Bioboygamer's page

nicholas storm wrote:

I think the proof is that this guy was forced to remake 5 of his characters. Maybe his playstyle works in your group, but it doesn't in his.

Really because what I see is the player in question going over his character with the GM, while pointing out that the OP (NOT the gm) is vetoing his characters. Not the GM, another player.

Now thats not to say the other player is wrong, but frankly one PLAYER in a game getting mad and making a thread does not make the high powerlevel player in the wrong, even if he does outperform the other players.

So, two players who probably shouldnt be playing TTRPG's together as they clearly have differing views of whats fun in game.

To be fair, most of the vetoing happened back when I was the GM.

In addition, as I was the one running the current campaign until floor 3 or 4, I often aid the current GM in understanding traps, room layouts, monster mechanics, and so on.

Also, Bob_Loblaw, regarding your fourth point, I asked the group what they wanted from the campaign when I started the module.
The answers I got were almost universally "It doesn't matter. Anything's fine."

And Wildfire Heart? I posted this because I was sick and tired of having the exact same thing happen with every character you create. I and the GM have been talking for a while about what to do, and at the time I posted this topic I was thinking about leaving the group if things didn't improve. We'd been struggling with the same issue for at least a year, and I figured an outside opinion would help to figure out how to fix things.

Bill specifically stated that the skeletons were created in an area affected by Desecrate. So, unfortunately, it is very possible for him to have this many undead.

As for having him take a more passive role, like healing? The last time he created a cleric, he ended up making a character that was better at ranged combat than the party ranger.

Dave Justus, I am currently a player in the campaign, but I was previously the GM. I advise the current GM, formerly one of the players. I have definitely heard complaints from all the other players, stretching back several campaigns.

TPK, part of the issue is that the other players tend to not pay attention to tactics at all. Have you ever heard of a wizard who refused to use any of their 1st level spells? There's just such a large gap between Bill and the other players. Not necessarily a gap in experience, but more of a gap in effort.

DM_Blake,the first character Bill used was a blaster sorcerer, and e utterly annihilated any opposition via the use of Scorching Ray and building his character around increasing his effective caster level.

I've been having problems with a particular player for a while now, but nothing seems to work.

This player - let's call him Bill - is an excellent roleplayer and a clever tactician. However, he's also several times more skilled in character building than my other players combined. We've had to make encounters at 4 or 5 above APL just to challenge him.

We're playing through the Emerald Spire module, and are on floor 6.

Bill is playing as a 4th level LN Hellknight Cleric, and used much of his WBL to create a Bloody Skeletal Dire Lioness, a Bloody Skeletal Ogre, and a Bloody Skeletal Bunyip. As such, his minions have ungodly attack power and defense for the character's level, and his minions just keep regenerating unless killed with positive energy or holy water - Neither of which the Evil opponents he's facing are likely to be using!

A high CHA means that Command Undead is likely to fizzle when trying to take control of his minions away, and he's clever enough to use a spell to avoid one of our GM's countermeasures (positive energy traps).

This wouldn't be such a big issue if this were the first time this happened, but Bill's characters are consistently several times stronger than anyone else in the group. Anything that challenges him simply flattens the rest of the party, and his ungodly luck means that the dice are almost always on his side.

I've talked to him about the problem several times before, and even tried having him help the other players in making characters. Inevitably, he ends up outshining almost everyone else in the party.

This has been going on for far too long, and I'm sick and tired of it. He's not doing it maliciously, but he doesn't see why he should be punished for being good at building characters. I honestly don't know what to do at this point.

I'm running an Emerald Spire campaign, but my players are bad with keeping track of experience. As such, I've abstracted it, and simply informed them of when they level up.

However, this means that I am uncertain about what level they should be at any given floor.

Is it possible for someone to let me know what level the party should be at for each floor of the Emerald Spire?

The party size varies, but is generally no less than three players and no more than seven.

They are currently at the start of the fifth floor, and are level 4.

Bioboygamer wrote:

I actually did print out an unofficial "Emerald Spire Player's Guide".

I suggested they read it several times. None of them have read it even once. Also, less than half of the group puts any effort into roleplaying whatsoever, and as far as I know only one player has a backstory of any kind.

I've asked them for their thoughts on the campaign several times, and the result I got essentially amounted to "Everything is fine." It feels like they don't want to give their real opinion on anything because they're afraid of their wants as a player conflicting with those of another player. I've even asked them if they would prefer more combat, more roleplaying, more puzzles, or whatever, and they responded that the way I was doing things was perfect - something I doubt highly.

Ok, so that are some indicators right there. You basically know that something's not right, they just won't tell you. Also, and I know this might sound confrontational, why did you allow stuff like only one real backstory in the entire group allow to go on? As a GM, that would immediately alert me to the fact that something's not ok. There is a difference between "the players will never be as excited about stuff like the GM is" and "the players don't give a sh** whatsoever".

If there's awkwardness within the group or some other reason that people might not be upfront about their opinions, interview them privately. If nothing helps, be at least upfront yourself and announce your irritation to the group and ask for honesty. If you're not having fun, the game will never result in something really good.

And Azure Falcon might be right, it's entirely possible that Pathfinder just doesn't click with your players, at least not the same way it does with you. That's nobody's fault and the only solution is to switch systems and maybe try PF again in a few months or so. But make sure that this is really the case (which is tricky if people aren't telling you stuff, I know) before you throw in the towel.

Well, the backstory thing is sort of a grey area. Does "I'm a dual-wielding catfolk ranger who's a land pirate and my village was killed by lizardmen so that's why my favored enemy is lizardmen" count as a backstory? Because I really don't think that makes the cut.

It's even more confusing because almost everyone in the group knew each other before the group started. I have no idea where the awkwardness or insincerity could have come from.

Bioboygamer wrote:

... I'm worried that we might end up with the entire group of characters standing in a daze while getting pummeled by enemies. ...

I find that unlikely. Usually after just once or twice, people will start doing something rather than their character doing nothing.

