Blackbot's page

Hello hello!

I intend to introduce a couple of friends to Pathfinder.
I don't want to run a full module because these tend to take a bit longer than only one evening and I'd like for their first adventure not to end with a "Right, so we're in the middle of the cave now but have to pack up - ah well, hope you had fun!", but with a full "Yeah, you did it!"
A PFS scenario should be ideal for this and I would love to get a few suggestions!
However, one important note:

I will not be running this as Organized Play. I want to show them what a Role Playing Game is and how it works without bogging it down with all the overhead of PFS. If they are hooked this might change, but this is a more general introduction to Pathfinder as a whole:

• I am free to change encounters and the scenario as a whole. If someone wants to suggest a scenario that would have to be adjusted in some way, I'm all for it! (Stuff like "Scenario XY is great, but too difficult for newbies" - no problem, I'll just make it easier!)
  
• It would be great if the characters don't necessarily have to be PFS agents. So while I adore The Overflown Archives, it is sadly not a great option hee.
  
• For the same reason The Confirmation and especially The Wounded Wisp are out. I might do The Confirmation, but I'd have to change quite a few things around I reckon.
  
• A scenario not relying on combat with animals is a bonus. I like The Segang Expedition, but my players would outright refuse to participate in a hunt.
  
• If it's a two-parter and both halves work on their own, great! This would leave a "I hope you had fun...we can play the second part next week, if you want?" open.
  
• I fully expect one or two players to grab a druid and a ranger. A scenario in the wilderness (or with a huge part of wilderness) would be great.
  

Thanks for the suggestions in advance! :)

(And does anybody know why the bullet pointed list does not show up?)

Hey guys,

I will put spoilers in the first post in case someone lands on this thread by accident, but as this is a GM thread I encourage you not to use spoiler tags.
Players beware!

Any other bright suggestions to my dilemma?

Hi there,

I'm not sure if this goes here or in the Advice forum - but I think this fits better here, because it a) is directly tied into Golarion and b) I kinda know how I want to do this and are more interested in other views.

The central question is:
How do you deal with noble PCs in your groups?
(And does it differ where they are from?)

So, the setup:
One of my players likes to play nobles.
In my Carrion Crown campaign, he played a noble paladin of Sarenrae from Ustalav (his mother's Qadiran). Compassionate, no-nonsense type of guy. His parents aren't really big players either.
In PFS, he plays the paladin's brother - a bard who sets out to learn about the world.
And now Dragon's Demand - he wants to play a noble wizard.
And that's where I start thinking.

Nobles in Taldor are (usually) filthy rich, decadent and FAR above the common man. Even if they are more down-to-earth, how would you deal with the fact that one of their kids basically says "Hey, I want to risk my life somewhere far away, don't hand me any money please, I'll do it myself!"? Even more weighs that if later on nobles show up they basically have to treat him better than the rest of the party because while he may not "outrank" them, he won't be
My current thoughts:

• He doesn't start with more than the usual character because he lost everything just before the adventure started. Maybe he got robbed, maybe he drank away everything.
  
• He might be the estranged son, or at least his parents are pissed enough at their youngest that they won't jump to his rescue as soon as his money runs out.
  
• He only pretends to be a noble or at least massively overstates his importance. (This is something the player has to agree with, obviously.)
  
• He is too proud to ask for help.
  

Hi there,

has there been any clarification how to handle the death of a pregen in a special (e.g. Serpent's Ire)?

From what I've seen, there are two trains of thought and I wonder if this has been clarified. I certainly cannot find anything.
First, to make this FAQ-markable:

Do the rules preventing reassigning the death of a pregen to the specials which force use of a pregen?

Second, the trains of thought from what I've gathered:

Version 1:
No pregen death can ever be reassigned. The new rules are written with all pregens in mind to raise the stakes and prevent players from being "careless" with their character.
If you decide to apply the chronicle sheet to one of your characters before the scenario and your pregen dies, your character dies.
Since the guide makes no exception for pregens in specials, it's obvious those rules apply to them as well.

Version 2:
The pregen deaths in specials can be reassigned. The new rule is intended to "protect" the "real" characters from reckless pregen use. Since everybody plays a pregen, nobody is in real danger and it would be unfair - you are forced to play a pregen from a very limited pool and do not even have the option to play a character up to this level.
The rules are introduced with step one ("Choose one of the pregenerated characters available in Community Use Package: Pathfinder Society Pregenerated Characters at paizo.com/communityuse/package") which cannot be fulfilled in the mentioned special scenarios.
Also, the rule about resurrection ("The Roleplaying Guild character must contribute a minimum amount of gp before spending the pregenerated character’s wealth in this way, depending on her level: 0 gp for a 1st-level pregenerated character, 1,000 gp for 4th-level, and 2,000 gp for 7th-level.") cannot be applied since some pregens have levels which are not exactly 1, 4 or 7.
Concluding: It is obvious those rules do not apply to them.

Sooooo...have they ever said one way or the other?

Hi there,

I recently leveled up my fighter and came to the conclusion that he probably won't reach any of his faction goals without really good rolls. Sovereign Court might be an awesome opportunity to get contacts for when he rejoins the Taldan military, but most of this stuff just isn't the typical fighter way...

I'm aware that he could always spend a PP to bypass one of the skill checks. However!

What if I am on a mission with another member of the court?
Say my fighter Nicolo Felix Morella notices that the bard of the group, Bob, is also from the Sovereign Court (And why wouldn't he? Their dental plan is great!). They reach the end of the scenario and while Nicolo killed all those dastardly evildoers, Bob really proved himself to be quite the convincing talker.

In the end, they helped out that nobleman and Nicolo thinks he'd make a great addition to the Sovereign Court, but let's be honest here - he'll probably say something stupid along the way, confuse the princess with the duchess or just stutter around. Bob, however, also wants to use his silver tongue to convince the nobleman.

If Bob manages to convince the nobleman to join the Sovereign Court and Nicolo assists him, can they BOTH mark the goal as fulfilled on their faction journal cards?

And if that is a yes:

Can Bob recruit the NPC to grant Nicolo the mark even if he himself does not need it anymore?

Right now I'm sinking one of my precious 3 skill points per level into Knowledge (Nobility) and this might help a bit, but still...

Hi guys and gals,

I'm preparing to run a adventure and it features archers (well, they have slings, but let's say they are archers) hiding behind arrowslits.
The rules say this:

Improved Cover: In some cases, such as attacking a target hiding behind an arrowslit, cover may provide a greater bonus to AC and Reflex saves. In such situations, the normal cover bonuses to AC and Reflex saves can be doubled (to +8 and +4, respectively). A creature with this improved cover effectively gains improved evasion against any attack to which the Reflex save bonus applies. Furthermore, improved cover provides a +10 bonus on Stealth checks.

Okay, cool. So the PCs have to cross the room while they are being fired upon and have to figure out a way not to get hit...BUT.

Logically the arrowslits should be something that favors the defenders - they hide, shoot through them and are more or less safe.
While there is no rule saying "The target does not gain the AC bonus if the attacker is adjacent to the arrowslit" it seems logical that it works this way. But I like to have a rule written down and not just made up, so tell me:
Is this written down anywhere? Am I the only one reading the rule like this and can you tell my why your opinion differs?

Responses are appreciated!
Blackbot

So. The situation was this:
The party goes through a jungle and approaches a swarm.
The scenario is contradictory at this point - it states that the party can go around or wait for the swarm to calm down. The swarm tactics, however, say that " ...they attack the PCs as soon as they come near enough to witness the scene."
I decided that they see the swarm crawl around and that it doesn't immediatly attack.
They pull out some alchemist's fires and go closer to throw them. I ask them how close they want to go, deciding that if they approach closer than 4 squares the swarm attacks. They go far enough to reach that square and the swarm attacks.
Initiative gets rolled, the swarm wins, it moves first.

Long story short: No major damage, nobody poisoned, swarm gets killed farily quickly (partly because I messed up the splash weapon rules - I thought you only needed to hit the swarm's square instead of the swarm itself), a bit of healing required afterwards. The scenario overall was also well received, so this is not about some day-ruining argument or anything.

However. A few players were fairly unhappy about the swarm acting first because they clearly approached it with the intent of striking first once it reacts. In the end I called "even or odd?", they called even, I rolled odd, so the ruling stood and the swarm moved first. No hard feelings on either side. Though I got thinking: How would you have ruled in this instance?

