Darth Weasel's page

And from the other side of the room...I severely dislike the "point buy"*. We did the 4d6/drop 1, I am playing a highly sub optimal monk in it (best I could squeeze out of the wisdom was a 10...) and have no problem with it.

Led to some interesting choices on how to play it, has forced somewhat of a modification to the character I envisioned, and causes me to struggle in some encounters...and I enjoy it so much more than I would have enjoyed a crippling 15 point buy type thing where I never would have had even the remotest chance to build the character I envisioned.

For our particular group (which is not the OP's) the 4d6/drop lowest was the correct choice. Doesn't mean it would be for others.

And our gm has done a great job of balancing the encounters where they have all been challenging without being unovercomable.

Just thought I would put one out there on behalf of the OP..I like the way he did it and would hate to see an overall rule change to remove those options which some of us find vastly more fun than the point buys

(*and yes, I actually considered playing in a local PFS game to get some more experience until I found it was a point buy. believe it or not, that killed my interest entirely)

based on his comment, I did ask...and a couple people said, "It was great. I mean, it was pretty much what we were all doing except you made it game related".

They also thought it fit the character I was trying to run so will keep rolling with it at key moments.

And love the cave troll reference above...

I should clarify...I like his reasoning on naming it Tanis...and the dwarf with the oversize earthshaker is playing that for laughs too...so I think we may have an off-center group

@ Gypsy...one of the guys is playing a half-elf named...Tanis. And yes, named for THAT Tanis.

Appreciate the feedback folks, will make a subtle alteration.

We have just started the Rise of the Runelords AP. The GM is a first time gm, I sort of played D&D way back when, and other than that none of us have really played an RPG other than consoles.

I am running a LE monk with a character design to skulk in shadows, avoid head to head combat, although so far I have gotten down to -2, 3, and 1 hp...largely because the other party members tend to try to stay out of combat too.

I also routinely change my appearance and name (our party, due to real life players showing up on average one in three times so the party composition is never the same twice) and show up at the sherrif's office for new assignments.

As you can probably tell, I am learning as I go (and regretting certain initial ability score assignations I would change now that I know the rules better) and experimenting with how to play him.

In our second adventure I started shouting random "battle cries" whenever I entered the fray.

Example, in a battle in a town I crept along the rooftops and, when the battle was well and truly joined leapt from the roof into the rear of the fray shouting "Remember the Alamo".

Later, facing off with the goblin chief, I spouted off, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

When our dwarf ranger crit fumbled his oversize earthshaker, I shouted, "Nice butt fumble Mark"(not funny to Jets fans I suppose)

I was having a great time with it, getting some laughs and so have been thinking about other stuff I could use...

Like cribbing Conan quotes.
Or a series of "let"...when the archers unleash, "Let it rain", when the dwarf charges, "let the earthshaker feast", stuff like that.

My general question; if you were the gm and/or another party member, would you find that funny or annoying?

Since the people who play are A) my 2 brothers, B)one of my brothers' best friend (the GM) and, actually, a pretty good friend of mine, his brother in law, my cousin's husband, and the son of a guy I grew up with, they are unlikely to tell me and I don't want to ruin it for the other people. Hence i turn to you, random strangers, in search of pathfinder-related wisdom

appreciate the thoughts.
Still new enough to the game i am not sure what the "take leadership and get a wizard" thing is...I assume it is something along the lines of hiring a hench-dude?

For what it is worth, I through my lowest score on charisma and, due to the negative bonus therein, my attempt to coerce two dwarves we rescued into serving as hench-dudes failed...which I found hilarious. The results were exactly as i tried to play him...my arrogant elf-ly ways turned them off of the offer...

Here is the background.(sorry for the wall of text, skip past the asterisk to get to the non-background portion. I think the background matters, even if only for me)

An unspecified number of years ago (25ish) a few of us "played" D&D. I say played but...well, at the risk of getting blasted off the boards...we were known to have 4 or 5 character each, routinely got enough experience to level up and need just 1 point to level up again in any given adventure...it was to real role playing what Miley Cyrus at the VMAs was to class and good taste.

It did, however, give me a certain experience level with it. Recently a small group of us decided to try a role playing game and, obviously, settled on Pathfinder.

I know my brothers well enough that I assumed both would be magic-users of some sort. CrisAsUsual was pretty upfront about wanting to play a dwarf wielding the most ridiculously over-sized axe possible.

I wanted to play a wizrad but party composition meant we needed a healer type. I dislike clerics (and clearly had NOT read the new rulebook where wizards can heal...), We needed a rogue. Which I had no interest in playing.

I thought about a Paladin but in the interest of being a good party member I went with an against-type Elf Monk.

I conceived the monk as something I could develop into an assassin based around a character in a series of books I wrote after a few levels (again, clearly NOT having read the Advanced Players Guide at that time...) Meanwhile, I could go around looking for traps, trying to pick locks, etc and took my first skill set around that. He was built to avoid combat.

So we go out for our first adventure and I discover the brother I knew 100% would be a wizard...was a half-orc barbarian. And my second brother was a dwarf ranger.

Holy party imbalance batman.

And the worst part? In our first adventure I had a cool plan. I tried to disguise myself as a zombie to sneak through some undead and secretly snuff out the candle giving them power.

Now, in a moment of comedy the undead were skeletons...but I still had a plan to, when the barbarian and rangers charged the skeletons, I was going to use stealth and shadows to sneak around the combat and put out the candle.

Instead one ranger charged in, one sat back shooting at them with a bow, and the half-orc...stood back by the bowman. He had the same plan I had.

I ended up being one of two guys in close combat. Unsurprisingly, I dropped below zero hit points in our first adventure..

I missed the second adventure in which the other guys started on the Rise of the Runelords modules.

My cousin wanted to join and needed to start a character so the gm ran an adventure with me, my cousin and my brother playing the ranger.

And Chad promptly decides to be a rogue.

Since we are small party light on close combat, we were sneaking around, sticking to the shadows, etc. As a result we surprised two of the first baddies and took them out very easy (stunning fist for the win on the first one).

When we got into town the ranger was no longer part of the adventure (this was the point where the other party was so he went back there). The rogue naturally stood as far from the action as possible so I opened a can of whoop-smurf.

I managed to get some fantastic rolls and actually finished off every opponent we faced in the entire adventure.

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The Problem
We have a heavily imbalanced party. 2 rangers, a barbarian, a rogue and a monk. No wizard (which rumor has it is desperately needed for this path) and no healer.

But I have grown to love my character as developed. I have always played elves and usually played either wizards or paladins. The party needs both.

In the interest of party balance (and to not make the first time GM's life miserable) should I create and start a new character in either the wiz or some healer class?

Same question except should I multi-class starting in level 2? This one is particularly hard for me because I dislike multi-classing. I prefer to focus on building a character a specific way to take advantage of class focus.(except for when I try to make a Busa Hitada clone in some future character)

Or will we be able to work with that module if I stick with the character i surprisingly have grown to love? It has created some fun party dynamics but might lead to everybody dying as we have no effective way of healing or dealing with magic.

In your opinion, what is the proper balance between playing something I like that potentially dooms the entire group to failure and playing something less fun on an individual basis but probably more helpful to the entire group?

Again, sorry about the wall of text but I have been going back and forth about this idea for a few days.Appreciate you reading and any feedback. It does matter to me that everyone have fun so that is a factor.