Teine is a human wizard specializing in evocation magic. Assisted by her rabbit familiar, her dream is to become the greatest stage magician. She also adventures because it pays the bills, helps her hone her magic, and often earns her the adoration and fame she desires. It's only a level one build, but I just love how magician-y she can get at just level 1, between her rabbit familiar, the ability to hold her breath, use her performance skills mid-combat, and her equipment (including manacles to use underwater along with her ability to hold her breath for 150 rounds!). I made her for 5e, but she feels like even more of a stage magician in PF2.
On your character sheet page 1, What is TEML?
I see it under each ability score with little boxes, can't figure out what it's for
That's extremely handy to know of if you're in a party that's complaining about you holding them back.
and it's really nice that you can pass that item around on a daily basis to make sure that the party isn't slowed down by someone when you're doing long treks through the wilderness, then hand it back to the superfast one when you expect a fight against whatever you're tracking.
One of the problems with the spellcasting system in PF, is that the caster in the party always has the ability to fire everything off in the first fight of the day and then demand a rest.
Now to be fair, this will never happen and any caster that did this would be mocked furiously, but it's still an option there.
The real trick is, there's no real cost associated with spending your entire power balance early and then taking a rest, because if you rest at the end of the day and have spells available, they're "wasted," but if you're cleaned out then you feel good about your contribution.
Getting a good pace going can be really difficult for a player who's new to spellcasting, and it's a struggle that affects everyone, not just them. some players just don't like trying to handle that responsibility.
I think if a newer spellcasting system offered some rules for casters pacing themselves, it would go a long way to establishing mechanical balance without threatening their power structure.
I have a character that I've bounced around in various systems.
When I first played around in 3rd edition D&D, I was very impressed with the flexibility of multiclassing and I loved the idea that a character could show real growth and even a career change in the game, something that most roleplaying games could use as a kick in the pants. (The idea that you're locked into a class system really disgusts me on multiple levels)
This character of mine reached what I would consider her ideal nature when I simplified her as this:
Level 1 she's a fighter, spends a great deal of time as a soldier and mercenary and is competent at fighting, but it's not her real calling.
Then she multiclasses into rogue - having turned her back on the soldier career, she joins into various criminal sororities and ends up as a career criminal, but then ends up on the run, and ends up in a very interesting situation.
She kills and replaces a student at a secret wizarding school, and begins training as a wizard, using her "use magic device" and "Knowledge arcane" to pass herself off as the student she's impersonating. The other students at this school are completely aware of the deception and are not fooled, but never really liked the other girl and are totally okay with the situation. After a few wizard levels, she ends up becoming one of the star pupils of her class and ends up going on adventures mostly to obtain things for the school.
Yes, it's true that this character started out as an excuse to sneak attack with a greatsword using invisibility, and that kind of thing has long since been nerfed to hell by newer game systems, for various reasons, mostly because DM's don't want to deal with that kind of nonsense. It's honestly just silly that you can accept all of the ridiculous nonsense in the game already but catching someone off guard with an invisible greatsword won't deal extra damage "BECAUSE OF REASONS OK".
In any case, as far as I can tell this PF2 system actually lets this character shave an entire level off of the character progression. I'm looking at the rules as is and just by declaring the character background of warrior and making the level 1 rogue a brute, that pretty much settles that part of the background. Looking at the damage her weapon would deal, it honestly seems fine, I don't think she loses out on any practical gameplay utility or power from being more interesting. But I'm not sure how the spell progression works out. Do I only get the spells from feats every other level? or do I get some spell progression while gaining levels in rogue (since apparently she's full rogue till 20 in this new system)?
Anyways if you guys have any ideas on how to improve this concept or make it work more closely with the original design, I'm all ears.
We had the ability to hire a mercenary (say, a generic orc fighter) to kill goblins over and over for us, and at the end of the day, we get 80% of what he looted. (If you feel evil, demand more or kill him and take his stuff)
Anyone that sees the orc fighting the goblins has the opportunity to kill it and take its stuff. They get a rep hit, but it's less significant than if they had killed a player doing the same thing.
This means that an opportunistic player can find in game areas with low traffic and create orc labor forces to make as much money as possible over the course of a day.