My reasoning: You cannot decide that all of a sudden you're in combat. They inched nearer and nearer but were still surprised at how quickly and suddenly the swarm attacked them (displayed by initiative).
Their reasoning: "Implied" initative, they moved & readied their action to throw constantly. Thus they should've been able to throw once it was the swarm's turn.
I feel like this reasoning is a difficult one - it opens the door for things like "We approach the guys working at the docks. The fighter and the paladin ready an action: If they turn out to be aggressive we want to hit them as soon as they enter an adjacent square.", making initiative useless for fights where both combatants are aware of each other.

So...your thoughts?
(I'm not sure whether this should be in the rules question forum, but because it strongly interacts with some PFS scenarios [and because we're bound by the tactics noted] I feel like it should be here.)

Hi there!

While reading the Pathfinder TVTropes entry and looking up some stuff about Taldor I noticed some retcons in Golarion.
Now, James Jacobs has said numerous times that if they decide to change something about Golarion they just "phase it out" and stop talking about it.
I think this is confusing - if something is described in a source book but not in the next one, did it change or was it just ignored for space reasons?
For that reason (and because I find it fascinating to see how Golarion changed over the years) I'd like to collect retcons, big and small ones.
Sources would be appreciated.

• Paladins of Asmodeus - Let's start with an error. As far as I can tell it was Mother of Flies, a module in the Council of Thieves AP that Asmodeus has paladins. Obviously kicked out because of alignment problems.
  
• The Darklight Sisterhood - From what I can tell the Darklight Sisterhood were some kind of Chelaxian anti-pathfinders. The Aspis Consortium got the job.
  
• The bearded/unbearded class structure in Taldor - Deemed needlessly complex and silly, thus removed (or it was in place once, but is not in modern times).
  
• Erastil's misogyny - This seems to have been added when building Golarion on James Jacobs' original notes and has been retconned out later.
  
• Tiefling/Aasimar ages - A minor one because this seems to have been an error, plain and simple. Aasimar and Tieflings are supposed to age at the same speed as humans do but have quite a long lifespan statted out in the ARG.

Hi,

question is pretty much in the title:

If a paladin smites an evil creature, does his attack count as good?

Background of the question is a monster with regeneration 5 (good weapons, good spells).

I think that RAW the paladin is not able to block the regeneration by merely smiting the monster, instead he'd need to cast bless weapon for the task or beat it to a pulp and suffocate it.
If anybody here know that this is wrong please do correct me.

Also note that while "at my table I'd allow it" is a valid and appreciated answer (because that's how I would rule it at my home game), this is intended for PFS play. So answers based on rules are very valuable. :)

Hi,

Given the APL of a six-player-group is between two subtiers (e.g. APL 3 in a Tier 1-5) but no character is actually in the higher subtier (e.g. six level-3-characters), do they have to play in Subtier 4-5 with 4-player-adjustment or can they decide to play the lower subtier? (Rule is clear for seasons 0-3, no clarification needed there)

In the fringe case where there are no players that are high enough to have reached the subtier level (such as a party of six 3rd level characters), the group may decide to play down to the lower subtier.

It is unclear whether this statement applies only to seasons 0-3 (because it's located in the season 0-3 paragraph) or to all seasons.

This has been discussed at length at several places, but to my knowledge no FAQ thread has been started yet. Feel free to mark this as an FAQ candidate.

Hey there!

Consider this:
A rogue has a strenght of 10, a dexterity of 18 and chose short swords as his "finesse training"-weapon on 3rd level.
How much damage do they do?
Is it 1d6+4/1d6+4 or 1d6+4/1d6+2?

The weapon enchantment agile says this:

Agile weapons are unusually well balanced and responsive. A wielder with the Weapon Finesse feat can choose to apply her Dexterity modifier to damage rolls with the weapon in place of her Strength modifier. This modifier to damage is not increased for two-handed weapons, but is still reduced for off-hand weapons.

The bold sentence is missing from the similarly worded:

Whenever she makes a successful melee attack with the selected weapon, she adds her Dexterity modifier instead of her Strength modifier to the damage roll. If any effect would prevent the rogue from adding her Strength modifier to the damage roll, she does not add her Dexterity modifier.

Now, I think that the sentence missing means just "treat your dex modifier as a strength modifier for all intents and purposes" and that the "...still reduced for off-hand weapons" in agile is merely a reminder and is applied in the rogue's case as well. But...I'm not really sure.

Hi there, me again!

Grandmaster Torch has done some things that has put him on the "Kill on sight"-list of quite a few PCs and has been declared an enemy of the Society. But in scenarios prior to his departure he could be quite important, be it as the faction leader of the Shadow Lodge or as an information broker back when he first showed up.
So...what do you do when it comes to these things?
Granted, in some scenarios he provides merely the background - "Grandmaster Torch gave us informations when the Shadow Lodge reunited with the Society, we have to kill the remaining rogue elements" can be easily changed to "Some of Torch's associates were careless when leaving the Society and we found informations about rogue elements". But in other scenarios Torch is someone the PCs have to bargain with, sometimes he is even the one sending them out to do something for him.

What do you do in situations like these?
Do you simply run as written and say "Yeah, it doesn't make sense, please don't question it!"?
Do you come up with an explanation about how this is all in the past and time is flexible and all that?
Do you substitute him with a no-name information broker?
Do you substitute him with always the same information broker your local PFS group might know for quite some time now?
Do you hope for your players not knowing who Torch is and change nothing?
Or is there even an unofficial consensus on the forums I'm not aware of (like substituting him with a guy named "Burned Spider" or something)?

Let me hear your ideas!

Hi,

quick question: A player of mine chose to play a pregen last Saturday and wants to hold the chronicle sheet for his paladin. Does he immediatly write in the chronicle number (so later his character will have sheets 1-2-3-5-6-7-8-9-10-4) or does he wait with that until the character reaches level 4 (so his character will have sheets 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10)?

I couldn't find that information anywhere. I think it should be the former, but I'm unsure.

Hi,

I tried looking at all paizo blog posts with the Pathfinder Society tag.

While this displays some of the posts, it's missing quite a few too.
The first four are:
The England GM Team Marches on its Stomach
Gen Con 2015 News and Official Call for Volunteers!
Learning Exotic Spells
No Hablo Shoanti

The first four SHOULD be:
Faction Journal Cards
Represent Your Cause!
Shax's House of Pain!
The Plot Thickens

I don't think it's a problem of "New stuff doesn't show up" because some older stuff is missing too - Faction Evolution I and IV is missing from the "Show only PFS tags"-page but displays fine when showing the whole blog.
I'm unsure whether this extends to tags that are not PFS, didn't test this.

So. The Overflow Archives.

Who GMed it? What problems did arise? What solutions did you find?

I read the scenario and two problems became obvious to me:

1. Caught's statblock is erroneous, and at one of the worst places possible: His saves do not differ between his bard 3- and his bard 7-statblock. This leads to a Will save of +3 (instead of +5) in Subtier 4-5, or in other words: he'll be slumbered before he can say "Stop what are you doing" as soon as a witch is on board. We may not fix it (I think) and I've never seen a scenario fixed after release, so that's a bummer.

2. The author HATES foreign GMs who have to translate the poems and plays on words into other languages. ;)

But nevertheless, I look forward to judging it. I plan to swap Albatross' and Owl's names - after all, the text never explicitly states who is who, and I think it might drive a group appropriatly crazy that the owlheaded one is Albatross and the albatrossheaded one is Owl.

Hi,

today my group ran into a problem I was unsure how to handle.
We defeated the encounter and the scenario said:
"If the group fails to defeat the encounter, reduce their gold by x gp"
(Or something along those lines).
However, we did not find the treasure the monster had hidden in his cave.
This was a season 4 scenario.
I'm unsure how to handle it - in another scenario (season 5) it explicitly states "If the PCs fail to fend off [the monster] and recover its treasure, reduce their gold by x gp".

So we were pretty sure we should get the gold as that's what the text said ("Defeat the encounter", not "defeat the encounter and find the loot"), but we're unsure whether the items should be crossed off the chronicle sheet or not.
We did not find them, but the scenario does not have the instruction to cross it off the sheet.
The Confirmation explicitly states at one point to cross of unfound treasure off the chronicle sheet - though the treasure in question is determined by random, so this might have something to do with it.

So basically it boils down to this question:
Does the GM has to cross of loot the group did not find if the scenario does not explicitly tell him to do so?

Hi there,

today I tried printing #6-10 - The Wounded Wisp and ran into some unexpected problems.
I print the PDFs with the printers at my University because I myself do not own one. This has never generated any problems aside from the process taking a bit longer with Season 6 scenarios - why that is I cannot say. Maybe because every single page has a bigger background image.
The Wounded Wisp however refuses to print properly - it prints until it reaches a map, slaughters the map (some parts are okay, other parts are offset and others are stretched) and stops afterwards, declaring an incompatible type of file being used.
This is...unfortunate, to say the least. While I can probably print the scenarios somewhere else, the most convenient (and cheapest) way to do it have always been these printers.

