bypass their save/SR.

Lakesidefantasy wrote:

It kind of gets weird given that elven PCs gain class levels at the same rate as their human comrades. At that rate I would expect many really high level elves to be out there, but I have yet to meet any. I've met one elf NPC who was three or four hundred years old, yet he was only level 8.

I stopped asking this kind of questions about the world when my character in RotRL went from 1st-level to 10th-level in a matter of in-game months.

Also, this thread is very humanocentric. What about Goblins, Orcs, Kobolds, that age nearly twice as fast as humans ? Should they be depicted as incredibly smarter than humans ?

Or have we been slaughtering toddlers by the thousands all this time ?

Actually for me the issue is the opposite. We know that the reason humans have such ridiculously long childhoods (as compared to other mammals) is that we have large and complex brains that take a long time to 'programme'. In fact the length of an animal's childhood tends to correspond to the size and complexity of their brain. With that in mind, Elves could have 55 year childhoods but they would therefore need to have absurdly high intelligence scores (probably a racial +6 or so) to explain why. Likewise, Goblins, Orcs and Kobolds would need to have big intelligence penalties to explain their extremely short childhoods.

The maximum age of a race doesn't really affect their intelligence, but it does seem like Dwarves and Elves should have lots of high level characters running around - that's why AD&D had racial maximum levels after all (to stop Elves and Dwarves from taking over the world).

The way I would run it is that all races reach maturity within a few years of each other, but Elves and Dwarves stay looking young for a very long time compared to humans

If you've got a melee guy, grab some javelins or spears and go to town. As the Sphinx said when the Shoveler told him he has only one weapon,

"No! The fist! The knee! The elbow! The head! You must lash out with every limb, LIKE THE OCTOPUS WHO PLAYS THE DRUMS!"

The octopus who plays drums would be an awesome character. Hagfish, step aside, the octopus who plays drums is the new hot attraction in Sandpoint! :P

It might be worth the trouble, from time to time, to give your players some gentle hints to help them think outside of their box that they find themselves in.

Yeah I think a little bit more forshadowing might help

We've had to homerule that creatures can't outright coup-de-gras someone with natural weapons because otherwise we'd have been TPK'd.

I'm not sure whether or not that is a houserule, natural weapons are the thing I understand least well in Pathfinder. In any case having you guys get TPK'd by Ghouls because of a few unlucky saving throws would have been grossly unfair

I have to say that many deaths have come from bad decisions and the dice

that said I'm looking forward to anything that helps my other party members from dying

Perhaps we should try the method listed above where you always get the upper half of your hit die per level?

But yeah I agree with you there, to be honest. Must be our DM's accursed lucky dice.

I bought a new set of dice for you on Saturday, hopefully you'll start seeing numbers higher than 4 now!

Aurumaer wrote:

when I consistently roll 19s and 20s

My guess is this is the problem. However, the question Misroi asks are needed to figure out what else could be happening. Has your group been able to reflect on the difficult encounters and come to any conclusions as to what they might have done better?

They have learned from some encounters, e.g. they've all started carrying Wands of Cure Light Wounds after they realized one party member can't shoulder all the healing. A lot of the time though character deaths have been down to bad luck: bosses critting, (Xanesha did 60 damage in one round last session), players failing to save against Ghoul Fever (despite having healing checks made and Remove Disease cast on them). However it was the fact that it happens so frequently that prompted me to come here and see if we were missing anything.

I always make sure that when my players roll for hit points they get a minimum of half-plus-one hit points for their level. Thus a Barbarian would get at least 7 hit points before Con bonuses, while a Wizard would get at least 4 hit points. (What I do is have them reroll the die until it's above half.)

This system sounds very interesting, thanks for suggesting it :)

Even with goodly hit points I've had characters almost killed on more than one occasion. Sadly, I doubt your players will appreciate this last option, but I'd say roll behind a screen. Then fudge rolls when needed.

We've all (save one player) agreed that fudging dice rolls ruins the fun for us, as does the suspicion that the GM is fudging dice rolls.

On a separate note we've noticed that the treasure in RotR is well below the wealth-by-level chart in the back of the CRB, perhaps boosting the amount of treasure they get would help the situation?