And it would emphasize social and crafting skills over combat, so if you got ambushed while collecting your paychecks, you'd be a HUGE loot pinata.
PFS has a ruling that eidolons leave a pile of gear behind when unsummoned; it does not go with them. PF in general leaves the question officially unanswered, but the community consensus seems to be the same as the PFS position.
Okay so we all know that the mechanics are going to be harshly different in PFO, because a lot of things just don't translate over, but...
Let's do some mental exercises and ask ourselves, "What would be the most awesome level one pen and paper character we could possibly take into Pathfinder Online, as is?"
(no mythics)
Half-elves get immunity to sleep, can make perception a class skill regardless of their class to go along with their racial bonus, they get to choose the ability score they get a bonus to, they get skill focus, and they get an awesome favored class bonus for being a summoner.
If I were to attempt to break a character concept, I'd start looking at ways to cheat around things the designers wouldn't have anticipated.
I'd be a summoner and I'd make my eidolon try to be a rogue.
With just scent and climb, my eidolon would be able to sneak up walls that nobody was guarding, while I remained stealthed in an area that guards weren't expecting an attack from. I could give it a climb of 35 with my other trait, and share my expeditious retreat and shield spells if the target of theft was under a minute away.
When the eidolon makes it into the treasure room, it grabs some scrolls and wands and weapons, and then... I desummon it. it keeps that gear in its hands until I stroll into town, buy a room, and resummon my eidolon in safety, to count the riches.
With a 9 in bluff and disguise (my eidolon would have 4 in each), I can probably get away with most necessary interactions, and my 12 in use magic device gets me the ability to fool any magic item into working for me.
So basically, I'd be an untraceable unkillable super-ninja stealing powerful magical items from wizards and guilds and using them to fuel my next heist.
rather, aim instead at what it offered:
1. it mattered what you put into your recipes. garbage in, garbage out.
2. You had to experiment to find out which items (and their relevant sub-stats) worked best in which slots. and you had plenty of opportunities to do that while leveling.
3. It was a crafting system that allowed you to explore.
4. Building a reputation as a good crafter, and sometimes even BEING a rare crafter meant a LOT. (bioengineer and chef were extremely rare because of either being incredibly specific to another group's playstyle, or in the case of the chef, being incredibly expensive to level - until they allowed stuff like milk to drop more and become gatherable)
5. you could level by crafting. or dancing. or playing music. (pretty sure PFO's system wins out in this category though)
6. you never had to kill the cow boss over and over to get the recipe for a brown fishing pole so that you could level up your crafting skill past a certain point.
7. a blue chair was not superior to a red chair, even if it was harder to make. it cost more to make, so it sold for more. Yes, it really sold.
8. if you crafted a crate of 1000 hunting knives because that was the highest level recipe you had, and you needed to craft a bunch of stuff for xp, you did not have one crate of worthless goods in your inventory. Other players would BUY THAT, because it was a CRITICAL component of their leveling. (in this case, it was needed to create advanced survival tents for another class)
9. If you wanted to change your hairstyle, facial features, makeup, head tentacle positions, and body sliders, there was a class for that, and you could charge other people to do it for them. (seriously, make this a spell or something and it will do wonders for character longevity, especially if players can get a "new identity" out of it. if you're not going to permakill characters, you're going to have players that get frustrated when they want to try out something new but don't have a character slot - and don't get me started on selling character slots, I have like 16 in guild wars 2, and that's one of the reasons I get exhausted logging into that game - I'll never be able to level all those characters)
Sorry that one got so long.
10. It was fun. Not so much, that it was very fun, but it was just unbelievably neat that the non-murderhobo classes actually got to level up by doing what they do. I mean sure, you had a smorgasbord of weapon based classes, both melee and ranged (why melee? because it's science fantasy, which is dumb), but it was nice, that, for the first and last time, the nonviolent classes actually got to be who they wanted to be without having to go full on genocidal to get twelve vampire pancreases or something for a quest. Well, to put it mildly, that's fun. Yes it WAS a torturous, multi-month-long grind to get to the top of your class, unless you had a fat stack of cash and the support of a guild (in which case you could hit master dancer in under an hour, you [REDACTED] [and you know who you are] ). Yes, it was mind-numbingly boring unless you had someone to talk to. Yes, it was hell getting paid a big fat nothing for saving other players days of waiting in the hospital logged out. Didn't matter. The game explored all sorts of crafting options but the biggest and most important was this: Players got to craft the experience of the game by having a fully functional, completely player driven world.