Did anybody else run into printing problems?
I had no problems with #6-05 and #6-06 (aside from very long period of the printer converting the file before printing it), so I suspect it has something to do with the inclusion of statblocks at the end of the scenario (as described here), but that is, of course, mere speculation.

Hi,

I got a quick few questons to 1st level Sajan.

1. Why is his unarmed strike 1d6+4? It seems like it's treated as a two-handed weapon, but this is the first time I ever saw this happen.

2. Couldn't he flurry with his temple sword? +2/+2 (1d8+3/19-20) surely is better than +2/+2 (1d6+3), right?

3. Same question for his shurikens.

I understand they try not to overwhelm new players with the iconics, but the same goes for the monk 4 and the monk 7 iconic...and once your temple sword is dealing 1d8+6/19-20 it really makes a difference.

Hi,

I recently ran a scenario which ended with a moral dilemma. The choice was basically between "We can work together with these crooks and really help the Society or we do what's 'right'."
This ended in a seemingly unsolvable conflict between our paladin (who wanted to work with the crooks, arguing that the Society's work at the worldwound was more important than the wishes of a few people who wouldn't even really be harmed, just imprisoned with high comfort) and the ranger who refused to even budge a little.
Democracy was quickly abandoned because both character were convinced their way of doing it was the right one.
This went on for quite some time and when they left the room to argue out of earshot of the crooks (where the paladin tried to explain to the ranger that they could still go after them AFTER they had what they wanted - though it would take at least a few months ingame) I decided that the villain used this very moment to attack. The group was missing two party members, the discussion didn't really go his way and most important of all our time ran out, so I had to act.

Still - it did not feel too good to basically say "Time's up, roll initiative".
It occured to me to just say "Okay, your characters will not budge here. How about you to an OOC vote and if you lose your character will be convinced?", but that didn't sit right with me.

How do you solve seemingly unsolvable inner party conflicts?

Hi there!

Recently we ran into the following situation:

The wizard wanted to cast Summon Monster. He uses his full-round action to do so.
Before he finishes his spell he takes damage from a bomb. No worries; he makes his concentration check and all is well.
However, the bomb has a secondary effect: He is now stunned because he failed his save.

What would happen in this case? I can see three different outcomes:
a) He made his save. While he will lose his next round the spell still goes off.
b) He has to make an additional save similar to how non-damaging spells work:

If the spell interferes with you or distracts you in some other way, the DC is the spell's saving throw DC + the level of the spell you're casting.

c) He is stunned and it is an unwritten rule that if you are not able to take any kind of action you lose the spell.

I would say c), but I am not really sure how to justify it rules-wise.
What do you guys think?

Addendum 1: What would happen with nauseated? Nauseated says that you can't cast or concentrate, so I'd say you lose the spell.
Addendum 2: This happened in a PFS game, so the less house-ruly it gets the better.

Greetings,

while it is common knowledge in these messageboards that everyone can "buy" spells between scenarios by paying half the scribing costs (as stated in the FAQ), many other players don't.

Part of this might be the wording in the FAQ - in January 2013 Mike said he wanted to delete the word "Rare", but I guess he just forgot because he was away from the office for a week.

Also, I was under the impression that this FAQ entry overruled the usual "PCs may not take gold off each other" rule.

So, can we have this change now? Something a little clearer like "In the instance of a NPC wizard charging a fee for the privilege of copying spells from their spellbooks, this fee is equal to half the cost to write the spell into a spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). Rare and unique spells do not change the fee in PFS.
All characters have the opportunity to do that during downtime between scenarios."

I'm unsure about the last sentence, but I would welcome turning this into a real clarification and not just a something people on these boards can refer to as their secret knowledge. ;)

(How can I make sure the right person [Mike Brock, for example] sees this post? Hitting the FAQ button?)

Greetings,

I'm sorry for the vague thread title, but I figured that what I am about to discuss might be too big of a spoiler to be named in plain sight.

The battle I want to spice up is the one at the Stairs of the Moon. Let's have a look at the situation.

The primals don't want to let anybody get in or out of the clearing. Okay, fair enough - I can see them just go "Eh" as soon as the PCs who broke through their defenses are getting shot at - let their enemies kill each other, who cares.

The weirdness starts when the PCs enter the temple. The Mordrinacht have orders to prevent someone from entering the temple and...when somebody does they just figure the monster inside will kill them. Hu? Okay, maybe these wolves are extremly lazy.

And then the PCs emerge, slaughter the three guards on top of the temple and march upwards to kill the pack leaders. And nobody seems to care.

Okay. WHAT?
It just seems weird to me that the adventure seems to assume nobody would bother to stop the party of maniacs murdering their guards and attacking the pack leaders on top of the tower. Where IS everyone? Are they constantly patrolling the entrances of the clearing to hold off the Primals? Are they all struck with plot convenience? Did they dump their perception skills?

As soon as their leaders are dead it is mentioned that they start fighting each other for the position, so obviously some of them are still around. And did what, just watching their chiefs getting killed? Nothing about werewolves indicated that they would do such a thing - if you want to be leader you fight the leader or wait for his death, but up until this point you are under his command and will help him. Even if you take into account that there are likely fights elsewhere in the forest - Broken Moon mentions multiple times that the Mordrinacht defend the temple and the Primals laid siege to the temple, basically.

So what is it? Arrogance? "Well, our boss will kill these guys swiftly and without a problem" stops working once the party (of 6 people) dispatches of the guards without any problems.
Desperation? "We have to hold our positions so the Primals don't attack and get the temple!"?

No way how I twist and turn it, it just seems weird.

Suggestions are appreciated!

Blackbot

Greetings fellow Pathfinders,

first off, I am aware that there already is a discussion thread for The Frostfur Captives. It was created back when the scenario came out and you can find it here:
The Frostfur Captives
However: as we all know, resurrection such an old thread leads to newcomers only reading the first posts only and not bothering with the reason why it came back up in the first place, so I created this new thread. Also: Very minor spoilers ahead. Nothing you don't know after the first 5 minutes of playing the scenario.

Now, first off: I know that I am not allowed to change any mechanics in a scenario. I may not change a troll to a troglodyte because I see it as a better fit or move a scenario from Mwangi to Ustalav just because I like.
So all the tweaks I want to make are ones which happen in the "Intro" to the scenario.

Now! While the scenario still reads like a fun ride two things are just off.

First problem: The scenario basically starts by saying "Please get to the place where the mission takes place as soon as possible. You will have a few days when you get there. Take the next available ship, you will be there in a few months."
Maybe you already see the slight problem here...;)

• The PCs already are up there. They were part of the team which was sent up there and haven't done much in the past few weeks except waiting for the "Go!" - the scenario starts when the signal came and the briefing doesn't happen in Absalom, but right where the action is.
  
• Teleportation Cirble. Because the Society always has a wizard 17 around for fun like this.

Any input would be appreciated!

Blackbot

Greetings,

my group is heading straight for the Schloss and I found a couple of things that bugged me greatly. I hope you might help me out here.

1. How did the Promethean get from L2 up to L3? This thing is huge (literally, that's his size), so how can he possibly fit through a 5 feet wide staircase?

2. L2 is described as a prison. Fine. But how exactly did he hold him captive there? There are no prison bars mentioned anywhere. While the way down is blocked by the adamantine trap door, the way up seems open (well, it's too small, but if that was the only measure point 1 is an even bigger problem). I assume adding bars isn't too much of a problem, but still - it's irritating.

3. The tower is too small for the fight. If I put the Promethean on top of the tower the group will have trouble standing up there. The beast won't be able to fit at all. I mean sure, it should be cramped, but that's just ridiculous.

My solutions are as follows:
1. He just squeezed through and the staircase is pretty much busted. Including a Promethan-sized hole in the ceiling.
2. I thought about just ruling that the trap doors in both directions were adamantine before the one going upstairs was damaged/stolen, but this raises the question how the count manages to get upstairs without running into the promethean. As an alchemist he doesn't seem to have any ways of just flying up there, so I guess I will just add some bars there. They are extremly expensive, but hey - what isn't in this dungeon?
3. Doubling the size seems a little too much. I think making the diameter 50 feet instead of 30 should to the trick - the platform itself will be 40 feet in diameter.

What did you do? Any suggestions or critique on mine?
Blackbot

Hi,

can a normal human/goblin/orc/whatever notice magic?
I assume they do have some ability do do so since everybody can notice a magic trap (even one which has alarm as a trigger), but it's not noted how this happens. Abjuration says that:

If one abjuration spell is active within 10 feet of another for 24 hours or more, the magical fields interfere with each other and create barely visible energy fluctuations. The DC to find such spells with the Perception skill drops by 4.

