Doran Steele's page

Have online PFS games become official or are these still unofficial games as far as the Pathfinder Society and Paizo are concerned?

Check page 5 of the Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play, version 2.1:

Additionally, online play for Pathfinder Society is
now legal. Online play constitutes a number of different
methods of play. There’s Play-by-Post, there are a variety
of online digital game tables, and you could even play
using webcams and a voice-over-IP system. So long
as your Game Master can get you all of the required
paperwork (by fax, scan, or otherwise) online play is
a legitimate method of playing in Pathfinder Society
Organized Play. Check the Pathfinder Society Organized
Play messageboards for additional details on several
active online groups playing around the world.

Technically speaking, "female sorcerer" is more correct than "sorceress". The first accurately describes sex and class and the other is a rather nebulous definition about someone's probable career.

I guess I don't get the reference. Is there another meaning of "sorceress" other than "female sorcerer?" What is this "nebulous definition about someone's probable career" that you refer to? A sorcerer's career is sorcery. A sorceress' career is also sorcery.

Question:

Does anyone actually use Professions?

Perhaps I'm not getting as much mileage out of my games, but I've only once "used" profession and it didn't have much of an affect on my game.

That being said, is there any need for 3 slots for "professions" on the Pathfinder Character sheet?

Also, if they are as useless as I am assuming (and I may be quite incorrect in my assumption) why not just fold them into "Craft" skills?

~LD

I agree with others have said above--profession can add a lot to the role playing experience. Just to provide an anecdote--I have a friend who had a sorcerer with profession: butler and the results were hilarious. This butler would select the richest and/or the most powerful character in the group and was constantly offering to clean things with prestidigitation and offering to serve dinner and fetch slippers. I suppose one could role play without the skill, but I like it when the piece of paper correlates with what the player does. Otherwise one would need a bluff check since the character would be pretending to be a butler rather than actually being a butler.

However, I do think that both profession and craft need work. I would like to see a standard list of professions coupled with a specific description of what can do with that skill. I would like to see the professions to be broad enough to fit a range of skill levels. Right now people can have profession: anything and craft: anything. I see this as a problem because what if you have one character with profession: baker, another with profession: pastry chef and a third with craft: baked goods and they all want to attempt to make dessert for the king's banquet in order to gain the king's favor. The DM would probably have to come up with three different DCs for each of the skills because "pastry chef" already implies advanced skill in baking. Instead, I would like to see these all bundled as profession: baker. A "pastry chef" would be someone with a lot of skill points in the profession: baker skill. There would be a brief chart for each profession skill--for the baker skill it would be something like this:
DC 10: muffins, biscuits and rolls
DC 15: loaf of bread good enough to sell
DC 20: a cake good enough for a peasant celebration
DC 25: a fine cake
DC 30: pastry

And so forth. The problem with a lot of the profession skills is that one is left wondering exactly what the character can do with them. If I've got profession: ship builder, how long and/or what's the DC to build a boat? How long and/or what's the DC to repair a boat?

Another problem is this: what happens if a character has a profession that would seem to duplicate another class? What would happen if I had a fighter with profession: thief? Shouldn't I be putting those skill points else where? What would happen if I had a character with profession: wizard? Would the character get any benefit out of this profession skill? What's the difference between "profession: singer" and "perform: singing"? I would like to see a standard list to help guide people into avoiding this kind of overlap. Of course, if you want something else, go ahead and create that, but it would help if we had a common list to start from.

I have the same kind of feeling for the craft skills. Some make appearances (craft alchemy), but mostly these are rather vague. I would like this to be made more specific and fleshed out--the same kinds of things that I described for profession above.

Finally, I would like to see a standard list for what benefit one can earn from using craft and profession skills. This is sort of covered in the 3.5 PHB, but I would like to see it fleshed out. ("About half your profession check result in gold pieces" doesn't seem quite satisfying enough.) Let's say that a player can't make it to a role playing session and missed out on defeating some villain and stealing the villain's loot. In terms of in-game explanation, we could say that the character was off working and using his profession and/or craft skills. The character could then earn the corresponding gold--if you don't put the skill points there, you don't get the benefit. (This would make profession more attractive for the home game setting.)

Hit die limits are just an awkward in my opinion and should be done away with. Let the Saving throws relfect the difficulty of effect targets. I just makes no sense for a cowerly theif with no will willpower to be immune to Cause fear because he is 7th level but the 5th level cleric with a +4 wisdom bonus to will saves can still be affected.

Excellent point! Yeah, this is exactly the kind of thing that I had in mind when I started this thread. The restriction just seems arbitrary--the specific example makes it seem even more arbitrary. The timorous rogue is immune because of his level.

But since we brought it up. How come Command doesnt have a HD limit? Or Charm Person for that matter? Both of those effects could easy be more useful than Cause Fear.

If we do add hit dice limits to these spells, I would like to see them be scalable limits, based on the caster's level/hit dice. I'm not a big fan of the idea of disposable spells that become useless.

I'm thinking of the drawn out dungeon crawl. At the end of a series of combats, a high level caster might be down to just low level spells. Some of them are still useful (magic missile), but others are completely useless because of hit dice restrictions. I guess I don't get why some spells will always have some usefulness, while others have planned obsolescence.

Fear-based spells can be a lot of fun. They offer players certain options--scaring opponents off rather than having to kill them, disabling or hindering opponents to make them less effective, etc. When they work, they add extra color or flavor to combat instead of just hacking away at enemies.

The problem is that certain lower-level fear spells have hit dice restrictions:
Cause Fear - one living creature with 5 HD or less.
Scare - one living creature/three levels, each must have 5 HD or less.

To me, these hit dice restrictions seem arbitrary and unnecessary. The spells already have a DC. Why add second layer of hit dice restriction? (It might even be a third layer if the monster has spell resistence.) Since these are low-level spells, the DCs end up being lower than those of other spells. High level monsters will generally have better saves than low level monsters, so it already works out that higher-level monsters are less likely to be affected.

Consider the following: a first-level wizard can use Cause Fear to scare monster with five hit dice, but a 20th-level wizard can't use Cause Fear against a monster with six hit dice. Any six hit dice monster that isn't scared of a 20th-level wizard is an idiot. This rule doesn't make any sense.

I would be fine with implementing a restriction based on the caster's level/hit dice. For example, we could make it so that Cause Fear is not effective against monsters that are more than three hit dice higher than the caster.

As it currently works, the spell caster reaches a certain point in level progression and discovers that these two spells have suddenly become completely worthless. It's fine if these low-level spells seem less effective over time, but it's another thing if you're only facing monsters with 6 or more hit dice and they literally can't be affected by the spell. Also consider that the spells I listed appear both on the bard and sorcerer spell lists--spell casters with limited lists of spells known. It is unfortunate that these spells have such strict restrictions.