The developers did not even realize that they had virtually eliminated any possibility of dangling a juicy carrot in front of the players to guide them somewhere later on. When they introduced factional armor, it was less than half as powerful as the best player-crafted armor. And when they saw that, they thought they had made a horrible mistake and they entertained the idea of a revamp. It did not even occur to them that a completely stable, friendly, player driven economy could be or should be the desirable outcome.
And then on the darkest day in history, they ruined that player driven economy. And the heavens quaked, and the mountains trembled, and all of them burst into flames and became shrieking skeletons, dying of agony in hell forever. So don't do that.
In order to take a tower, you must first gather together supplies from various areas and gather them into a supply pile at an area that's relatively safe for you and your allies.
There you can construct a makeshift "tower capturing device." For simplicity's sake, we'll call it "Battle colors." (that's a fancy name for a flag, but we'll assume it's a BIG flag)
This flag is very big and you can't carry it at your normal speed, so you're slowed. and you need someone to assist you while you carry it, up to 4 people total can hoist and plant the flag at the tower.
At the tower, you plant the flag, and wait, and after enough time, all the flags at the tower are replaced with your flag's image. Magic.
There are a few noteworthy observations here.
1. While constructing the colors you can be easily interrupted.
2. While carrying the colors you can't attack enemy colors. or players. in fact, we'll just say you're helpless.
3. This sounds pretty dramatic, but probably wouldn't end up being very dramatic.
4. The extra step of constructing the colors basically just means you have to make a short trek across the battlefield while people try to kill you and you can't fight back, and you have to rely on your teammates. Makes the decision of who to send on a flag run very important, and it means that the players who specialize in combat probably won't run the flag. Noncombatspecialists will be ecstatic to hear that they have a role on the battlefield. One that can't be fulfilled by a combatant. (Because the fastest way to eliminate a combat target would be to wait for it to pick up the flag - instant death)
What do you think?
Seems like only a tiny mod to the ideas they've already expressed, might even be more efficiently expressed.
Bastress, I'm one of those who believes that, if PFO added anything even resembling Permadeath, when added to the difficulty they're already having--and will continue to have--with audience reaction to the words "Open World PVP", they'll have extreme difficulty in encouraging folks to even try the game long enough to see whether they like it.
This is already going to be a "more hardcore" game than others, because it appears there's not going to be a lot for casual players, those who might have 20 minutes on a given night and want to jump in to the game and feel they can accomplish a little something, or who want to relax and un-wind after a hard day.
This feels as if it's a game where relaxing is going to be a foreign concept, because of the near-omnipresence of risk of loss, and where seeking quick accomplishment might be questing for a Holy Grail. I hope to be wrong on both counts, but we-the-players will have to create that wrongness...somehow.
I believe those who want "tougher" than what they find in a theme park are already going to be pleased with Goblinworks' design. One part of that design, involving we-the-players in Crowdforging, allows our voices to affect what we end up with; we can watch our fellows and suggest adjusting mechanics if they appear to be cutting corners or being "too efficient".
I think you're misunderstanding me.
I've already stated, the settlements are hardcore, the characters are not.
I'm pretty sure a double-hardcore game won't work.
But I think the more interesting approach would be to make the settlements non-hardcore, but the characters hardcore.
Then, if a high level character gets killed, they have to scramble to replace that character in the hierarchy of the settlement, otherwise the settlement becomes a joke, probably gets taken over by someone else, and renamed. But I can't really think of a way to preserve forward momentum across your account.
Maybe if a character died, you got an xp bubble from pharasma that let you gain xp at a boosted rate until you got caught up. Just don't die with the bubble.
I'm befuddled by this conversation. Talking about perm-death makes sense if you're talking about a game like DDO, where the only thing that is persistent is your character. Putting that at risk through a (social) mechanic adds risk to the game, and so it has stakes and more meaning for some players.