This suggests that visible fluctuations are not the "normal" state. I assume that the "DC to find such spells" focuses on stuff like glyphs and magic traps since I cannot find "normal" way of percepting magic.

But this raises the question: If a normal person cannot "see" magic, how can they detect a magic trap? What is the difference between "I guarded this area with an alarm spell" and "I guarded this area with an alarm spell and if it goes off, a fireball explodes"? What makes the latter of the two detectable without detect magic and how do I detect it? Is it a hunch? A flirring in the air? A little shining line on the ground which mysteriously goes dark when I can't see (since darkness still imposes huge penalties to perception)? Is it a faint buzzing? Or just whatever the heck I want it to be?

Also: I suppose that when a character manages to roll a high enough perception check to notice a trap he notices that, well, it's a trap and not just some undefined magic effect, right? How does he know? How can I describe that feeling instead of saying "Yup, you're seeing a magic trap alright. Though of course you don't see the magic itself. Just that it's a magic trap. Because reasons."?

Greetings,

I have found a few threads discussing the addition of new characters or the replacement of dead ones, but I didn't really want to hijack another thread, especially not one several years old - people tend to only read the first few posts and missing the timestamp.

Again: TotB spoilers are ahead!

The situation is as follows: My group just reached Schloss Caromarc and killed all the trolls but did not yet manage to enter the building itself. Since it has gotten late they decided to rest and continue their efforts next time.
This was two months ago (RL got in the way) and now we have a new player joining. I have no idea how to bring her in, even shoehorning seems difficult. Now, a fighter, rogue, wizard, sorcerer or anything along those lines could be brought in by "Ah, the Order of the Platinum Eye could send her!", but now - she's a druid. Not really something you see in Ustalav all that often and not something the Platypus Eye would have too many connections with in my opinion.
It also seems unlikely that she's trapped inside the Schloss since everybody else has been killed and/or turned undead.

The only halfway decent idea I have is to retcon her in somehwere, but I'm not sure where. I could just say that she travelled with the Crooked Kin and followed them out of curiousity, but this pretty much forces the character into this role - though it might not be too far off if she decides to be a gnome.

So, can you help me with some suggestions? Order of the Peebrain Eye? Crooked Kin? Maybe something to do with Vorkstag who escaped them and followed them to take revenge? I'd appreciate it!

Greetings,
Blackbot

Greetings,

while preparing a game recently I ran into a little problem.
I did not have access to my Bestiary and did not want to use my laptop at the table (taking up space and all that) so I decided "You know what? I ran The Confirmation and the statblocks in the Shared GM Prep-Drive were really awesome, so I think I will just copy the stuff from the PRD."

Well, to make it short: The layout did not survive copying it. It doesn't look HORRIBLE, no, but it basically loses every resemblance to the "iconic" statblocks.

Now, as linked above there seems to be a way to create statblocks looking like statblocks.
Can someone who did something like this give me some tips how to achieve it, maybe even give a template or something?
I assume it's not as easy as copying from the PRD because HTML, CSS and Libre Office don't really work together.
I did it quick&dirty by just screenshotting the PRD and mashing it together, but really - not a great way of doing things, especially if I want to upload it to the GM drive.

Help would be appreciated!
Blackbot

Greetings,

a few weeks ago I ran #5-08 The Confirmation for my group of players and reported.
Yesterday I ran First Steps I. Since it's more or less the same group of people and to make things easier for me I decided to use the same Event (thus not changing the Event number) and just adding a new session to the event as suggested by the Event Schedule Page:

If this is a public event and recurs regularly, such as a gaming night at a game store, please return here to add additional dates as necessary.

It's not really public, but I figured this shouldn't make much of a difference.

So I set up a new session with no problems and tried to report the game, but unfortunately I can't add First Steps I to the list of available scenarios. I can click the box in front of the scenario without any problems, but when I save the changes it's gone again and I cannot select it when reporting the session.
I tried adding another scenario (Mists of Mwangi) and it saved without problems.

Did anyone else run into this problem ever before?

Also: Why is it that I can download the session sheets for one of my events and none of the others?

Thanks in advance,
Blackbot

Greetings,

while running a campaign there seems to be a problem coming up on which I'd like some advice.
The situation: The party is in a dungeon about one day of travel away from the next town. While they may not have expected the dungeon itself (the dungeon has been overtaken by an evil force) they geared up for the worst, already assuming that something was wrong at the place.

It should be noted the characters are level 6 and have about multiple hundred gold pieces each. Also: This is the first time they are running into a dungeon that is not a) no more than 4 rooms or b) directly next to or inside a town.

So, the party kicks the first monster's arse and proceeds to enter the dungeon. We ended directly before entering the dungeon itself, but it is now that I see multiple problems coming up...

1. The casters purchased some scrolls, but none of them with identify. This already bit them as they could not identify a pretty powerful staff.
   
2. The ranger and the bard (who remained back in town and will follow) both have a bow and a back-up weapon for melee. Cleric, paladin and sorcerer don't. Oh, sure, the paladin has two or three melee weapons, but not even a lousy shortbow.
   
3. The ranger bought arrows. 20 arrows. While fighting the guards it dawned on her that this might not be enough if you shoot 4 arrows a round. This is not a first with her, too - prior to this the group had to fight incorporeal beings and she had no magic weapon, not even an oil: magic weapon. The group received multiple warnings that place was "full of monsters my weapons could not touch, I swear to the gods!"

Long story short: I fully expect them to really, really suffer. This might be the first time they will actually get into big trouble.

Problem 1 might not be so bad - they have two (later three) tries to idedentify each day (cleric + sorcerer + the bard that will, again, follow later). They might consider buying some scrolls or a wand later.
Problem 2 might be a bigger issue since they are about to go up against a flying enemy (in conditions favoring him nontheless), but again, I'm not too concerned - they have the opportunity to flee the encounter or shift the battle to a environment more suited to their style of combat. Plus the paladin has a little god complex and I think it wouldn't be too bad to show him that there ARE monsters he can't do anything against with this attitude.
Problem 3 is the biggest one. A ranger with focus on ranged combet is just near useless in a dungeon without her arrows. She can go into melee, but that really isn't an ideal solution.

I thought up 4 possibilities:

1. The dungeon as written has no arrows, but it wouldn't be too hard to just put them there. There are reasons for them to be there - the lord of the dungeon might be an avid hunter, for example. Or it's a hobby. Or one of the guards used an arrow and they called him Hawkeye.
   
2. I offer her to use a hero point to just say "I bought another 200 arrows in town and they are on my mule.", basically using hero points for small retcons.
   
3. I let them suck it up. They have to ride back into town to get more supplies.
   
4. The bard brings an enormous amount of arrows with him once he follows. Because he just knows how ditzy the ranger tends to be and just figured she'd forget to buy arrows. (This is pretty much in character for both the ranger and her player, actuall...)

My favorite solution so far is the second one, but I'd really like to get some more input on this.

Thanks for reading this wall of text,
Blackbot

Hi guys,

while reading the forums and talking to other players, I got the strong impression that play styles very greatly between continents or even countries.

Let me explain what I mean, how I come to this conclusion and what my theory is. Up front: I'm German and I have never played P&P outside of my country or even outside of my general living area, North Rhine-Westphalia, though I participated in some online groups with players from all over Germany.

To make my point I will exaggerate, so beware.

The American player sees Pathfinder as a tactical game. A PFS scenario can be handled in 4 hours, and if you need more time you're just slow. An American player wants the situation presented quickly so he can solve it. Something like "You walk up to the door and find it locked. After looking around and asking some people you determine that the owner of the house has died quite some time ago." is something that is pretty much expected to keep the game flowing.

The German player doesn't rate combat that highly. A PFS scenario can take 6+ hours, if you do it quicker you just glance over parts. If you tell a German player "You walk up to the door and find it locked. After looking around..." he will instantly stop to explain what his character will do, maybe with a bit of "How dare you tell me what I'm doing!". Also there are not enough skills.

I get that this will not match every player - it's just a general tendency I noticed or think to have noticed. The German player might as well extend to all of Europe, I don't know that.
So...am I completly wrong here? Did I just get the totally wrong impression?
It should be noted that German players more often than not grew up with The Dark Eye, the biggest German role playing system. (Its literal translation is "The Black Eye", but for obvious reasons this translation wouldn't work - in German we don't have this problem, since our expression for that translates to "The Blue Eye"...but I digress...)
The Dark Eye is pretty low fantasy — mages and stuff exists, but are not nearly as powerful as a high level caster in D&D, and magic items are VERY rare — and the world is extremly detailed, to the point where you know how to adress every nobleman from every region, how the certain kinds of bread are called and whatnot, the skill system has 18 skills in the "body" category alone (which is just one of 7 categories).
So you can see while a seasoned TDE player might find Pathfinder overly simplified. It also fully supports creating characters who did nothing but being a baker beforehand. Not in the "Crafting: Baker" sense, but in the "There's a class for that" way. And while quite a few players sooner or later go over to other systems, I think the general play style is already in their bones by then.