Before we can say what the issue is, we need a bit more info. What classes are being played? How much experience does your group have? Have they been playing 3.5/PF for years, or is this their first experience with the rules set? What sort of tactics do they employ? Do they favor stealth, or kick-in-the-door dungeon exploration? Do they seek non-violent solutions, or are all monsters things that exist to be killed? What criteria do they use to decide that they can handle one more encounter, and when do they decide that they need to cut bait and run?

With the level or turnover almost every class has been played at some point, the current group composition is Inquisitor, Fighter, Cleric, Gunslinger Cohort and two characters that have yet to be made to replace last session's deaths (both of those were barbarians).

This is almost the first Pathfinder campaign we've played (there were a couple of one-shots a few months before), before that we were playing 4e and some other systems for about 3 years. No 3.5 experience to speak of.

They definitely favour a direct, kick-in-the-door approach though the more rules-savvy players will employ a bit more caution. Non-violent solutions are rare. They tend to keep going until their resources begin to run out or someone gets dropped to 0. All the fights I listed were not beaten on the first attempt (they fled).

Are you running them on the Fast Leveling track?

Sometimes you just suffer bad die rolls. You might want to give them the Optional Hero Points to improve survivability.

Me, I started everyone off at 2nd level and increased the CR of everything by one to compensate with XPs. I know some people start them at level 1... but give them maximum starting XPs, Con Bonus, and the Constitution itself for starting hit points (thus a 1st level Wizard with a Con of 12 would have 19 hit points).

If it's just hit points at fault... perhaps do the latter. It would increase the hit points of everyone by probably 10 to 16, and that improves survivability a bit.

Yeah, they're on the Fast Leveling track. We've started a system of awarding a hero point to the best roleplayer at the end of each game session.

Dice rolls definitely have something to do with it. I roll my dice in the open so they know I'm not making it up when I consistently roll 19s and 20s

I started them off at first level using the standard rules and let them either roll for hit points or take the average at subsequent levels. I could see bonus hit points helping a bit, would giving max hp at every level make them too durable?

I've been running my group through Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition and quite frankly we've become demoralized about how much of a meat-grinder this campaign is. We're just finishing The Skinsaw Murders and so far we've had near-TPKs against Erylium, Gogmurt, Nualia, Foxglove Manor, Justice Ironbriar and most recently Xanesha.

At the beginning all the characters were made with 15 point-buy that I later bumped to 20 and then 25 to help them succeed. They've also had some side-adventures in Riddleport making them about half a level above what's expected. There are 5 players of which at least 4 tend to be present at each game. Everyone is on at least their second character while most are on their third, fourth or fifth.

Any idea where we might be going wrong? The adventure is supposed to be doable with 4 characters and 15 point-buy. I don't particularly feel like re-writing the monsters to make the adventure easier - we'd rather just start a fresh campaign if that's the solution.

56: The Handy Guide to Teleportation

This book purports to be a guide to learning to teleport at will "No prior magical expertise needed". Unfortunately, opening the last page of the book causes it to teleport to a new random location.

57: Courtier - My Life in High Society

A librarian's note inside the cover of this book explains that the author is unknown, however the book claims to be the account of a Dragon. The author claims to have used polymorph to assume the guide of various mortal races and infiltrate their courts - each time becoming a major power player, cementing his dynasty with wealth and marriage alliances before faking his death to travel elsewhere and start the process over again. Many of the families the author claims to have begun are extremely powerful today and this book would destroy their legitimacy if it were to be believed.

What people can convince themselves "makes sense" differs from group to group. That doesn't change the fact that it's all hand-waving to one degree or another.

I understand what ciretose is saying, but he keeps saying "I just want courtesy" and I keep hearing "I just want some control."

Fair enough, but whether or not it's control I still think the level of explanation stated is not an unreasonable requirement if the gm's fun is dependent on it.

As stated, I think it just offends ciretose's sense of politeness. He's already stated how simple it is to justify - how does the lack of that injure his sense of immersion.

=** spoiler omitted **...

I don't know why the lack of that injures his sense of immersion (I can only assume it's for the reasons other people have talked about) but the fact of the matter is it does.

That's why I tried to abstract it; is (having some requirement of your players) as GM unreasonable, provided that that the requirement is essential to your having fun?