Bioboygamer wrote:

... or what their character can do, or sometimes they just have the wrong number written on their character sheet and it takes 20 minutes to fix it. ...

I have known players that have to have someone else do their character sheets for them. I personally use HeroLabs, so it is pretty easy for me to do the character sheets for multiple people. It has most abilities, spells, and bonuses printed right there on the sheet.

As I pointed out before, my players have been playing for almost a year and still know just about as much as when they started playing. They've asked me, in a relatively recent session, if it's possible to move through an ally's space, or if it's impossible to hit an enemy because there's another player between them and the enemy. I had always thought that those were some of the more basic combat rules that people picked up quickly, but apparently not.

In addition, at least two of my players need someone else to make their character sheets. This unfortunately fails to solve any problems, as often the player making the character sheet also makes a mistake, or sometimes the player doesn't understand what the numbers on the character sheet mean. One of my players needed me to go over every class ability their level 1 samurai had with them, because they didn't know what they did. The same player also took six months of playing to learn the difference between an ability score and an ability modifier.

Ah, not to dig on Pathfinder...but from the sounds of it maybe it's time you ask them if they actually enjoy the game? If this game isn't peaking their interest maybe you can find something that your friend group really enjoys and find a different tabletop game?

If you really think they are interested in Pathfinder, then maybe just take a hour out of the next session and run through their characters again with them until everything is cleared up.

Just remember, you can't force anyone to enjoy the game. For some people it just doesn't click on for them. I for one can sadly say that I have seen many people come and go because they lost the joy for Pathfinder or never had it to begin with. I hope this is the last case for your group, but if it is I'm sure you guys will find something else cool to do.

Edit: I totally and fully agree with Captain Yesterday. If they seem like they just want to have fun, loosen things up a bit!

Yeah, I understand that. Problem is, I'm genuinely awful with thinking out of the box. I need to have a plan for everything, otherwise I get flustered and panic and have no idea what to do and the game stalls as I try to get back on track. I like Pathfinder because it means there's a rule for pretty much everything, so I don't have to improvise. I just can't function when I don't know what I should be doing.

The thing is, I created the group because I really wanted to play a tabletop RPG with other people, and I get the impression that all but one or two of my players would rather just play video games together than play Pathfinder at all. At the same time, there are maybe two tabletop groups in my area, both of which are run by gaming stores and one of which I know from experience is always overcrowded. Like, 20 people at the same time. Finding another group to play Pathfinder or some other tabletop game kind of isn't an option.

Scheduling problems are something most GMs have to deal with at one point or another, if nothing helps consider reducing the size of the group or recruit new players to replace those who can't make it to the game regularly, even if they are friends. This is something you need to tackle head-on and be proactive about, it won't solve itself. It has been said already, but a weekly session is probably as good as it gets for most GMs anyway so I'd resist the temptation to go for a tighter schedule.

Regarding the issues of motivation and activity throughout a session, it sounds a little like your players don't know what to do because they lack context, that is knowledge about the setting and everything that goes into a character's personality and motivations. This is just speculation on my part, but I had the very same problem once in my game and the reason was that the troubled players were unfamiliar with any setting details and operated in the dark, which in return made them hesitant.

So my advise would be to ensure everyone is familiar with Golarion's basics (assuming you run Emerald Spire as written), maybe compile 1-2 pages (not more!) of infos from a wiki or the Inner Sea World Guide so that they know the important countries, gods, conflicts and everyday life stuff.

Other than that it might also just be the case that your players don't like Emerald Spire for some reason, or dungeoncrawls in general. Make a poll and ask them if they'd be interested in a different kind of adventure like urban intrigue, wilderness exploration, or eldritch horrors. I know it's hard to accept as a GM but sometimes players just don't love the stuff you run as much as you do.

As to encounters taking too long, don't hesitate to put the players on the clock - gentle, but firmly. Hand out "cheat sheets" with actions a character can do each round and explain again if necessary that a character can always aid another character or do something other than attacking directly, if that's a problem. Do this a couple of times and...

I actually did print out an unofficial "Emerald Spire Player's Guide".

I've asked them for their thoughts on the campaign several times, and the result I got essentially amounted to "Everything is fine." It feels like they don't want to give their real opinion on anything because they're afraid of their wants as a player conflicting with those of another player. I've even asked them if they would prefer more combat, more roleplaying, more puzzles, or whatever, and they responded that the way I was doing things was perfect - something I doubt highly.

The problem is that the most players we have at any time is five, and there are maybe two that can come reliably.

Pennywit, most of the players are in their 20s, with myself and one other player being the exception, being in our late teens.

It certainly doesn't help that most of the players are only there for the socialisation. I don't have anything against that, but it means that more than half the group couldn't care less if we were playing video games or something instead of Pathfinder. In other words, most of the players don't care about the game except when they're playing it.

There are maybe two players who genuinely care about the game, and they're the ones who are most often unavailable.

The worst part is, since I am currently attending college and live with my parents, I run the game from our basement, meaning I effectively can't invite anyone who I don't already personally know.

We try to have a session every week. We have had maybe two sessions in the last two months. I want to keep the group together, but it's starting to look like it won't be possible.

Even if we could get people together reliably, a single APL encounter will take up close to a third of the session, and a more difficult encounter could drag things out to an even more ludicrous degree. Being a relatively inexperienced GM, I don't even know how long an average encounter should last.

Redcelt32, the players aren't complaining too much, but I'm worried that they won't want to come in the first place if all they can expect from a 7-hour session is two rooms of exploration, a couple of tedious encounters, and some crappy pizza.

Azure Falcon, thanks for the advice. It's not that they usually don't know what to roll, it's that they don't know what their character should do, or what their character can do, or sometimes they just have the wrong number written on their character sheet and it takes 20 minutes to fix it. Honestly, I think the big problem might be that my players couldn't care less if they were playing Pathfinder or a video game. They don't really want to play Pathfinder, they just want to hang out, and Pathfinder is an easy way for them to accomplish that.