So yeah...that just went through my head.
What are your opinions on the matter?
Did you experience it differently?
Am I just talking nonsense?
Might this become an interesting discussion?
Discuss, my puppets, discuss!

Greetings
Blackbot

Greetings,

I'll start with one very simple thing: I'm from Germany. Therefore, some aspects of American law may not be as obvious to me as it is to you, so this might cause some confusion further down the road, so please don't assume something as common knowledge. I watched my share of American TV, so I get the basics, but some finer elements might be different over here.

Also: If you already played Trial of the Beast, feel free to read the post. It (and by extension the rest of the thread) contains nothing about the rest of the AP.

That said...

I'm getting in a somewhat tight spot. My group is on Day 2 of the trial, and some things have been established:

• A bunch of ragged guys (the PCs) can volunteer to defend the accused
  
• The PCs can present stuff they found as evidence as long as they totally tell the truth
  
• The judge can produce search warrants if really necessary (they obtained one to follow the trail of the scalpel - that is, an order to let the PCs have a look in the books who bought it). This, however, is usually not possible at the same day if not very urgent.
  

So far, so good. The group found most of the evidence surrounding the three crime scenes and everything is heading for the first major problem of the group: Vorkstag & Grine.
And frankly, I have no idea how they should operate there.
There are various options here:

• They smash the door and go in. They found enough evidence to be pretty sure they're involved. Problems: The Paladin won't be too happy about this. Also, in RL that's illegaly obtained evidence. At worst, they will all be prosecuted for breaking and entering, manslaughter or even murder.
  
• They get a search warrant and Vorkstag and Grine comply at first, then flee. Problems: Boring as hell.
  
• They get a search warrant and Vorkstag and Grine say "Screw this" and start attacking them. Problems: They might just call the guards. I *might* be able to solve this by declaring the PCs the enforcers of the law in this instance, maybe with a neutral person following along - the Paladin and the Sorcerer are both nobles, the former even a lawyer.
  

Greetings from Germany,
Blackbot

Hi,

when the forum was restructured this extended on the URLs, meaning that every link to a thread or post taken before restructuring is, well, dead.
They just link to the store now.
This is especially irritating for link collection threads, which are now more or less completly without use. Okay, you can still search for the titles of the threads, but really - it's annoying.

Is there any way to "convert" the old links to the new format or is this something that is completly impossible (or not with a reasonable amount of work achievable)?

Greetings,
Blackbot

Hey guys,
be warned, small spoilers ahead. If you are a player and your group has already reached Lepidstadt, you've passed the discussed point in the adventure.

Greetings,

once again: Spoilers are ahead. Do not read this if you do not want to get spoilered for HoH and quite possibly TotB.

That said...

The last gaming session ended with the group defeating the Splatter Man and all that is left do is bringing Vesorianna the badge and grabbing their reward; they are around 7-8 days into the 30 days they should help Kendra and are about 1200 XP short of level 4 (or they will be as soon as they finish the module).
Here's what they did, very roughly:

• They stopped the town hall from burning down and rescued all the people inside
  
• They then ordered the whole village to camp around the temple, recruiting guards from the villagers and all in all turning the whole of Ravengro into a certain "You guys are under siege by something dark; we will go and fix this!"-situation. So...they will be very thankful once this is over.
  
• They have not, however, stopped the writing of letters - they suspect it might be something mundane (or at least something corporeal as opposed to something ghostly), since they aren't really sure why the Splatter Man would need to collect blood to write something all of a sudden - something he never had to do before to write with those letters.
  
• They haven't really befriended anybody from the village (except Old River); probably because I'm still working on portraying NPCs in convincing and varied ways. (For examply, I tend to play most women in high positions as the clichéd old hag snapping at everybody as if they were mere children - until I remembered Vesorianna was supposed to be a griefing widow she had the whole group cowering like the Blues Brothers in front of the penguin...)

The Problem is this: I don't really know how to fill the time until TotB. They should hit level 4 by then - something I could easily fix by some random encounters - but then there is no way the ranger would have ANY chance to teach his companion a trick or two, so I want him to get his companion before travelling.
But directly throwing the next thread at their heads also seems like overkill - "What, 50 years of nothing in Ravengro, then the ghost of the prisoners try to level the village and TWO DAYS AFTERWARDS some damn Orcs raid the village?!" - so I'm kinda torn.

The last method would be to just say "Screw it, you guys are level 4 now!", but I don't know - the only fights they had at level 3 so far was the one against the Splatter Man and the one against the Skull-Dwarf (I don't know his English name, you know who), and I don't want to overwhelm them with the level-ups, since they are all new to Pathfinder. Plus, the Skull-Dwarfs is a really lame fight.

So...any ideays?

TL;DR: HoH is done, I need a little filler between HoH and TotB to get them on level 4, instant-level ain't such a good idea

Hey guys,

Hey guys,

I just stumbled across this in another thread:

Scroll:

step "decipher": if you fail, you must wait 1 day for next try. So you cannot take 20.
Of course, you may use spell read magic...

Can someone tell me where this rule can be found? It's not said in "Magic Items":

Decipher the Writing: The writing on a scroll must be deciphered before a character can use it or know exactly what spell it contains. This requires a read magic spell or a successful Spellcraft check (DC 20 + spell level). Deciphering a scroll is a full-round action.

Deciphering a scroll to determine its contents does not activate its magic unless it is a specially prepared cursed scroll. A character can decipher the writing on a scroll in advance so that she can proceed directly to the next step when the time comes to use the scroll.

The entry for Spellcraft also states that most of the uses cannot be repeated until a day has passed (or in some cases ever), but doesn't say anything about deciphering a scroll.

So...was Defraeter mistaken? Am I just not seeing something? In my mind, the wizard/sorcerer/whatever just sat down after the crawl, took 20 on deciphering every scroll and just sat around for one or two hours, carefulle deciphering the scrolls step by step.

Hey friends,

my question is pretty much in the title. To elaborate:
I will start GMing Carrion Crown next friday and as you all know the AP takes place in Ustalav. From time to time the first module mentions something to be in Varisian, suggesting that Taldane still is the go-to language and Varisian is just something most people speak, but not that many.
On the other hand Prince of Wolves points out (and occasionally makes a plot point out of) Rodovan's inability to understand the spoken Varisian, even sometimes needing a translator to communicate with some of the people around him. I unfortunately don't remember when those situations took place and am not willing to reread the whole book to see the context of those difficulties. And my experience from other RPGs tells me that novels usually differ from the "official" view of the world somewhat.

I imagine Ustalav as a place where the common folk speaks mostly Varisian and is capable of speaking Taldane to some extend, especially people with jobs requiering them to (like travelling merchants or innkeepers), so I would rule that every character can decide whether to speak Taldane or Varisian as a first language (they of course can still learn the other one with high INT or Linguistics). I also consider just giving them both from the start unless their background makes it somewhat illogical.

So. Input, please! I'm very interested in hearing your opinions. :)

I GM both. I thought 2e would become my system of choice because it's honestly a very good game and addressed a lot of the issues that I had with 1e. But now that I've played a lot if 2e I'm glad I still have a 1e game going.

I like that 1e has a lot of flavor abilities, even if those abilities are sometimes bad or janky. I like that there's a lot of stuff that's designed for utility with little obvious combat application. I like that classes can do stuff like talk to spirits, haunts, or animals, or walk through underbrush without difficulty, or become able to speak any language. Things without obvious combat utility but help a character feel cool and magical. The balance issues can be very difficult to manage, but sometimes its fun to be really good or really bad at something. I think a the jank and issues give the game a lot of personality-- but can also be really frustrating as well. 2e, by contrast, feels really well designed, but a little sterile.

I do quite like 2e though. It's fun to GM, easy to learn for such a complex game, and the rules make sense and just work. High-level play is also actually fun, unlike in 1e, where the game really breaks down once you hit double-digit levels.

I also just find the first edition Adventure Paths more interesting. t's probably personal preference, but I think they struck the right balance between being on theme while avoiding being too specialized. With the 2e ones, they come out so quickly that I think a lot of them never get played. They don't develop any kind of reputation and ultimately they feel a little forgettable.