Again, if you want to maintain "verisimilitude" and have any remote chance of multi-classing "making sense" in the game world, every initial level in any new class should take months at least to accomplish (with the exception of pure spontaneous classes like sorcerer). The idea that a character can pick up a book and read it at the campfire to become a "wizard", or can shadow-fence between watch and sleeping in camp to become a "fighter," or can do a few chants, meditation and prayers between encounters to become a "cleric" completely and utterly ignores the class descriptions which typically present learning the class abilities as a long, complex process finally earning the reward of reaching level 1.

Since that would mean any multiclassing would require months of "downtime" then any attempt to allow multi-classing through some sort of "makes sense" explanation of how it managed to happen overnight due to some "I read a book" or "I shadow fenced a bit" is no more plausible or believable than "it just happened."

So all this talk about "I want it to make some sense in my campaign" is pure balderdash. None of it makes sense without those months of training, and unless you force your players to role play that, then it's all a bunch of ridiculous hand-waving for the purpose of keeping the game going.

So since that's the case, why force the "I read a book" explanation at all? It strikes me as a pure GM control issue. "I'm the GM, it's my world so do it my way."

I don't think that's entirely fair. You said yourself earlier in this thread that what 'makes sense' will differ from one person to another and from one group to another. I don't see the need to accuse anyone of having 'GM control issues' for requiring a little verisimilitude so as not to ruin their own enjoyment

@littlehewy - And the whole point of the OP was that even asking that minimal amount was being condemned as unreasonable by some people now.

I was literally told it was to much to ask a player explain they practiced a bit to take a level of fighter.

Another person said that I should just allow the player to be "the chosen one" who gained it without training.

This is my whole point.

I pretty much agree with what you've been saying so far. I'm not having fun unless there's a basic level of immersion (which to me implies characters have some in game justification for their abilities).

It seems many of the others posters here can enjoy the game without it making sense to them which is fine too.

But the question then becomes; is it ok for Ciretose to ban or require something (as GM) to avoid completely ruining the game for him? To me this is not unreasonable.

What cosmic event could cause the gods to go silent for a time? Something spanning months, or years.

If you're looking for ideas how about having someone destroy the Starstone? That seems like it would cut off coneections with the Gods at the very least.

Alternatively you could have more gods just mysteriously die like Aroden did and the rest (understandably terrified) cut off all contact with Golarion.

If you want to take out all magic (Arcane & Divine) you could have the dead magic zone in the Mana Wastes expand to cover all of Golarion - though the ramifications of that would be pretty enormous.

Would all divine magic cease working? Druids and Oracles don't necessarily need to worship divine powers to get their magic; but would the gods retreating from the world cause them to lose their powers anyway?

Only Clerics need a god to grant them their powers, but as GM you could run it whatever way you want.

Would arcane magic continue to function? I know in Forgotten Realms, the death of Mystra (goddess of magic) caused ALL magic to go haywire and stop working (the undoing of the magical 'weave' that connected all things, even arcane couldn't function normally.) Would something similar happen if all gods of magic were suddenly gone?

No reason it shouldn't - but if you're planning a cataclysm of this scale they should at least feel some effect - perhaps the spells they share with Divine casters cease functioning properly?

What do you think the Church of Razmir would do? Have a freakin' field day, since they were the only ones left with "god-given" magic? Could Razmir have been a part of the gods silence, as he attempts the Starstone test?

Alternatively you could decide Arcane magic gets jacked up at the same time - that would certainly make things interesting for the Church of Razmir

You should check out www.pathfinderwiki.com - it has most of the known information about the campaign setting.

Having said that, information on specifics in Golarion are (intentionally) pretty vague - e.g. we are told that the Shoanti get tattoos to mark important events but what those events might be is left up to you.

If you want to get more detail on specific towns and the NPCs who live there then you should check out the adventure paths, since they tend to go into a lot of detail on a specific region.

Thank you for the advice, but he's my bff, he's the host, and he's got all of the books. I'd rather play with him than without, because he's frickin' hilarious, he just gets bored if we go all night and there's nothing to fight.

So, yeah, if worse comes to worse, I whip out the random encounter tables. It's no big deal.

Ah, yeah, I can't imagine asking the guy who owns all the books to leave the group - that would certainly be an interesting conversation! ("just so we're clear, you've got to go, but the books have to stay")

Sounds like you've worked out a good solution though :)

I'm curious, if I have a familiar that has, though leveling, gained an Int score of 12+, does the familiar gain an additional language? It's one of the familiars that can already speak by the way.