ElterAgo, thanks for the advice as well. I'm worried that we might end up with the entire group of characters standing in a daze while getting pummeled by enemies. Also, the group isn't actually all that new. We've been playing for about a year. The only reason I described them as inexperienced is because they've learned basically nothing about how the system works in that time.

So, I'm GMing for a group of rather inexperienced individuals, and it seems like we get way less done than we should.

We generally have 7-hour sessions once per week, and it seems like it'll take us a while to get anywhere.

For example, I am currently running the Emerald Spire module, and in one 5-7 hour session, the group explored...maybe three rooms?
And when I say "explored", I mean they set the cobwebs in the room on fire and closed the door, then waited for whatever was in the room to die. I still managed to get a couple of encounters in, since the spiders are rather intelligent, but a fight against one or two CR2 spiders can take upwards of an hour.

In addition, the party generally almost half an hour or more after each encounter before deciding what to do next, as well as when we begin to play.

To make matters worse, it's becoming increasingly difficult to arrange sessions, since most of the players have convoluted and frequently changing schedules, and usually half the players are unavailable for any given session.

If things keep up like this, I fear that we'll never complete much of the dungeon, and the group might even fall apart. I've discussed playing through chat programs or on a message board, but that doesn't solve the problem of having three players who are only available one day per week, with none of them having the same day available.

Does anyone with more experience than me have a suggestion about how to fix this?

Honestly, I don't see how the jewel could even be considered an artifact-level magic item. Sure, it's powerful, but unless you're Tar-Baphon (And, as a PC, you're probably not), the jewel is COMPLETELY USELESS.

It would literally be more useful if it created chocolate coins and created a flood of molten caramel throughout the city. At least that way you could eat the stuff.

Quite literally the only thing the jewel could be used for is turning the golden city into an art gallery with the art objects it creates... And even then, it would just summon molten gold once intruders entered the city, and the "river of gold defense system" is explicitly stated to be an automatic reaction that cannot be stopped.

Seriously, the jewel is entirely useless to anyone except for Tar-Baphon himself!

...I think I just got a campaign idea.

See, touch spells generally put the (usually squishy) caster in a very dangerous position, primarily because they require the caster to be adjacent to the target, which is generally a very bad thing for casters. To compensate for the increased risk, most touch spells are a lot more powerful than ordinary spells, and because they hit touch AC, they're more likely to be effective.

Add the ability to make touch attacks that would normally be melee at a distance, as well as the ability to have the equivalent of an unlimited supply of masterwork darts that can bypass DR/magic, plus the fact that several very useful spells (such as Mage Armor and all Cure spells) can be placed on your allies from across the battlefield, and you have a frighteningly effective ranged damage and support character.

Plus, the favored class bonuses for a lot of races can be pretty funny when applied to an inanimate deck of cards rather than a living animal.

The reason for that I believe is you could make the cards out of special materials to overcome DR.

But then why not just make darts out of those materials? That way, they'd still be useful as weapons if you can't use a swift action to enhance them.

In fact, what would be the problem with specially-made cards bypassing DR if they were made of the right material? They're no different from other similar weapons, and they don't even have the benefit of having a 50% chance to be intact if the attack misses!

Besides, who in their right mind would waste valuable materials on that fancy of a deck of playing cards? If you honestly think that painstakingly forging a one-time use 52 (or 54, with the jokers) card deck out of adamantine, then you are only a few small steps away from the Mithral Waffle Iron, and I fear nothing can save you.

The damage from Deadly Dealer is coming from magically enhancing the cards, not from the cards themselves. The material itself shouldn't matter much.

Still, I would imagine that a correctly-thrown metal playing card would deal at least a small amount of damage. Effectively, an unenhanced metal card would be a shuriken.

I guess it just seems odd to me that you could throw a magically enhanced piece of paper and do the same amount of damage as a similarly shaped piece of metal that has been enhanced in the exact same way.

In Ultimate Equipment, sets of playing cards are stated to come in many varieties, from thick paper to wood, ivory or metal.

The Deadly Dealer feat allows the character to use playing cards as thrown weapons, using the statistics for darts.

It occurs to me that a thrown playing card made of metal should do significantly more damage than one made of paper. Heck, you could sharpen the edges!

Does this have any basis in the rules? Even if it doesn't, what would be a realistic damage to houserule for more expensive cards?

Well, about 30% of magical weapons glow like a Light spell, but they can't be turned off at will.

Is there any particular reason it needs to be a weapon? Pathfinder's magic item creation rules would easily allow a minor magic item that could cast Light at will.

Other than that, I'm not sure. Someone else probably knows better than me.

The Profits of Kalistrade feat is very similar, I'd take a look at that.

Doesn't that feat state that the items in question are lent?

I can't see how you could lend someone a poison and expect it back, given the typical use of poisons.

I'm a little confused by this feat. Supposedly, it gives you a 100 GP "Resource Pool" to be used to acquire illegal goods.

So, how does this resource pool work?

Does the feat just give you 100 GP with the caveat that you can only use them to buy illegal stuff? Is the pool refreshed every time you return to town? Every level? Do you have to ration that 100GP over your character's lifespan? Can you just buy anything less than 100 GP for free as long as it's illegal? Does it just reduce the cost of illegal items by 100 GP? The feat mentions poisons and evil magic items as things that could be bought. I have a hard time believing that you could find any magic item or effective poison that costs less than 100 GP. Can you add GP from your WBL to this pool? What makes it different from your normal money?

I don't exactly understand how the feat is supposed to work.

Magda Luckbender wrote:

In the old Beatle's movie Yellow Submarine George Harrison picks up a Portable Hole. This may be where Gary Gygax got the idea for this item. It turns out to be quite useful for shenanigans with a Wall of Force.

As GM I've encountered several tricked-out portable holes. What people said above.

I'm pretty sure they appeared in Warner Brothers cartoon shorts before that. At least that's where I first saw them.