In PFO though, players can make persitent change in the world by creating social structures and associated buildings . And so risk is at the level of the social structure, thus adding stakes to the game, and thus meaning. Moving risk down to the level of players by adding permadeath is at complete cross-purposes to the game design. It's supposed to be ok if I die, but not ok if my settlement gets burned to the ground. We want players to take chances that might result in death: to go on raids, to defend caravans, to go to war, in support of their social structures. It would ruin things if players were more concerned with their own safety than the safety of the social structure.
It takes a little bit of time to get used to a permadeath system, but there's a huge pull towards it for people who play Pathfinder - after all, THIS GAME has a serious 100% permadeath system with options for things that can be done to bring characters back, assuming it's not a TPK.
But I assume that the developers are simply not confident enough in a permadeath game because it would be "too easy to grief." (it's always going to be too easy to grief, the consequences are just less permanent the way they're currently working on it)
One of the things that helps Diablo 3 Hardcore (which works well) is that no matter what, you make progress for your account even if your character gets obliterated. (this is assuming, of course, that you didn't blow all your gold on gems right before losing a hardcore character... twice... like my other friend has...) Because there is always forward momentum, you can feel ok playing the game and just doing what you do.
But in a game like EVE, you can play for 15 days straight and just vent money and time and energy into space and lose everything and it's just murder on the soul. And that's a game that is NOT permadeath. (rather, just the opposite) When I say I like hardcore games, I mean I like games where you are encouraged seriously to work as a team because if you screw up and lose a character you lost a LOT. Even if, in a permadeath system, you had access to resurrections, your friends would have to save your body. There are many circumstances where this could be made more difficult. If you died at the bottom of a very big pit, they might not have enough rope to pull you up. If you slipped on a banana peel and fell into a sphere of annihilation, you done goofed. If your body was reanimated by a necromancer before they could retrieve it, and you shambled away as a zombie, well, tough luck.
But without those limitations, players will be doing really dumb things (TM) like leaping at the wizard flanked by umbral blots, or using the barbarian to detect traps, or perhaps not even bothering to detect traps because the cost of time spent detecting and disabling doesn't let them meet their quota. You might chuckle at this, but we're talking about gamers. They will cut corners that should never be cut, they will find the most efficient way to "farm" things that should not be farmed, and they cannot be held back by trivial game mechanics.
Forcing them to start over from character creation, though? You're not just talking about slowing them down a few hours, you're talking about giving them a good enough reason to play a different character altogether.
In the end, the big difference between hardcore and non, is that in hardcore, damage per second is no longer "the only stat."
I was off doing random chores when I was thinking about the deities that are going into the MVP, and I figure they probably had Lamashtu as the CE god so that the gods wouldn't be "good=female, evil = male" because she's the one that breaks that trope, lol.
And I was like, "Lamashtu's the evil god that's all about sex(especially the noncon type), and pregnancy, and well, literally bumping uglies.
(note to self: another hilarious guild name, I just came up with that while typing this lol)
And I was thinking it's kinda hilarious that pregnancy is evil in Pathfinder, but I was trying to visualize it in terms of how the cult of Lamashtu would advertise themselves, and I just had this hilarious image of a cultist holding up a sign that said: "Sex is EVIL Let's get to F***ING" and just herding people into the Lamashtu Convention Center.
So it's pretty much a given that I won't be playing any chaotic evil characters at release, but the idea of a guild named SIELGF made me chuckle. I figured I'd share.
And I'd definitely go with Bumping Uglies over even that. I figured there had to be other names people would consider using (but ultimately wouldn't use), and the forums seem like a good place to get it out of your system.
Note: If you did decide to make that your guild name, it'd most likely be a big candidate for "bad name" and it'd get renamed or struck down by the gods.
City of Heroes had what were called "door missions", a mission given to you by your NPC contact that spawned an instanced building interior for your group. Ours was to "arrest" (slaughter) a Fifth Column cell of soldiers. There were four of us, and it was a fairly tough mission, but.after killing the boss we didn't get the "mission complete!" - a sure sign that we had missed a nasty Fifth Columnist somewhere. So we trooped back through the building; no sign of him. Standing just inside the entrance, discussing what to do, we were blindsided when the missing soldier ran up to us, punched my husband's character in the face, and ran away again.
