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This came up in a recent thread I started about a cheating player in my campaign. Is it the common belief that some people tend to roll better or worse than others? And what about the dice themselves? Do many of us believe that certain dice just tend to roll higher or lower than other dice?

My gaming group has joked about this for years. “Don’t roll that die it rolls crappy.” “Uh oh, John has to make a saving throw, start rolling up a new character.” In my group, I am one of those who has a reputation for rolling badly. I joke about it, but I never actually believed it.

So who thinks some people just roll better or worse? And who thinks they have certain dice that they can count on to roll well, or poorly? And have you run any probability tests on your dice, or on yourself? If so, what were the results?


My group has been playing together for a little over 20 years. We have one player who has “uncanny” luck with the dice. Many of us believe he is cheating, but we do not want to call him on it and cause an incident.

He uses clear 20+ dice that you can’t really read from across the table. Sometimes I will go around the table to look at the rolls. I call it “jinxing the roll”. So he will roll and remove the die before I get to him. The last (and possibly only) saving throw he failed was when I was watching.

I want to balance things out without making it obvious – at least not obvious right away.

My thoughts are:
- Most or all enemies will make their saves vs. his spells – he is a wizard.
- Enemies will cast mostly non-save spells at his character.
- His character will be attacked more often with weapons than spells.
- Whenever feasible I will make the rolls for him – secret saves and skill checks.

I am looking for other suggestions of ways to balance things. Trust me that no one in our group wants me to confront him about this.


I apologize if this particular question has been covered before - I know there has been much discussion about this combo.

Here is the backstory. When we made the switch to Pathfinder (almost a year ago now) my biggest optimizing player quickly saw the combo. So now he is an archer-type fighter/wizard/arcane archer who uses this in combo with gravity bow to devastating effect.

I try to house rule only when I must. So my response has been to have them fight more archer types, the occasional wind wall, opponents under water, and other various ways to avoid being pin-cushioned. But I am not out to spoil a player’s fun, so for the most part he has been very effective.

Now he has asked me to house rule the combo out of my campaign. He feels it is unfair to the other non-archer fighters. Not so coincidentally, his 2 nephews are joining the campaign, and they both made non-archer type fighters.

So I want to see how many of you have house ruled the combo.


I had a conversation with a friend about GMing that disturbed me. He was describing some feature he thought would be cool to introduce in a campaign if he were GM. I believe it had something to do with making it more difficult to come back to life.

So I asked him if he would be willing to play in that campaign, and he said no. In fact he seemed surprised that I asked the question. He said –

“There are things that are enjoyable to a DM that are not so to players. There are things I like doing to others that I don’t like being done to me, and there are things I like done to me that I don’t like doing for others. Your response speaks out like there should be equity between what I like as DM and player. That is not so for me.”

Just to make it clear, I do not agree with this statement.

Any thoughts?


Another 2 - 3 game sessions will mean the end of a long standing campaign. We are now 17 - 18th level, and for the finale we will face off against an evil deity.

The campaign will end after that battle - win or lose.

Since our GM announced that the end was near, some of the players have lost their enthusiasm for the remaining sessions.

Which raises the question - Should the campaign have an ending?

I understand that a campaign is like a story. I understand the need for this GM to take a break, and that he is reluctant to carry on into epic levels.

I am not trying to convince him to keep GMing - that ship has sailed.

But from a philosophical standpoint I have always felt that a campaign should be open-ended and organic. It grows and takes shape depending on the actions of the players - without a definite ending point.

Thoughts?


1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.

I apologize if this answer already exists on the forum, but I have been searching with little success.

Is there an official ruling on the Magical Knack trait?

Does it increase the caster's number of spells per day?

I have a player who feels that it should, but to me that seems way overpowered for a trait. I think it increases "caster level" only not the actual "class level" - and so no additional spells per day.

From what I have seen on the boards, some agree people with me, while some others don't.

I can rule on it as the DM of course (and I will if I must), but I would feel better if I had an official answer to share with the player.

Thanks in advance for all of your responses.


I realized after reading a lot of the playtest stuff (Gunslinger, Magus, etc.) that I really enjoy reading game session transcripts.

Just to clarify - I mean writing up a detailed recap of what happened at the game session - especially the combats.

In my group we call it the recap. In fact we often comment how someone's actions during the session will "make the recap".

Is there more of this on the Paizo boards? Point me to them. :-)


I need help building a human werewolf sorceress. She can dip into other classes if it helps the build, but I need her to have at least 5 levels of sorcerer, and a maximum CR of say... 13. Core Rulebook and Advanced Player’s Guide.

The difficulty for me is in finding the right combination of spells, bloodline selection, magic items, etc to take advantage of the lycanthropy. I see her using her sorcerer spells and abilities to enhance her natural attacks in hybrid form.

Dragon Bloodline, no? But does that mesh well with werewolf? I’ll consider changing the lycanthrope type if it has real synergy with the sorcerer side.

Am I mistaken in thinking she cannot cast in hybrid form? If there is a way around that, I would also add some "keep these six 9th level adventurers off me and my fighter boyfriend"... spells.

I don’t expect you guys to build the entire NPC for me, but I appreciate your suggestions.