You know, if a Portable Hole worked like in those cartoons, where you could put it on a wall and walk through to the other side, it would actually be an extremely viable item.

Bioboygamer wrote:

average GM will just allow players to stuff as much stuff into a Bag of Holding as they want

I'm not at all sure I accept your premise.

Most GMs I know don't even pay attention to item weight or carrying capacity, so ignoring the limitations on a Bag of Holding isn't really that big of a deal in comparison. As long as you can justify carrying stuff with "It's in my Bag of Holding", most GMs seem to just handwave away carrying capacity...

I suspect that it has something to do with them not wanting to mess up WBL, since if the players can't actually bring the treasure hoard with them, it doesn't actually do them any good, and the GM can't design the treasure so that they can only carry as much as their WBL, since a player might leave something behind in order to carry more loot.

Long story short, most GMs I've seen just ignore carrying capacity altogether as long as you have some kind of Bag of Holding.

So, I looked at the Portable Hole, and for the life of me I can't figure out what it's supposed to be used for. It costs about as much as 8 Type-1 Bags of Holding, and the average GM will just allow players to stuff as much stuff into a Bag of Holding as they want, without regard for the specifications.

So, are Portable Holes just useful for when it'd be easier to just shovel coins into a hole in the ground than to put them in a Bag of Holding? Is it just for instant pit traps? Is it just an item that evil GMs use to screw over players due to the interaction between a Portable Hole and a Bag of Holding? Does it have some other use? What happens if the surface it's placed on is less than 10 feet? does it just open a temporary hole to the other side?

It just seems odd that such a useless item is so expensive relative to the Bag of Holding that serves a similar purpose.

Are there any archtypes, spells, races, classes/prestige classes or anything else that improves a character's usage of items?

I'm not talking about UMD, I'm talking about grappling hooks, block and tackle, fishhooks, soap, chalk, the works.

I've been thinking for a while about making a MacGuyver-esque character who primarily uses adventuring gear to fight/maneuver their way out of situations.

Is this anywhere near being a viable idea? It seems wasteful to have the Ultimate Equipment book full of obscure adventuring gear and never using it...

Bioboygamer wrote:

Also, If you need to transcribe something really fast. Say, if you're infiltrating an enemy stronghold and need to return with vital information without actually taking the book/scroll/paper out of the stronghold.

For, say, a rogue taking the Minor Magic rogue talent, this is a pretty good option.

I don't get what you mean. The book has to be with you when you scribe. 5 feet to be specific.

It's still a fantastic way to copy information from the evil wizard's journal if he has some kind of alarm spell on it that goes off when the book is touched.

Alternatively, since the copy is in the caster's handwriting by default, it could be used to render something written in messy handwriting readable.

Also, If you need to transcribe something really fast. Say, if you're infiltrating an enemy stronghold and need to return with vital information without actually taking the book/scroll/paper out of the stronghold.

For, say, a rogue taking the Minor Magic rogue talent, this is a pretty good option.

Hey, I'm the GM for this campaign.

what size is your pixie?

It's tiny.

how did you get 26 dex at level one?

small or less sized char with no minus to str

i understand that you don't want the crazy stat array that 3.5 had but yours is still way off if you want to keep the core of the race

you go from -4 +10 +0 +6 +4 +6 to +0 +4 +0 -2 -2 +2
it should be -2 +4 -2 , 0 int +2 wis +2 cha slightly more powerful than your stat array sure but much more in the flavor of the race.

if you got the 26 dex the way i think you did you don't apply size mods on top of racial mods thats why the racial are there

Yeah, I kind of thought that might be the case, but I wasn't sure. Getting +8 to damage with Weapon Finesse with a Tiny dagger seemed a bit broken.

i think the invis should scale you don't have SA so you cant get crazy bonus damage because of being invis in battle and at higher levels things have see invis or trueseeing so at 5th level or so you should improve to greater invis

The only problem is, since we're using a Pathfinder Module, all the encounters are preplanned. I'm fairly sure most of the creatures/people in this huge campaign have neither See Invisibility or Truesight, and Flying + Tiny + Invisible + Stealth = Literally no surprises or unexpected events ever for the entire campaign.

Honestly, I kind of think it would work better to keep the magic arrow SLAs instead of the invisibility, but Wildfire Heart was adamant about being able to turn invisible at will, for RP reasons. In addition, Greater Invisibility basically means a constant 50% miss chance for anything trying to hit the character.

Any ideas?

Also is the GM new? GM's are like people a GM with 1 year's experience is a baby and one with 10 years is a toddler, Mr. Fishy has nearly 20 years and he still has a rough night time and again.

Less than a year. Yeah, we're really, really new. As a matter of fact, this is literally the first Pathfinder "Campaign" either of us have ever had, so with that in mind, he's doing surprisingly well.

@bioboygamer & Wildfire Heart

You guys seem to be at odds against each other a lot on the forums. Do you actually enjoy playing together? Perhaps you should find different groups to play in (if thats an option)?

Actually, we've been friends long before we started playing Pathfinder!

The only reason it seems like we disagree so often is that we only really use the forums when we can't agree on something in person. So basically, it's just selection bias. The reason you see us arguing so much is because when we're not arguing, we don't post as much.

Hey, I'm the previously mentioned Bard.

First of all, the campaign itself isn't construct-focused, just the current dungeon, although the dungeon is...well...

Ever played Skyrim?
Remember that giant cavern with the Dwarven ruins with the glowing mushrooms and Falmer?

It's almost literally that.

I was somewhat aware of the upcoming heavy focus on constructs, but was not aware of the specifics. Essentially, the GM told me that the dungeon after the one we were currently in would have a heavy construct theme.
Alright, I can deal with that. Just sell some treasure, get some stuff, prepare for constructs.
What I did not know was that the entrance to that next dungeon was a one-way teleportation altar to a cavern miles below the surface.
Even that isn't too bad.
Except as soon as we entered the room, the entire dungeon started shaking as if collapse was imminent, essentially putting the entire party in "Anywhere is better than being trapped under rubble, get on the teleporter!" mode.