It took us another fifteen minutes to track him down...
Holy crap, the stories that come from City of Heroes... This one made me laugh out loud.
So I guess I'll share a few!
City of Heroes: I'm in the beta for Going Rogue, and everyone's talking about how broken the stalkers are, and I'm like "What the heck am I doing wrong?" so I ask around, and one person on the forums says "Bosses? Those are the easiest! I just pop a few reds and purples and oneshot em."
And I'm like... "Wait, those things STACK?"
And one of the other posters is like "You've been playing this game for FOUR YEARS and you didn't know they STACK?"
And I didn't know whether to be embarrassed or proud.
For those of you not in the know: In City of Heroes, literally every buff in the game stacked, no matter what, and stacking buffs was what got your character to go into godmode. I was popping inspirations no more than one at a time because I thought overlapping buffs just meant that their durations overlapped.
--
second story, world of warcraft:
I have my friend over and he's looking over my shoulder while I show off my priest's bubble spell (which was AMAZING at the time) and my macro that lets me levitate myself superfast, and such, and a druid jumps me while my back is literally turned around. I get back to the keyboard in time to see myself die, and I'm like "oh yeah, you get flagged if you heal a friendly in town, duh" so I hop down and rez myself and stand around waiting for the druid to show back up. three times, this time, the druid gets me down to about half, but then I fully heal myself, put a shield up, and start dotting the druid, and by this time the druid's about to half health and figuring it needs to bail, so he runs away, and I pursue, obviously nowhere near fast enough. The druid, at dangerously low health but with my dots about to expire, does that night elf vanish/flight form/takeoff thing to escape world pvp with no consequences. I see him fly up, up, up, and then I get an honor kill, on the last tick of my dot.
But instead of the night elf's body falling to the ground like it should, it's stuck about a half-mile in the air. So this guy can't even rez now, he has to use the spirit healer. (this basically means the fight's over for a good hour or so while he waits out the ridiculous debuff)
About this time I remember that my friend is actually in the room when he says "I don't think I've ever seen two healers fight before."
--
Third story, Star Wars Galaxies (caution: nostalgia warning!)
I was a dancer trying to earn enough cash to eventually get into the bioengineer profession (because it sounded cooler and would probably end up actually making money, unlike dancing lol) [and how cliche is that anyway? dancing to get my way into medical school? That's like the plot of half the movies out there] ANYWAYS...
In comes this bounty hunter who has just gotten back from a ton of missions (obviously, because he's got a ton of battle fatigue, which dancers heal really fast, and he goes to the cantina to get that healed in seconds, instead of having to log out in a hospital overnight) and this guy sits down, does /watch, and instantly heals. I know because instead of the slow trickle of 15 xp, 15 xp, I see: 15 xp, 154973 xp, 200000 xp, 200000 xp, 145 xp, 15 xp, etc.
Then the guy tips me ten credits.
ten freaking credits.
It costs at least 200 credits to buy a drink that doesn't even get you drunk.
I immediately stop dancing, and shout, out loud, "TEN CREDITS!?!"
The band stops playing.
Damn near half the cantina stands up.
The guy bolts for the door, and never comes back. I chase him past the exit, but it won't do any good.
I start heading back to the cantina, and I see a womprat that's managed to scurry its way into town, hanging over by the entrance.
So to determine how much you get out of stand and deliver, you apply appraise, knowledge (local), and intimidate? sounds fair. that increases the value of those skills for pvp'ers.
And better, if the bandit group gets to have multiple characters bring the diversity of skills, then there's a reason to bring John the appraising bandit, Karey the Knowledgable bandit, and Steve the Intimidating bandit to a shakedown.
That could be cool. Because then, instead of every bandit always having intimmidate, you get some bandits who are better at appraising goods, some who are more knowledgable about the area, and some (but not too many) who are good at applying the shaken condition.