I was reading through the LO: Tian Xia book and noticed that, canonically, Ameiko has not used the seals to rebuild the other four Imperial Families of Minkai. I know that this is likely because the assumption is that the PCs of Jade Regent would take on those roles, and that this can't be in canon, but I also think that could be a cool adventure.

One major criticism of Jade Regent is that you really don't spend a lot of time in Minkai proper, and I believe a lot of people would like a Minkai-focused AP. I'd like to see an AP where the PCs help Empress Ameiko select worthy individuals to recreate the Imperial Families (and maybe select a spouse for Ameiko as well, as I believe she's canonically childless, isn't getting any younger, and that Amatatsu line has to continue or what was Jade Regent even all about anyway).

My own Jade Regent campaign was based on relationship-building, and I think that could be a cool motif for the campaign. Seek out prospective candidates for the mantle of Imperial family, convince them to take on the responsibility, resolve their issues, and/or choose between a host of viable candidates, both good and evil, who might be best suited for the role.

James Jacobs wrote:

vyshan wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

After having misread a description of Gatewalkers as an escort quest AP, I now demand an escort AP. With the long-awaited attending LO book : Dancing Halls of Golarion.

Isn't an Escort Quest basically the plot of Jade Regent or are you talking about the courtesan type of escort?

That's exactly what folks are talking about (before some folks started running with the fact that "escort" is also sometimes used as a euphemism for prostitute).

** spoiler omitted **...

I just want to put some positive feedback here for the way Paizo has handled "escort quests", including in Jade Regent and the middle chapter of Gatewalkers.

My group loved the bioware style relationship building in Jade Regent, and I had a player who previously hated roleplaying blossom into one of the most involved roleplayers in my party because it helped them to have an underlying mechanic that could help them track their progress. Eventually it wasn't necessary and got moved to the background.

More than that the players treated Ameiko as integral to the party as if they had another player at the table with their own opinions on how to handle things. I played up Ameiko's nervousness about her destiny, and the weight of responsibility and made clear that she was relying on the PCs to help her navigate that situation.

People will gripe loudly when something didn't work for their game, or they were unable to adapt something to the needs and enjoyment of their players and that's understandable. People pay money for adventures and then expect it to work out of the box with little additional adaptation or preparation. Whether that expectation is fair or not, it exists.

However, for me and my group, who treats every AP as a scenario skeleton to build our own experience around, and players who treat NPCs with the same weight of existence as their own PCs, we love NPCs who are relevant to the plot and have their own drives, goals,...

This is almost exactly how my Jade Regent game is going. We used the Ultimate Relationships rules, which give more mechanical heft to the relationship-building aspect of the AP. Essentially, it's turned into a campaign with a Persona-like social system, where the players are building relationships with a ton of NPCs, and have mechanics for how those relationships are built. The mechanical aspect is important: I know a lot of people will say "you don't need mechanics for this stuff, that's what roleplay is for" but I think that works for some people and not others, and also roleplay mechanics can be fun.

Goes to show that even a "bad" AP can be right for your table if you approach it the right way. The "escort quest" aspect of Jade Regent is actually what led it to being a great campaign for my group, as it encouraged the players to roleplay with NPCs and really engage with the world.

Honestly, with the popularity of relationship simulation games like Persona, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, etc., I wonder if you could make an AP that is about building relationships as a primary goal. I know a lot of APs have that aspect in service to a larger story, but I think adding some mechanical heft to roleplay is really fun when it's done well.

I eventually rebuilt my Miyaro to be a Kami Channeler Medium. I wanted to play up her connection to the Forest of Spirits and make her feel like an otherworldly forest creature that's as much spirit as person. But instead of making her a cool swashbuckler, I gave her a strong fairy tale vibe. She's basically a Totoro. She can talk to forest spirits, she's nice to everybody, she can probably grant wishes to good children. She might be immortal because of the Kami. Her life is a Studio Ghibli movie. I'm having fun playing with a high-level NPC with that tone.

I think it really needed to expand Book 3 to multiple books. The lost city in the middle of a jungle is a cool trope and gives off great pulp adventure vibes, and when you get there it's just... not that great. If I were to really put my back into GMing the module I'd feel like I had to totally rewrite the content of the book. Different factions, more ways to interact with them, all kinds of stuff. And sadly, I just don't think it would be worth the effort. After all, the reason I'm doing an AP is because I don't want to put in the work required to homebrew a campaign.

Then eventually you go underground and there's .. another city? That's also underdeveloped? Sigh.

The lost city and the interactions with its denizens should have been most of the campaign. Unfortunately it would require a complete rewrite of the plot and redesign of the modules. It's a tall order.

Another gripe I have with it is the repeated encounters. This is a problem in a lot of games for sure, but in a couple of the dungeons there's a lot of fighting enemies with identical stat blocks. In the serpent fortress in Book 5, it's just generic serpentfolk soldier group encounter, again and again. Now, I get that it's a fortress and fortresses have soliders so you should be ready to fight soldiers. It's realistic, I guess. But I don't know how a GM makes that interesting. A lot of the SS dungeons felt like a chore to run, as the encounter designs weren't very great.

About three encounters away from ending Curse of the Crimson Throne (including the last boss) in the game in GMing. Been going for years and let me tell you, I'm very ready for this one to be over. It's a great AP, but it's time for it to be finished.

I've soured on them, honestly. In my experience they're just another way to optimize characters. In my groups I almost never see them roleplayed or integrated into backstories. Same with drawbacks-- nobody takes the ones that will be mechanically disadvantageous and they never get role played, so and it's just a free mechanical bonus.

In my games I just have every player take the campaign trait for the AP I'm running, and give them a free class skill of their choice. No traits.

I kind of like the back-of-the-napkin tactic of using (Int + Wis)/2 X 100 = character IQ, myself. Most modern IQ tests and theories of intelligence assess both formal, learned knowledge (Int) and the speed in which information is processed and acquired, as well as creative problem-solving (Wis). So just dumping one or the other doesn't make a character intellectually deficient in and of itself. But I digress.

Topics like this kind of crack me up. For sure, bloodless power gaming can certainly be irritating. But I've also played with players who over-RP and want all of the attention and spotlight, take 10 minutes to go over every encounter, make overbearing alignment decisions, and derail the game by backstabbing the other PCs and then declaring "it's just what my character would do". Then they think they're awesome because look at how complex and deep their character is!

Some players are just annoying, regardless of whether they consider the game a number-crunching fest or a "ruining your game is just what my character would do" drama camp. It's more a function of irritating players rather than one play style being endemically "better" than another.

An opt fighter can do the same damage as meteor swarm at lvl 10. A more vanilla build managed like 71 DPR on a full-attack. Heavy opt druid can pull 79 unbuffed all day with wild shape. Opt blast sorcerer can pull 90 per round provided they still have slots.

10 lvl fighter

assume +4 str and +2 weapon for magic

Hit 10BAB + 2 feat + 2 weapon training + 7str - 3 power attack + 2 magic weapon = +20

Damage = 7 greatsword + 2 weapon training + 2 feat + 2 magic + 10 str + 9 power attack = 32

That's without gloves of dueling with boost that to +22/34

Thanks! This is the kind of thing I was looking for. I wanted to get a general baseline of the kind of damage that a martial class that was moderately unoptimized could do but my system mastery is pretty poor. So the above post, assuming, what, a 2d4 Falchion?, will do about 72 DPR on a full attack. We'll bump it to 74 with Gloves of Dueling because it looks like there is never any reason for a fighter not to have those. I'm miserable at DPR calculations, so let's just assume that both attacks will just hit. But as mentioned, there might be times in which the fighter's weapon will not be *optimal* for the job-- perhaps it's against a flying enemy or an enemy with DR/bludgeoning or a "no greatswords allowed" rule or something. This won't be common, so I'll just estimate that the fighter's class features will operate 90% of the time. So 10% of the time he'll lose those +4s to hit and damage, to just spitball a number. This will barely put a dent in his DPR on average, so it's honestly barely worth calculating.

We'll assume that the base stats are the same-- that there's no reason to believe that a fighter and a ranger will have different Str scores or access to different equipment-- this might be a poor assumption but it's what I'm going with. So the "special" fighter contribution to damage and to hit is the +2 Weapon Training Damage and +2 for Weapon Focus. So I'm trying to parse out "generic" martial damage, with no special class features thrown in. So Mr. Generic Martial loses 8 damage across 2 attacks because he lacks those spiffy fighter abilities, bringing his dpr to 66. He also loses +4 to hit with each attack, meaning he'll do about 20% less damage overall. This brings his DPR to 53 or so-- a well statted/equipped martial DPR with no special abilities.