In addition, the GM keeps pointing out that both running and sneaking are options, but both are relatively impractical.

Running is difficult mainly due to the fact that either the enemy will have equal movement seed to us, or (as a construct) it will not have to rest, making the encounter nothing but a race to outrun the Terminator.

Sneaking might work, if the party Fighter wasn't in heavy armor and constantly drunk. Plus, the GM is noticeably fond of ambushes and ignoring the rules for surprise rounds unless it's in the enemy's favor.
Funnily enough, his previous GMPC (!) didn't have that problem when he snuck into a group of 50+ enemies and took out their leaders without being detected...

I do have to admit, the GM usually makes a point of giving us personalized magic items, and since last session we are...well above WPL.

And by "Well above", I mean we have successfully obtained about 300 lbs of adamantine, worth a metric crapton of money. Immediately after a gas trap that almost killed my Bard and the Fighter, as well as completely incapacitating us for the resulting fight.

With three rust monsters.

I mean, they never actually touched the adamantine, but...

A friend created a build that uses a combination of weapon materials, spells, and traits that can do enormous amounts of damage via hitting with the equivalent of a Colossal-sized weapon. One of the traits that allows this is the variant Tiefling ability 16:

"You have over-sized limbs, allowing you to use Large weapons without penalty."

My friend argues that, for a Large-sized tiefling, the ability would allow them to use weapons the next size category up.

Is this how it would work, or are my friend's dreams of 3d8 weapon damage with 30 ft. reach fated to disappear?

Um, actually, Cleave isn't a bad feat at all for fighter. You can get yourself a bonus attack in certain situations before your first iterative, then train it out once you actually get iteratives. It's not good throughout your whole career, but you can do worse for the first 5 levels.

Well, considering I'm relatively new to Pathfinder, and have never had a character go beyond level 6 so far, and also having never played a full BAB class, even multiple attacks are a new and exciting concept, as far as feats go.

But as to your general question, you can check out those guides, and just pay attention to the discussion on the boards. You'll see conflicting information (as you've already seen in this post) but at least get multiple points of view on things.

And yet, feats like Power Attack are considered to be indispensable in just about any melee build, for some reason which completely eludes me. For our party, attacks seem to miss half the time, so why would I reduce my chance to do damage at all?

No one just knows all this stuff instinctively. If people think of it as "common knowledge," that is only because they've been reviewing the resources already mentioned, or they're bringing system mastery over from 3.5 D&D, which can actually trip you up sometimes by assuming there aren't any differences.

Well, let me put it this way:

Are there any feats not found in the Core Rulebook that I should really know, or do the feats in the CRB cover most of what I'll need?

Speaking seriously, Cleave is a joke of a feat and Rogues are in the hole whether you go Dex or Str. There's no easy indication of what is and isn't powerful, but you don't honestly need to know unless your whole group does, in which case they can show you.

And now my joke response: There's no such thing as essential feats you filthy powergamer, I saw a single classed Rogue one-shot a balor at level 3, you just play them wrong, you're ruining pathfinder.

Specifically, classes like Monk or Fighter seem to be very dependent on the feats and other options you choose. As an example, a player I know was making a 1st level fighter, and took both Catch Off-Guard and Throw Anything. In addition, an archery-based Ranger accomplished almost nothing in combat because he had neither Point-Blank Shot or Rapid Shot.

Add to that the fact that our GM regularly throws APL+3 or APL+4 encounters at us (which we only survive due to his GMPC essentially carrying the rest of the team, either through super-optimised damage or other shenanigans), and I think you understand why having 2 or 3 feats that you never actually use isn't such an exciting prospect.

Looking around the forums, I've heard a lot about the various options you have when designing a character. Specifically, I'm a bit puzzled by the seemingly universal assumption that certain feats, racial traits, spells, and magical items are "necessary" for any given class to be effective. For example, it seems to somehow be common knowledge that every fighter ever takes Cleave and Power attack, and every rogue takes Weapon Finesse. Furthermore, some feats are considered "traps"; in other words, they're considered objectively useless in almost all situations.

How is a relatively new or inexperienced player supposed to know? How do I determine whether or not lowering my chance to hit in order to do additional damage is a good idea?

Is there some sort of list somewhere regarding which options are good and which ones aren't? Some sort of guide to tell me which feats to always choose and which ones never to touch with a 10-foot pole?

How do new players deal with playing classes like the fighter, where one misspent feat can apparently send your character into the black hole of obscurity and lack of contribution to combat in any way whatsoever?

Seriously, if there's any way for me to learn which feats are good and which aren't without spending three years doing in-depth calculations of DPR and action economy, I'd love to hear it.

I've just realised a use for the Massive amount of gems and gold in the city:

Spell components.

Wish, anyone?

Coalford wrote:

ShaeuraDrae wrote:

Find a safe place in the city and use the Jewel of Everlasting Gold to craft a bunch of magic items. Then leave the city with completely customized loot!

Everything the jewel makes gets teleported out too. It's like April fools all day forever.

Just curious but the gem doesn't create the items. The jewel creates the money?

If so the money is then used to purchase whatever you need to make the items.

The crafted items are in no way associated with the Jewel's abilities because they are crafted from the base materials that were purchased with the money produced by the jewel, not created by the jewel itself.

Unless you are saying anything purchased with the money created by the jewel is bound to the city then the items are independent of the inability to leave the city.

So, you trick various merchants of magical and mundane goods into this mystical city, and then proceed to purchase the needed materials from them? A few problems:

First of all, the merchants would just take whatever wealth was lying around.

Second of all, the merchants would demand their goods back after their newly-acquired riches disappear upon leaving the city.

Finally, any merchant in their right mind would find it suspicious for some stranger to insist that the merchant lug their supplies into the wilderness to trade instead of trading then and there.