In character creation, I'd randomly generate a character based on the average character breakdown for the region, then allow the player to customize whichever parts they didn't like, to finish out the character. Why? Because I'm undoubtedly going to hit option overload and paralysis. So many things to choose from, I'll be in the character creator for hours.
I would also be tempted to make certain race, class, background trait, or starting feat options randomly locked (as in, you have an 85% chance of having paladin be inaccessible to you if you choose tiefling, or something like that) - not to remove the option, because you'd be able to create one eventually, but to highlight the alternatives, and to make the character feel extra unique when you see that the button is available. From experience though, as soon as a player sees that something is restricted, it becomes something they have to have, so that would have the opposite effect. And also, I have to remind myself that there will only be the handful of stuff available at release...
And that's probably a good thing too, because as soon as the Advanced Player's Guide classes make it into Pathfinder Online, those are going to be all of my characters. Witches, Summoners, and Oracles galore!
It's hard to guesstimate how much work would be necessary to repair a reputation hit without having a client to play with, so we'll just have to wait mainly.
I mean, if it turns out that the only ways to bump up rep come when the stars align, then avoiding a rep hit is huge and necessary, and you'll have to store up a rep buffer every chance you get.
On the other hand, if it's possible to repair 50 rep in thirty minutes, you'll probably see players going to town on their own rep because it's not that big a deal to fix it.
I'm thinking perhaps that a character should have to do 2-3 30 minute jobs across a couple days to repair the reputation hit that they might take for an unprovoked kill.
If a player gets a massive rep hit in a single day, that character becomes unplayable while a GM determines whether this character can be classified as a griefer, a hacked account, or a bugged character.
During this time, the player may switch to another character (who will not be training skills unless they got that perk in the kickstarter, so you don't have to worry about zero-day trolls farming players like this).
end result: far less likelihood of characters being ruined by hackers, far less likelihood of characters becoming notorious griefers, far less likelihood of game-breaking reputation bugs destroying your progression.
There's a certain mystery behind it that you'll never be able to understand until you try it.
It IS just a game, and you don't really lose that much when you lose a character, but there's an immense rush that you get from surviving in a game where survival means so much more.
The stakes are higher and the rewards are the same, but each reward means so much more because of the potential for loss.
What's really impressive about it is that you stop seeing the exact same glass cannon builds over and over, because those characters just disappear when they get caught off guard.
I encourage you to try it out if you don't understand it.
Part of what makes hardcore work though, is that there's no question that the character hasn't died. Bugs, lag, sudden real life emergencies, these things happen. And in real life, you might very well die because some old driver plowed right into your house, accidentally flooring the wrong pedal.
In game, each hardcore character knows that they are in a field of massive attrition. Every single character has to have gotten where they are by not dying. There can't be any co-mingling. If a softcore character has the ability to make themselves into a character with no defensive ability but the ability to one-shot both themself and someone else, well, that's not cool, because they'll just get back up and the hardcore character won't. In other words, only hardcore characters can interact with one another. No flags, no purely voluntary nonsense, nothing.
I'm all for it, but I don't see it happening soon, because it would require a separate server. The goblinworks folks probably don't want to "divide the population" so they'll avoid it for now. (Even though the population will probably already be divided)
We are a Neutral guild dedicated to amassing powers, treasures, and political favors to empower ourselves.
Permitted alignments: Neutral Good (sparingly), Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral, Neutral (Preferred), and Neutral Evil (Preferred). (The only reason for a slight preference for evil as opposed to good is because I am a jaded person and I fully expect hundreds of thousands of so-called good characters to be nothing of the sort. At least the evil players are honest)
There will be no tolerance for those who openly or secretly plot against our guild, from within or without. You will treat one another with utmost respect, and if you are mistreated by a fellow guildmate, bring those concerns to light. We will always listen.
Cartoonish stereotypes of evil will not be tolerated, nor will stereotypes of anything else.
It is in our best interests, in every way, to ensure a wonderful, pleasant gaming experience for one another. See that you contribute to that.
If you're thinking of permadeath, I heartily recommend observing and playing through hardcore diablo 3 to see how and why it works.
here's a few observations:
1. in softcore diablo 3, characters can build themselves out for maximum dps first because death doesn't set you back much of anything, and they lose out on nothing. this heavily favors certain builds and usually ends up making most gear useless because "there's only one stat."