I believe that the rules say int determines your number of starting languages, but doesn't say/imply that increasing your int gives you access to more languages. Then again it does retroactively give you bonus skill points.

I'd rule it as no in my home game cos it doesn't make sense to me, but as was said in another thread you're unlikely to break the game by creating a powerful lingomancer so I doubt anyone will care too much if you do take it.

I have tried to play sessions where there wasn't any fighting and it never worked. Most of the players were up for it, but there was one player who shall remain nameless who would get bored. And when he got bored he drank. And then bad things would happen which would result in both in-game and irl fighting.

So, now, I throw in fights every game. Even if they're cheesy and immersion-breakng. Everyone agrees it's a necessary evil.

I've never had to deal with a player like that - if they're a problem for your group I would suggest asking them to leave.

Nonetheless, if you're stuck with them you could try forms of conflict that don't involve any exchanging of HPs. My players and I are fond of what we call 'Pirate Dice' (this game has a real name but I can't remember it, it's essentially dice-poker). A good game of Pirate Dice often has magic items, gold and the honour of everyone involved(read experience points) riding on the outcome. So although no fights were had in a particular game the players could come away with the equivalent of a full day's adventuring.

I've also observed that the players tend to be much more willing to risk life and limb for characters they've shared these kinds of tense RP moments with than ones they've shared a dozen forgettable fights with.

Do you mean a day in 'game-time' or 'real-time'? In either case the answer is yes.

The trick (imo) is to have characters (and by extension players) who have motivations other than killing things and taking their stuff (even if those are their primary motivations).

I can think of several examples, the most recent one was when our party spent an entire night at the aptly-titled 'Spire of Intoxicants'. Needless to say we had tremendous fun roleplaying our characters as they became progressively more intoxicated, and the GM had tremendous fun tempting our characters with outlandish concoctions and then describing their effects (both short term and long term).

Heck, my players come into our house expect bottled water, free pop, snacks and free food at times. They are really spoiled.

I made it a point when I started my gaming group a couple of years ago that if you aren't DMing or hosting you were expected to contribute some snacks to the table. I later dropped this rule because one player was taking 'more than a fair share' shall we say. Still, I find it hard to imagine your players getting up in arms if you were to implement a Bring-Your-Own-Snacks rule - hell you'll be paying to dispose of the garbage anyway so you'd still be saving them a few cents.

I would rule that gravity within the portable hole always points downwards (from the perspective of someone in the hole). That deals with several of the shenanigans you described. You could also rule that the portable hole can't be moved while open.

To be honest though it seems that your players want to play some kind of physics simulator rather than a roleplaying game

I didn't need the world expanded--I don't care about the world in general, if my story is only the size of one city. I rather liked the location and didn't mind the limits.

I didn't mind the city, I thought it was mildly interesting - the issue I and others have is that you had to fight combats on the same streets over and over and over again. Aside from how quickly we became bored of the environments it also created the question of why people would keep attacking you when they had seen you lay waste to entire mobs of people before. At least the Darkspawn were insane.

Rynjin wrote:

2.) The combat changed from "strategic RPG" to "Party-based Dynasty Warriors".

I know! It was much faster paced and I think more fun.

I agree, they improved the combat dramatically

I did like the way they beefed up the Fighter and Rogue a bit (the dodge flip was a damn nice addition), I just didn't like the other changes.

I think ME2 is the best Mass Effect as well :)

The biggest change I had an issue with was the story. While DA1 had a depressing story, it had a story that was believable and - most importantly - that you could imfluence the outcome of. The end of DA2 was one big disappointing railroad

Tom Hanks
Ewan McGreggor
Samuel L. Jackson
Robert Downey Jr

***But I'd swap all of them for the chance to have Quentin Tarantino GM :D

Dear James Jacobs,

1)Is there a way in a post-Skyrim world to prevent 'Words of Power' Wizards from shouting Fus-Ro-Da! every fifteen minutes?

2)When a player shatters the fourth wall do they get to save against taking damage from it?

3)A Goblin, a Gnome and a Dwarf walk into a bar, who gets the punchline?

Best of luck everyone, I made my first submission this year too. Hope to get through to the top 32 but I'm looking forward to seeing what crazy stuff everyone else comes up with regardless