Basically, the city is a large-scale equivalent of a Prestidigitation spell to fake gold. Sure, you can have as much as you want, but it's absolutely useless, because it cannot be used for the single thing that gold is useful for, that is, buying things.

Upon further research, though, there seems to be a loophole that truly would allow for the removal of vast riches from the city:

Step 1: Go to Gallowspire.
Step 2: Find the Whispering Tyrant sealed beneath Gallowspire.
Step 3: Somehow outwit the Whispering Tyrant.
Step 4: Free the Whispering Tyrant.
Step 5: Have the Whispering Tyrant remove treasure from the city, as he is the only one who can do so.
Step 6: ???
Step 7: Profit!
Step 8: Become a mindless undead thrall to the Whispering Tyrant and aid him in his war against the living.

I am playing the Sepent's Skull adventure path (on Roll20).

Our party consists of:

- Dwarven Cleric [2]
- Halfling Rogue [1] / Sorc or Wiz? [1] (will be Arcane Trickster later on)
- Human Ranger [2]
- Human Barbarian [2] (me)

Up to now, the DM had some "specials" in store for us:

a) He thinks fights are too easy and buffs the enemies.

b) A 20 is not an automatic success if the DC or AC is greater than 20. You need to do a confirmation roll, add it to your result (first roll+skill) and the result needs to be greater than DC / AC. This is also used for npcs.

Last night, my Barbarian (Damocles Guile build) was killed by a yellow musk creeper. The DM had upped the creeper and its zombies with the advanced template. He also added a spore mist around the creeper, that reduced visibility so we only saw the zombies. The mist also reduced skill checks by -2 if you failed your fortitude save. The ranger failed his DC, so we retreated until the effect wore off. The party used wet cloth bound before mouth and nose to get a bonus of +2 against the spores.

The fight and my Barbarian were raging on and most of the creeper zombies were finally defeated. Out of the mist, I was hit with pollen spray and entranced. So my barbarian was forced to run up to the creeper stem and the creeper started inserting its roots into his brain. The other players still could not see what was happening, because of the spore mist. It was ruled that the entrancement stopped the rage and that the barbarian was fatigued.

I was given a will save every round and if I failed, 1d4 intelligence was drained. I was also attacked with 1d4+4 damage on hit each round. The other players tried to rescue me, as soon as they had dispatched the last zombie (one round). My barbarian was able to break entrancement with 4 intelligence left and had to roll for strength ("high DC because it's difficult"), since the DM ruled he was bound by the roots to break free. I failed...

That...

That seems like the kind of encounter I could only dream of my GM creating.

Difficult, but with several logical ways of bypassing it, and he was fair in giving you a chance to escape.

My GM would normally just find the biggest thing we could possibly handle, then just put it in an empty room for us to fight. In my opinion, a difficult but dynamic encounter is better than a difficult but boring one.

Admittedly, your GM seems a bit too eager to add additional layers of challenge and complexity...

Does your barbarian seem strong to you? If he does, then changing to a different character won't necessarily solve the issue.

My advice would be to try to figure out what your GM is trying to tell you. Does he want you to approach encounters more tactically? Does he want you to consider noncombat solutions, like stealth or other skill checks? Or does he just think that it's not a real encounter until someone's at negative HP?

If it's his GMing style that's causing the problem, you need to talk to him about it.

What would be an appropriate cost for a magic item that allows metamagic feats/rods/whatever to work on spell-like abilities?

A friend suggested that a ring that allows the wearer to use the Intensify Spell metamagic on a SLA once/day with only 1/5 the effect would only cost around 1600 gold.

Is this reasonable?

At one point during a campaign, a player attempted to harvest the poison from some miscellaneous beastie. I pointed out that the player would have to roll to see if they were exposed to the poison, but the player retorted that, since their character wore gloves, there wasn't any way for the poison to affect them.

This got me to thinking...

Poison in general is almost comically useless. Applied to a weapon, it only lasts for one hit, and any opportunity that players could be exposed to it while attempting to harvest or apply it, they'll invariably be wearing gloves or other kinds of protection - especially since the typical explorer's outfit is explicitly stated to come with gloves.

In addition, most poisons do a pitiful 1d2 or 1d3 of ability damage every minute or so, and are essentially only capable of reliably killing someone with a below-10 ability score in that stat.

Even the strongest of poisons have a chance of actually killing, and they cost more than a lot of minor magical items and have DCs of around 20 - fairly reasonable for a number of martial characters.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that, since all poisons require fortitude saves, almost all monsters with high fortitude saves (that is to say, almost all monsters) will shrug off the poison as if it was nothing?

Honestly, I'd rather chug a bottle of poison rather than fight just about any monster. It's most likely the safer option, after all. Seriously, poison seems to be a threat only to characters below level 3 or so.

And yet, players invariably go crazy over poison, going into a panicked frenzy whenever some monster injects them with something and eviscerating any monster with a sickly-green tinge to it in search of the beastie's precious sack of useless, useless poison.

Are poisons really just that lame, or is there something I'm missing? Some sort of feat that makes poisons to triple ability damage or doubles the DC or something?

What adjustments and alterations should I make for a non-standard campaign?

If I'm running a low-resource campaign, where the players start with a paltry 2 GP each, should I advise against classes like Gunslinger? If I'm creating an underwater campaign, what magic items should I give the players free of charge? If I'm going to be GMing a low-magic campaign, what monsters should I avoid having the players fight? If I'm running an evil campaign, are there any races or classes I shouldn't allow?

This is the kind of stuff I have trouble with.

I'm really bad at looking at the implications of certain factors on the game, like the fact that many high-CR monsters assume that you have a certain amount of magic items, so a centralized list of guidelines for unusual campaigns would be helpful.

Rynjin wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

Call the police and have them kick him out of the house.

Maybe he'll even fight back, and be removed as a problem in the longer term. =)

OK, gotta get back to work, but let's be serious for a moment.

What's more childish? Using the rules a player establishes himself to punish the player and "educate" him that playing in a selfish manner sucks, or calling the police to remove a mostly-harmless man-child from your house?