In hardcore, however, you must, MUST balance out your damage with survivability. too far in either direction cripples your character, and you are, at times, balancing on the knife's edge, with sixty-plus hours invested into your character, who could be lost at a moment's notice.
2. In softcore diablo 3, any item you craft with a level requirement reduction is a piece of trash and must be discarded. that's a wasted stat slot, it cuts directly into your dps. any gear that you outgrow is discarded forever because it's worthless.
In hardcore diablo 3, level requirement reduction gear is a GODSEND. It allows you to save tons of effort in time, energy, and money getting your next character back up to speed.
3. In softcore diablo 3, there is a cap to how far you can progress before you're "done."
In hardcore, however, there is always the threat of having to start over again, so you can keep piling on the legendaries in your stash, confident that they will not be wasted!
There are a few things to note though, just to be sure.
A) Softcore and Hardcore characters are never allowed to co-mingle. They can't even share items across the account-bound stash. It was incredibly frustrating that I couldn't unlock skins and recipes for softcore characters with my hardcore characters. When my friend got pissed at losing his wizard again (seriously, dude, put teleport on your bar and this wouldn't happen so much) he gave up on hardcore and the grind was sooooo annoying. (but that was mainly because I had a 70 character in badass gear right... over... there...
B) There is next to zero pvp, and absolutely NO nonconsentual pvp. This is a big thing that helps the hardcore experience, because it's a lot easier to get into.
C) Their servers don't suck anymore. This was a huge deal-breaker when the game first came out.
D) Leveling up is nowhere near as bad as it once was, and having high level characters and a few items in the stash REALLY helps alleviate the sting of losing a character.
E) The game is 100% co-operative, and at every turn, they remind you that the bad guys are "over there" and you are the good guys and you have to save the day by working together. The bad guys can't be any more bad, you can't be any more good. Seriously they drill this into you. The monsters in the game are the hostile environment. You work together to destroy it. This likely wouldn't work as well if you had to play against other players with different goals who were actively trying to eliminate you. (and if it were, things would get out of hand FAST, since players deal upwards of millions of points of damage and have hit points MAYBE in the hundreds of thousands, but much more likely in the tens)
F) This is the most important and if you don't read anything else, read this: In diablo 3, hardcore, when you die, you do not lose everything. You have a stash. Your stash holds gear, gems, and money. Once you hit the level cap, you get paragon xp, which makes every character (hardcore, that is) better. That means that when you begin the long crawl back up, you have a big boost. Not only are you more prepared against fights like the one you lost, but you have a little bit of your last character that will always be there to help you up. Even though you lose a character when it dies, you don't lose everything. In fact you can get right back up to where you were pretty fast.
Now, Diablo 3 only has 6 classes. There are a lot of things you can do with those classes, but Pathfinder has a lot more. A hardcore game option wouldn't just be cool, it would be a fantastic way to explore all sorts of different character builds, especially since some of them take off at different levels. A wizard might be awesome at high levels, but if your guild has one and he's working on getting level 5, he's a threat to other guilds nearby, who would love to kill him and prevent him from getting access to fireball, or worse, capturing him and forcing him to work for them.
A hardcore option for Pathfinder online would be AMAZING. But in order for it to work, there has to be a better foundation for the game, including a softcore alternative for players who need to work their way up in baby steps to the hardcore mode.
Here's my meteor swarm wizard:
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Tentacles-1857/hero/44918930
And while I'm at it you can check out my future Pathfinder Online guild.
https://goblinworks.com/landrush/guild/144
http://almightier.guildlaunch.com/
What's this intended to do, that normal point buy cannot do?
The purpose is to add a little flavor to the ability scores, not to eliminate point buy or replace it.
It's a sort of point buy buffet, where you only have to worry about the ability score landmarks where the modifier actually changes.
I'll probably take it to homebrew/suggestions once I'm convinced it's not broken.
I noticed a mistake I made, I was treating the competence bonuses like they stacked in one example. I'll fix that.
edit: welp, nevermind, I can't edit it. I wonder why.