Ok, so let's take that and add Ranger class feature damage to it. At 10th level a ranger has 3 favored enemies. That said, I have no idea how often FE comes up, but I do know that I am not bullish on it. I'll say a ranger has a 5% chance of encountering any one of his FE at any given time, so a 15% chance overall to do an additional +2 to hit and damage. This will not likely nudge the ranger's DPR over Mr. Generic's 53. I am not a big fan of FE. This will leave the ranger with about 53 dpr compared to the fighter's 74-- admittedly a baseline that is accurate for the fighter and shows disfavor to the ranger. Somebody can correct me on that if they'd like.

Next I'll go through the bestiary and look through CR9, 10, and 11 monsters; the sorts of things that would be reasonably difficult for a Level 10 character. I took a random sample of 20 of each and averaged their HP to ask how many full attacks it takes each class to kill the monster.

Full attack damage: Fighter: 74 Ranger: 53

CR 9: 115.79 damage average.

The fighter will drop a CR 9 monster in 2 attacks, while the ranger will not quite make it. But let's give the guy a break. Critical hits are a thing and weren't accounted for in these calculations, so let's say it nudges the ranger enough to drop it in 2 hits. If the enemies don't have DR. Which 40% of them did.

CR 10: 128.63

Again, the fighter takes 2 full attacks and the ranger takes 3.

CR 11: 145.47

Big difference here. The fighter will still eke out dropping an enemy in 2 full attacks, but the ranger is laboring. Setting aside critical hits, he'll drop an enemy in 3 full attacks on average... but if that enemy has DR then he won't-- he'll need 4 full attacks. Now, neither will the fighter, but when critical hits ARE taken into account then I'd expect him to get over the hump.

Ok, so this was obviously a pretty terrible comparison in a lot of ways, but to me it does give a baseline as to how *much* more effective the fighter is in combat. On average it seems like the fighter will drop a CR appropriate challenge ONE FULL ROUND earlier than the ranger will. Personally, I think this make the fighter substantially more effective in combat and does seem to imply that he can kick ass so solidly that he has a role that is difficult to replace. Also note that none of this takes defenses into account at all.

There are a lot of caveats, of course-- no equipment, no optimization, full attacks assumed all of the time, no buffs. But I'm not sure that any of those things will favor a ranger any more than it favors a ranger.

How do we know the developers don't care about balance?

Grappling is a big problem early, for sure. Later on it's more of an inconvenience.

I don't think it's any easier to pull apart a wizard party than any other class, truth be told. Sure, a party of low-level wizards will have trouble with grapples. A party of low-level fighters, for example, is in a lot of trouble if they're invited into that same yurt and the orc shaman casts color spray or sleep on them. A party of low-level rogues will have trouble with... well, they'll basically have trouble with combat in general. Low-level PF is swingy as hell even for non-gimmick parties.

I'm still confused about how we can have threads that aren't about casters vs. martials.

It's especially great when the rogue stealths into amazing tactical position in order to deliver that sneak-- 50 feet away from the nearest party member. Well, say the monsters, I can't quite get to that squishy wizard hiding behind those armored chaps. But as a consolation prize, here's a squishy rogue!

I find that a lot of the time "theorycraft" is used as a last resort dismissal of various "problem" builds. I liken the apparent "theorycraft" criticism, as it's often used, to the backlash against the use of statistical analyses in sports. The "old-school" non-stats crowd tends to throw around dismissive statements like "well if you'd watch the games, you'd know I was right" instead of engaging in actual discussion. This seems to gloss over the fact that people who use statistics to analyze sports probably watch sports as well.

The point is that I haven't seen many builds that I don't think would work on an actual game. Even "joke" builds like AM BARBARIAN would probably translate pretty well into most games I've seen.

Man, Marthkus just wears you down with his combination of being wrong and persistent. But you've been a trooper for hanging around as long as you have. Personally I don't know how to respond to a statement like "34 spell slots IS LIMITED SPELL SLOTS" beyond just shaking my head and moving on.

I think that if I'm in combat against 100 soldiers then losing initiative is the least of my worries.

Casters have defenses too, you know. A wizard with, say, mirror image or stoneskin on doesn't detonate instantly upon being attacked. And that's not even taking into account things like high AC sorcerer or druid builds. And even if my wizard takes a hit... hm... checking the rules... nope, not instantly dead. Apparently I get HP too.

Oh man, there's no way this isn't going to turn into a "casters vs. fighters" thread. Just sayin.

I don't think it's about disrespect, exactly. If I'm playing a wizard and there's a bard in the party, I'm probably not going to put a lot of skill points into Knowledge skills. It's not that these skills aren't important, but it's something of the bard's schtick, and he's going to be better at it than I am.

With combat it's not really like that. You can argue about whether Control spells are more effective than damage, but they sure as hell aren't a lot less effective than damage. So when I look at other party members, I'm trying to think of what they bring to the table that my wizard doesn't-- or at least what I can't do without significant effort.

Also, The Fighter isn't really the standard to flock around for the "pro-martial" crowd, IMO. Paladins, Rangers, and Barbarians are core-classes that are all kind of awesome and bring a lot to the table that spellcasters can't easily replicate.

Paladins are tough to bring down because of great saves and do sweet bucketloads of damage against most enemies. Great package! They don't get a lot of skill points, but their high charisma makes them terrific at social situations, giving them good out-of-combat utility. Plus they even get some nice spells. No problems with a paladin at all.

Rangers get terrific skills and do a lot of damage. I don't have one in the party, so I can't speak from a lot of experience, but they're good in combat and have a lot of utility outside of combat. Plus, again, nice saving throws (two "good" saves and will have a reasonable Wis score).

Never played with a Barbarian, but they get a reasonable amount of skills and are tough to bring down in combat.

Personally, the problem isn't with "martials", the problem is that The Fighter is pretty limited in what it can do. Sure is good in combat... but every class is pretty good in combat. What other bases can they cover? As a wizard who can (theoretically) "do anything", any base the Fighter can't cover is a base that I feel I have to deal with, so the fighter's poor Will save (gotta pack Protection From Evil in case the fighter's Dominated) and poor skills put some pressure on me. Other martials have a bit more utility and bring a bit more to the table, at least IMO.

Sloanzilla wrote:

I guess you should probably decide either way- even aside from the stealing issue, it's important to avoid the double standard. The worst is "evil" players who think any in-game interference with their "right" to do evil stuff is OOC limiting on their roleplaying rights. My paladin has as much right to roleplay stopping you from torturing someone as you have a right to say that your character is torturing someone.

Oh good God, That Guy. Especially when they expect everyone else to play their characters like impotent bystanders while they flaunt that #%€*.

"Why aren't you letting me play my character?"

"We are. Now let us play our good characters. Also, actions have consequences."

The very epitome of Chaotic Stupid. Works especially well with his counterpart, the poorly-played Paladin with the Lawful Annoying alignment. "I detect evil on everybody. If they pop as evil I kill them. What do you MEAN I'm going to prison? You aren't letting me play my character!"

Alignment is fun tool, but I find that sometimes players forget that their PCs have personalities as well. Evil characters can actually care about others, after all. A person can be evil and quite loyal to their friends. They just might have strange reactions sometimes-- if somebody hurts their friends, an evil character might, say, murder the transgressor and everybody that person cares about. But hey, at least they won't steal from the rest of the party!

Hm. this has been talked about a lot and in waaaaay greater detail than I'm able to produce, but I'll give it a shot.

-- A fighter can out-dpr a barbarian, but it costs them feats to do so. So in matching a barbarian, the fighter has to commit their class features (more feats). Barbarians just get rage, which scales with their level and requires no feat/ability investment.

-- Ditto with survivability. A barbarian's AC will be lower, but they don't ALWAYS have to rage. If the lack of AC puts them in danger, then they don't have to rage and can still put up some good dpr. Even then, there are barbarian archetypes that can give them ridiculous DR; this will boost their survivability much higher than an AC fighter's.

-- AC is not the only measure of survivability. Barbarians will likely have better saves. A fighter, OTOH, has to spend some of their feats to remain competitive. We're seeing that the fighter's bonus feats can be deceiving; they have to spend a lot of them to account for the class features of other classes. Their feat advantage looks more striking than it ends up being.

-- Barbarians get rage powers, which can further close the gap between the two. Rage powers scale better with level than do feats, as I understand. Barbarians can't cast spells while raging. They also cannot cast spells while not raging. This matches them up well with fighters, who also cannot cast spells.

-- Barbarians get more skill points, giving them more out-of-combat utility.

-- For a "who is the best DPR" discussion, you'd be remiss if you didn't include the paladin. Smite Evil is (arguably) the best DPR ability in the game. There is, of course, the caveat that not all enemies are evil, but you'll have a target more often than not. And sometimes that target will be an evil outsider, dragon, or undead and then the DPR discussion isn't even close.