I was speaking more about calling the police to remove someone who's using the threat of violence to stay.

Accepted. I just think the pat answer of, "Kick him from your group. Otherwise you're a wimp and deserve what you get," is a bit over-used.

Social groups are rarely that simple.

In this case, the problem is that he's the one whose parents give rides to 3/4 of the group.

Also, the reason we couldn't just let his character die of his own weakness is that the other members of the group would inevitably risk life and limb to keep his character safe, even if he probably wouldn't do the same for them.

Our problem player knows most of the members of the group from a young adult social group they all attend. Our GM, Wildfire Heart, doesn't attend that group, and as such has less of a social connection to him than the rest of the group.

Besides, on more occasions than I can count, our "problem player" has been the only reason we had enough people to play, since he's easily the most consistently available person.

And honestly, I'd feel kind of bad kicking him out. He may not be mature enough to play on the same level as the rest of the group, but due to reasons that I'd rather keep private, it's not really his fault.

MeanMutton wrote:

Bioboygamer wrote:

Apparently, giant medical practices involve giant dire leeches that do 1d8+2 CON damage immediately.

A Giant Dire Leech is something addressed by the core rules and they do not do 1d8+2 CON damage immediately - they would do 1 point of strength damage and 1 point of con damage at the end of a round of attachment.

Here's Giant Leech: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/vermin/leech/giant-leech

Here's the Dire template: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/dire-creature-c r-2-tohc

Sounds like your GM was just being a jerk to be a jerk, honestly.

^This.

I think this was a case of "GM: argh giant crappy Will save...how can I still kill the PC?"

Seriously if these custom leeches do that much CON damage, the giant race would be practically extinct. As say applying an average of 3 'GM special custom' leeches per giant would make them easy prey.

A typical Hill Giant has a 19 Con. He cuts himself while fishing and gets a leech. And then he gets into a couple of fights that same day.

3 leeches later his Con is down an average of 6.5x3=21.5
Con is now -2. Dead.

Sounds like a great way to wipe out the giant race. Just get them to start healing each other.

Well, according to the GM, the only reason it did so much damage was because these leeches are used by giants to heal each other, and the summoner was a Halfling, with easily 1/8 of the amount of blood that a giant has.

...You're an oracle and you had no magical means of healing him? You must have been completely out of spells then, since Oracles get the appropriate Cure spell for free each time they get a new spell level.

I cast Compassionate Ally on the giant.

So, I may have indirectly caused the death of a fellow party member via the rarely seen cause of CON damage.

So, our party's summoner has been knocked down to 7 HP by a single attack from a stone giant. The party's oracle (me) figured that this would be the perfect time for a spell. Compassionate ally!

Now, this is where things get interesting. The GM had apparently written out various bits of giant society, just in case they were needed. As such, since the giant had no magical means of healing our summoner, the spell indicated that the giant would simply make a heal check on him.

Apparently, giant medical practices involve giant dire leeches that do 1d8+2 CON damage immediately. And the 1d8 was an 8. And the summoner was a Halfling, thereby only containing approximately 1/2 of the amount of blood in a standard human.

This brought his CON down to 7 from 17.
It also brought his HP down from 7 to -23, since he was level 6.

And so he died. Horribly. Of exsanguination.

Admittedly, the GM gave him the chance to break out of the grapple, as well as a Fort. save to take half damage, but neither of those tend to be a summoner's specialty.

What should I/we do? Should he get another chance, or should we let the dice fall where they may? Did we mess up in determining that a reduction in CON also changes the negative HP value the character dies at? Is it even reasonable to come across a leech capable of doing 1d8+2 Constitution damage? Should I get the player something to apologise?

Hey, I'm the previous GM for this group.

Honestly, Wildfire Heart is basically the best roleplayer in our group, and everyone in the group likes his character.

It's less a case of "GM-controlled NPC" and more a case of "GM-Controlled PC". It doesn't really have as much to do with him GMing as much as the fact that he has a heavily optimised character in a group of players who are playing for literally the first time in their lives.

I will admit, the story is sort of focused around him, since the most recent plot development involved him accidentally freeing his sorcerer master who happened to be a massively powerful, extremely evil, 18th level Lich. Also, we regularly face +3 EPL enemies, surviving primarily due to his character's beastly damage output.

I'm relatively new to GMing, and I've been having some trouble with a few things. Of course, most of my players are also new to Pathfinder, but I still want to do the best I can.

Firstly, I've found that I have trouble with NPC dialogue. "Spontaneous" is not a word that I think could ever describe me, and as a result, most NPC conversations involve a lot of stammering, saying "You know" a lot, and generally having each NPC be identical in personality. Honestly, it's a bit embarrassing when your players feel less awkward in-character than the GM does out-of-character. I've tried doing NPC conversations in the third person, but it just feels impersonal, and I still have trouble figuring out what I'm going to say next. Does anyone have any advice on dealing with a lack of improvisational ability?

Secondly, I can't figure out if I'm being too easy on my players, or too hard on them. On one hand, due to my inexperience in GMing, all but the most recent sessions had me handwaving away any rules that I had trouble memorizing, like carrying capacity (where I essentially said that the players could basically carry as many objects as they wanted, within reason, as long as none of the objects was over 60 Lbs), as well as HP regained from resting (where I basically said that a full night's rest restored all HP). In addition, whenever one of my players argues that something should logically work (which is often), I generally end up agreeing with them, even if it would cause problems. On the other hand, some monsters and traps in dungeons that I "made" (AKA made in a random dungeon generator) could easily reduce a PC to half health in a single blow. All the same, though, the players always seem to be able to breeze through encounters, even those that should be above their level. How can I know if I've got the balance of difficulty right? Or the balance of traps to monsters to puzzles to NPC, for that matter?