Cost-efficient MAD should be:
16
16
14
12
10
10
or
14
14
14
12
12
12
Those seem too low to be effective to me, is that low by point buy standards?
Also, if the reasons for this change are still unclear, just think of it as answering the question: "Why is my Dexterity an 18?" and breaking that down into chunks.
Lemme throw out the basic design first, then I'll explain it.
Characters start out with straight tens in all stats, plus racial and size modifiers, and can purchase competence, enhancement, insight, and sacred/profane bonuses to their ability scores by spending 15 points worth of character customization points.
A competence bonus of +2 can be purchased for two ability scores from the following combinations:
Strength/Dexterity
Dexterity/Constitution
Constitution/Charisma
Charisma/Wisdom
Wisdom/Intelligence
Intelligence/Strength
competence bonuses do not stack. This option costs 3 customization points (but is cost efficient).
An enhancement bonus of +2 can be purchased for any ability score. enhancement bonuses do not stack, nor do they stack with equipment. This option costs 2 customization points (and represents a magical trinket on your character's possession that can never be stolen nor disenchanted, nor used against your character in any way).
An insight bonus of +2 can be purchased for any ability score. insight bonuses do not stack, nor do they stack with equipment. This option costs 2 customization points (and represents innate talent and a gift that cannot be taken away, even by ability score drain).
A Sacred/Profane bonus can be purchased for any ability score, but at a cost.
+2 Strength/-2 Constitution (you are gifted with strength at the cost of health)
+2 Dexterity/-2 Charisma (Your physical grace and speed afford you less social grace and patience)
+2 Constitution/-2 Wisdom (Your health in the face of danger leads you to unwise decisions)
+2 Wisdom/-2 Strength (You are granted the sight of the sages, and some of their sloth)
+2 Intelligence/-2 Dexterity (You are granted gifts of memory, but your head remains in the clouds)
Sacred/Profane bonuses can be purchased at the cost of 1 customization point, and do not stack, and Sacred bonuses do not stack with Profane bonuses. These are gifts granted by the gods through clerics, and represent blessings obtained at childbirth by a child's parents (or by the watchful eyes of oracles and gods).
-----------
This system is intended to flesh out the ability score generation process and to help players start fleshing out more interesting character concepts from the beginning of character design (without pushing the limits too far) while giving characters the ability to create fleshed out scores for their characters.
here are some sample "rolls":
a standard distribution:
18
14
12
10
10
8
cost efficient MAD:
14
14
14
14
12
12
Two double-18 loadouts:
18
18
10
10
10
8
18
18
12
10
8
8
I'm hoping this is close enough to the standard 15-point buy that it doesn't create dangerous builds or push too far into the overpowered or underpowered.
The choice of buff names was because they were the best from HERE that would work okay at explaining not only why a character would have a high stat, but a little more about the stat boost's source.
Racial and size modifiers stay as is, and I chose not to use circumstance, luck, or morale boosts because those seem tied better to spells or GM decisions.
Anyone have any feedback or suggestions? I'd appreciate your advice on this.
I came up with a daily obedience for Charon, which fits his theme (somewhat) and seems flavorful.
Obedience: Each day, at mid-day, the character must lie down on a flat surface, place two coins over her eyes, and take a nap. The character must exercise as much patience as possible given any distractions.
Benefit: The character gains a +1 bonus to all skill checks made against persons seeking immortality, including liches and vampires (Just because they're not dead yet doesn't mean they won't die eventually).
Gonna make an Evangelist Summoner (no, no, it's okay, don't panic, I think I still get a lot of evolution points) who's an evangelist of Charon, and I have this really awesome complex character all set up, but I have no idea what divine boons would be appropriate. I thought about pharasma's list as a guideline, but it seemed odd.
One of my character's mannerisms was going to be a compulsion to honor the dead. Every body encountered by the group has to be placed at rest facing up with two coins covering the eyes. Typical service to honor the dead, of course, but specifically to pay the boatman's fee.
Pharasma's ability to turn bodies to ash seemed too deviant from that goal to use that. So I'd like help coming up with a list of Evangelist boons for this character. If you have any ideas, or if there's a list someone else made somewhere, can you point me in their direction?