-- Paladins also have much better survivability than fighters by virtue of vastly better saves. A lot of the AC difference will be balanced by a paladin's ability heal themselves as a swift action.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. Off the cuff, I'd rule the say I said above (that it can). If I had time to sit down and deliberate after the session, I'd say that it's just not flammable enough.

But again, it's because this specific type of grease isn't flammable, not because the spell doesn't say that you can. I honestly don't get the "power creep" argument-- maybe a better example than grease or gate is in order? I'm not saying I disagree with your position, I'm just not seeing these cases as being egregious enough to worry about.

Pretty much. The "broken" stuff involves a lot of RAW nonsense like Planar Binding and Simulacrum. I don't think this comes up a lot in actual games.

For things like Overland Flight and Teleport... well, it's just a matter of realizing that high level games are different from low-level games. The "bandits wait in the forest to ambush the PCs" style of encounters are over now. Instead, ambushes are "the demon is scrying on the PCs, will teleport him and his flunkies in to attack them when they least expect it". NPCs get things like Overland Flight and Teleport too.

I'm a proponent of giving Martials Nice Things, not banning spells. Balance is more fun when you're giving, not taking away.

Except for Blood Money. Ban that cheese.

I always roll my eyes at the "caster superiority is just theorycrafting" arguments-- as if none of the dozens of people making this argument have ever played a game. I also feel like these discussions always move the goalposts. I think most "pro-caster" people are making the argument that, properly applied, magic can solve *most* problems in a game *more efficiently* than alternative methods (skills, pointy sticks).

The "anti-caster" arguments often come across as "well your caster can't solve EVERY problem ALL OF THE TIME, so the game's balanced". Well yeah, full casters can do anything, but not everything. I'm not sure how this makes them weaker, but to each their own, I suppose. This leaves the martial classes to solve problems that casters have not deigned to waste resources on, i.e. have relegated them to support classes.

And really, the "pro-martial" arguments rely on just as much theorycrafting. In this thread, the notion of a "flip" relies on ideas that casters run out of spells/finite resources. After playing a low-level wizard, I just don't see it. Cast Sleep, hit 3 guys, say 2 of them fail their saves. This outcome is hardly theorycrafting, it happens all the time. Now 2 guys are dropped with 1 spell (for all purposes). Much more efficient than a martial class in combat. This isn't even optimization, it's just the ability to recognize that Sleep is awesome at low levels and choosing to take the spell. How is this pie-in-the-sky theory?

"But spell slots are limited", you say. Alright, sure. This is a problem at low levels, but it assumes things like 4 encounters/day. Personally, a lot of my DMs have trouble with the 4 encounters/day paradigm. Combat just takes too long and detracts from the story too much to fit 4 encounters into a session. And a lot of stories just don't lend themselves to "4 fights before sleeping". Sometimes you have time pressures associated with them, but some plots just don't. You can't add these artificial fiats to prevent casters from resting to regain spells without these fiats eventually becoming contrived ("Oh look, another race against the clock story. For the sixth week on a row. Sigh"). In the game I play (a real game, no less!) we're usually good for 2, maybe 3 encounters before resting, and often it's just the one fight. Your experiences might be different, of course. But I feel that the caster/martial design choices were made in an era where many D&D adventures were dungeon crawls. In my experience, though, dungeon crawls and sessions with many combats/day are pretty rare. In games with political intrigue or mysteries to solve, it's a lot harder to fit enough fights into a session to make a caster rue the lack of spell slots.

And casters aren't the only classes that have limited resource issues. Paladins have the same problems, with limited Smite Evil and Lay on Hands. Barbarians only have so many rage rounds at lower levels. Monks and Ninjas spend ki to do a lot of class features. The idea that martials can operate at peak efficiency 24/7 is really only true for some classes-- fighter or a rogue, perhaps. Until his hp run out, I suppose.

So again, I maintain that there's no "flip" that takes place. There's not really any point in which a caster is significantly outclasses by a non-caster class. The opposite cannot be said-- martial classes can be inferior to martial classes at very low levels (rogue vs. bard, for example).

Sure, and again, if you're specifically trying to make a PC seem weak then you'll often succeed. But I would argue that throwing variety at the party makes spellcasters seem stronger, not weaker. Casters have a much bigger toolkit from which to work, and thus have a better chance of finding SOMETHING useful to do. Martial classes (especially at low levels) can often have a harder time. Again, this is not always the case! There are definitely times that martial characters just shine. But on average the casters have more to do.

For example, in the monsters you listed... do they really impede casters effectively? I'm not trying to be Schroedinger's Wizard here, but not all wizard builds are save-or-die based. What part of my low-level Conjurer's Haste/Summon Monster rotation is going to be less effective as a result of any of their abilities? Hell, I can't remember the last time I cast a spell that targeted SR. SR is pretty rare isn't much of a problem at low levels and a lot of battlefield control spells aren't subject to SR. Things like Grease, Create Pit, Summon Monster will all still work and be just as effective. And for things those don't work on (say, an incoporeal undead)-- well, I'll take bets that a wizard or cleric will find a way to deal with that before a fighter will.

On the other hand, the party Rogue or Ninja looks at that ooze, realizes that it's immune to sneak attack, sighs, kicks a tin can down the alley, then cries softly to themselves.

Ok, I see what you mean about the father and not wanting him to betray the PCs. It makes sense that you wouldn't want to do that right now, if at all.

First, I will say that it's not a *bad* thing that the PCs are in control of your story. It's their story too, after all! I'll re-iterate that I'd try to ask them what they plan on doing with the thing. This lets them move the game forward, which is a good thing. If players care about what happens then you're doing your job as a DM.

One thing I like to keep in mind for a sandbox game is that you don't have "plots", you have a setting. You can't predict what the PCs will do, so it's hard to write a typical "they have to do X so Y will happen" plot. Instead, you're reacting to what they do. "So the PCs did X. Given that information, how does Faction Z and NPC Y react? What's their next move?". If you have a good handle on your setting's major NPCs, then you can react to what PCs do in a reasonable fashion. It's a lot easier to react to PCs than it is to predict PCs :)

-- So right now, they have no idea how valuable the object is, and they're level 4, so a "huge amount of gold" could still work within WBL guidelines (so about 1000 gp per encounter for level 4 PCs). Again,you could have them make an Appraise check to determine what the value of the object is, opposed by the Patron's Diplomacy check as he tries to haggle them down. They get, say, 1200-1500 gp for it, your story goes on. They could ask for more, but you could just laugh it off and suggest that it's kind of unreasonable-- it'd be like me trying to sell my used car for $1 million. Sure, I'd LIKE to, but.... In this way the object seems like you intended solely for them to sell it for a nice chunk of change. Giving them a little windfall won't disrupt your game, and you can go about your business plot-wise.

-- If the PCs feel immune to danger because they're invaluable to 3 factions, you could disabuse them of that notion veeeeeery quickly. Faction A might want to play nice with them... but Faction B might decide that if they can't have the information, nobody can. Faction C might be hiring adventurers to find out alternate information-- if successful, then the PCs info might drop in value very quickly. The PCs think they hold all of the cards for now, but that can change really quickly.

-- Steal it back. It seems like what your NPCs would try to do in the first place. It might seem contrived to the PCs right now, and that's a problem you can deal with. What I would suggest is simply forgetting about the object for now. Ask the PCs what they intend to do with it, then just take note. Run another 4-5 sessions where the PCs do something totally unrelated. You can begin another long-term plot thread, if you want. The point is to distract the PCs from the object. Then, when you steal it, they aren't rolling their eyes and saying "Oh, you just did that so you can get your plot back on track". Instead, they're saying "Oh, that thing we found last month? I forgot about that". Depending on your players, this could work quite well-- it certainly would in any group I've ever played with.

Stories like this make me want to buy my GM a beer in appreciation for how he can run a good game, week-in and week-out, for years on end. Yeesh.

The thing is that I've had Unwinnable Fight scenarios work out-- as in, the session involves the PCs being captured. The BBEG shows up, wipes the floor with the party, captures them, now... adventure!

The first time my GM tried the "you're supposed to lose this one" encounter, it did not work well. The problem was that it wasn't difficult enough, oddly. If I'm supposed to lose a fight for story reasons, I'm happier feeling that I never had a chance to win in the first place.

But it sounds like your GM isn't making these encounters because they're supposed to lead to something fun. It sounds like he just wants to win. I find this can lead to a competitive table culture where people think tabletop RPGs can actually be "won", which leads to player-vs-GM mentalities, which is less fun in total. At least to me. YMMV.