Finally, and I save this one for last for a reason, is that one of the players annoys the heck out of me. He only ever uses cantrips, even against incredibly powerful enemies, and after I made the mistake of allowing him to make his own spell, he uses it almost exclusively. Annoyingly enough, it does more damage than any other cantrip, and apparently creates magical snow that can be eaten to regain 2 HP, but only once per day per character. He points out his 2 HP of healing incessantly, constantly argues that the cold spell should freeze or slow the enemy, and his idea of roleplaying is to talk in an awful indian accent. He has almost no interest in doing anything himself in combat, placing more focus on his monkey familiar than his character who's backstory was directly ripped from a book series that the player had talked to me about at the time. His character's name is literally "Gandalf" wit one letter changed, he refuses to use an actual paper character sheet rather than fumbling with a PDF file that takes 3 minutes to load whenever he goes from one page to another, he seems to fail to grasp the concept of "Just because this creature shares a name with a creature from Harry Potter, it does not mean that they are the same creature", and he repeats things 7 or 8 times, even after people have told him that they understand or that they heard him the first time.

So why don't I kick him out?
Well, the thing is, I honestly don't think that he does any of it deliberately. Everyone in the group, myself included, has some form of...well, let's just say "problems with socialization". So, I honestly can't be judgemental, since he's not doing these things to be a jerk, and I don't know whether he just doesn't know better, or if it's a behavioral thing. Not only that, but we barely have enough people for the group as it is, and I can't afford to lose anyone. Besides, I invited him personally, and even if I find him disruptive, I don't know if the other players feel the same. So, one way or another, I can't kick him out. I honestly like having him around in the group, but he just gets on my nerves. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could deal with this?

I'm aware of the fact that the vast majority of my posts basically boil down to "I'm a newbie GM, can you fix my problems for me?", but I just don't feel confident enough in my abilities to try to fix these kind of problems, given the possible consequences if I make the wrong move (people leave the group, my players start to resent me, etc.).

He's wearing very little armor, only enough for a 5% arcane spell failure chance. He sometimes uses Mage Armor too, for an AC of 21.

Well, I've got some info from the player's character sheet:

Ifrit Sorcerer 3

STR 10
DEX 17
CON 17
INT 12
WIS 8
CHA 20

17 AC (4 armor + 3 from DEX)

FORT 4
REF 4
WILL 4

Unfortunately, it seems like the player in question uses his character sheet as more of a quick reference for the session, and he keeps the rest of his character info at home. All the same, it looks like he's not going to be nearly as overpowered as he was before.

If there's any other info you want, I could probably just ask him, but I'm not sure if there's much else to say at this point.

Hey, everyone. So, the next session will be today, and I'm going to ask for a copy of his Character Sheet. I've talked with him about some of the problems, and he admitted that the Quicken feat allowing him 2 spells per round was stupid. He was sad to hear that the +30 feet speed thing wasn't going to be allowed, but I think he'll get over it.

In addition, as something I probably should have mentioned, rather than using point buy, we used the 4d6 drop lowest method, so all of my players have distinctly above average stats. I don't know if any of my players has a stat below 10.

So, we'll see how this session goes, and if his character's still too powerful after the removal of the additional 30 feet and the Quicken feat, I'll be sure to post his full character sheet.

Hawktitan wrote:

Christopher Dudley wrote:

Bioboygamer wrote:

I posted a thread a little while ago, but due to a lack of input on my part nothing came of it, so I'll briefly recap:

I don't mean this to sound rude, but it should be pointed out that nothing came of it because you abandoned the thread after posting the question.

He admitted as such.

I got that, but he might not know that this would still be appropriate to post there.

ETA: Also, since the last thread, I looked and noticed that this same user started and abandoned three other threads, two of which were the same question, much like this, so I thought someone should let him know. I really am not trying to come off like a self-appointed moderator; just trying to be neighborly.

I'm sorry if I've cluttered things up unnecessarily. Thank you for letting me know. Given that the previous thread was locked, I figured that posting on it was no longer allowed. I tend to be abysmal at figuring out little nuances like this, so I'm honestly grateful for the advice.

Thanks everyone!

Everyone who pointed out that extra spell slots aren't usable until he can actually cast spells of that level, thank you. That was probably one of the main things that was causing a problem.

Ughbash and Shaun, It seems to me that he mostly picks up these things on the off chance that they'd be useful. He only fashioned the frog tongue into a whip after the dungeon was over, and even then only to sell it. I suspect he was picking up the femurs for the purposes of crafting them into something. Possibly grinding them into dust to throw in an opponent's eyes?

And Ughbash, I'd agree with you on the +30 ft. base speed thing if I didn't recall actually having seen it. It's possible that there was a bigger penalty than I remember, but in any case, you're probably right. Even if it did exist, it's just causing too many problems.

He shouldn't do 3d6 damage with an elemental ray. He should do 1d6+2 fire damage. Wooden doors have 10, 15 or 20 hit points. Next time he tries to burn down a door though, explain how the fire quickly spreads through the entire room.

Technically, the salvaging thing wouldn't bother me. If it gets irritating, ask for craft (taxidermy) checks the next time he tries to skin a lion.

If he has 7 elemental rays, he only has a charisma of 16 (+2 from his racial ability). That's not very high, considering he could have a charisma of 20 (counts as 22 for his sorcerer class abilities and spellcasting.)

7 Elemental Rays was an estimate. He probably has a Charisma of around 20.

Also, most of the time that he's burning down wooden doors, it's in a dungeon of some kind, with stone walls and such.

The salvaging thing isn't particularly irritating, it's just the fact that he uses the things he gathers to try to trivialize any encounters. Honestly, if it were another, less powerful character doing it, I'd be fine with it, but it does tend to get irritating when he has an answer to almost every possible challenge.

Considering Quicken is a +4 spell level adjustment he would need to be able to cast 5th level spells before being able to quicken a 1st level spell.

Apparently, the bonus spell slots from having high Charisma can be used with the Quicken metamagic feat. A quickened 1st level spell is still castable by any character that can cast 1st level spells, as long as they have an open 5th level spell slot.