Eryx_UK's page

Bryan Bagnas wrote:

I still don't understand what they are trying to fix with a second edition.

I absolutely understand.

1) They feel that the CRB is very badly organized and doesn't read well to people new to the game. Witness Strategy Guide as their stopgap measure to try to address that.

2) They feel that there are a lot of mechanics that have been introduced after the CRB that really *should* be in the CRB, like swift/immediate actions, traits, archetypes. They want to rewrite the CRB so that these very basic components of gameplay are introduced in the most core book. (Or made obsolete, as in action economy.)

3) They feel that they have accumulated a ton of FAQs on post-it notes over the years that aren't available in print anywhere, and re-doing the CRB gives the opportunity to incorporate all these FAQs and clarifications.

All of which could just be put into a new printing of the CRB. Call it PF2 if you will. It still doesn't need a new rules set.

I was really hoping we would have had a hardcover guide to Tian and at least a gaz for Arcadia.

I will be sticking to PF1.

I loved Dungeons & Dragons. I played 1st ed through 3.5 but 4E killed that game for me by destroying the game system. Pathfinder, being a continuation of what I feel is the best system for the game (personal bias and all) is the game that I love. I love all the so called sacred cows, including the Vancian magic system.

Here is the issue for me... I don't mind a new edition. I object to a change of rules and a change of rules that invalidates an entire collection of books.

Take a look at Call of Cthulhu. The game system is the same as it was when the game was first released back in the early 80's. CoC has a strong following just like D&D and Pathfinder. It shows quite clearly that game doesn't need to change it's system. That has always been the problem with D&D in the last twenty years. Each change of edition since 2nd has invalidated the previous edition when all it needed was an update on the current rules.

As for the collection of books, I'm not prepared to buy a whole new game system - and let's be honest here, that is what PF2 is - when the current rules system is perfectly fine.

Good luck to Paizo in this endeavour but I won't be with them. I shall stick to PF1 as my fantasy game of choice.

I'd certainly like a hardcover copy as I missed the initial release.

I'm still waiting for hardcover guides to Tian Xia, Southern Garund, Arcadia and the gap between the Inner Sea and Tian Xia, so I imagine we won't see any other campaign settings yet.

Starfinder is a nice rules set but I don't want Pathfinder to go the same way.

Maybe not quite what you are looking for here but I'd like to see add-on packs that cover more monsters from the bestiaries, magical items, barriers, generic locations and so forth. Basically stuff you can add to your game.

I've played the games but I'd like the game to be more open. In fact i'd like to sort of run the PFACG like Pathfinder itself and create my own campaigns/adventures. Adding extra card packs of things that could be used as such or just added in to enhance the games would be nice.

We have an on going joke in my group that hobgoblins are just goblins in hobnail boots.

Daemon. It's just the old English spelling but still pronounced demon.

For some time now I've been pondering re-writing and overhauling the old Dragonlance setting to be a more traditional but romanticised fantasy setting. It won't bare too much resemblance to the old setting but I think I could make it more interesting.

You can play whatever you want but I have always found that you need certain roles to properly have a balanced party. A good GM will always balance a scenario or campaign to accommodate whatever the players bring.

My personal preferred 4 player party build would be:

* A dedicated melee combatant. Two in a 5 player party.
* Scout/trap finder/trap remover. Preferably a rogue but other characters such as ranger can fit the role. Should be built for ranged combat as well.
* Healer/buffer. I prefer cleric for this role but the life oracle does the job extremely well too.
* Arcane caster and knowledge character.

A nice wartime adventure path.

Against the Dark Tapestry.

Definitely some deep space exploration.

I never touch third party products. There are gems amongst them I am sure but I remember the great bloat of third edition D&D. These days I prefer to stick to purely Paizo for my books.

Now that said, I do think that at the moment there are too many books out of Pathfinder and more constantly adding to the mechanically bloat of rules, spells, feats and the like. I personally would much rather see Paizo focus on the campaign setting rather than more and more rule books. We still need countries, continents and the bits in between fleshed out in further detail not just the Inner Sea Region.

Several years ago before my group got into Pathfinder we had a 3rd ed D&D group going. One of the players who joined us (a friend of mine before he took up gaming) was what the rest of us at the table called an over-optimiser. We don't play especially optimised characters, especially at the time, but he could only play characters that were as powerful and as strong as he could make. It got to a point where no one else at the table was happy with his style of play compared to our own.

We spoke to him away from the table and simply asked if he could tone his characters down and better match the rest of us (GM included). His reaction was simply a massive rant about how the rest of us played c**p characters and how we were forcing him to waste his time playing something he wouldn't enjoy. It caused a lot of grief and bad feeling but ultimately real world events caused him to leave the game before we had to say anything for the betterment of our game.

My point is, and I raised it with him at the time, was that if a player joins a group they should play to that group's play style. If the group doesn't over-optimise and/or the GM can't handle it then you need to either play down or, quite frankly, find another group. It's not fair to force players on either side of the problem into a play that they don't enjoy.

My personal opinion is that everyone in a group should share a similar play style if everyone is to enjoy the game.

I'm holding my breath for something like Ultimate Archetypes. A nice big hardcover book with a load of new archetypes for each class thus far published.

Hybrid classes.

Attacks of Opportunity (or at least find another way to handle it).

Grapple rules (and do new ones that don't need a PHD in nuclear physics to work out).

We have a weekly PFS lodge locally. It has been around for about three or four years now. Lately we have had a fortnightly D&D 5th organised play (encounters?) table where a handful of stalwart Pathfinder players give the game ago. For them it's about having a bit of variety which is good. They still say that 5th edition is far too simple though. Far too reminiscent of the old basic D&D box sets of the 80's. I think that is the problem.

Paizo took 3.5 D&D and ironed out a lot of the issues. A few, like grappling, still need to be worked on and simplified IMO, but otherwise they took an excellent game system and made it better. WotC, on the other hand, seem to be bringing D&D down to a more intro level. A reverse of what it used to be back in the day. That is obviously going to draw some players who want to be guided into the hobby gently. Pathfinder can be a lot to take in all at once and could be turning people off.

Then there is the issue that some games are pushed more by FLGS staff than others. Been there and done that. I used to work in a FLGS for a few years and I stopped suggested 4th ed D&D because of personal bias and directed potential new players towards Pathfinder. That is probably happening all over the world now but in 5th ed's favour.

Paizo also put out a heck of a lot of hardcover additions. This may also be turning people away as they think they need to buy them all. Then you have something like Herolab (an invaluable resource) where I have met gamers who refuse to buy the real books when they can just download the HL update and get everything for far cheaper.

There is no simple answer. Another year and maybe Pathfinder will be on the top spot again.

I've already started working on an Oracle with the blind curse. The idea being that she has read things that man was not meant to know and clawed her own eyes out. She was then incarcerated in the asylum by concerned family and while screaming in the dark something gifted her with the powers she has started developing.

No Numeria in my games. That area is just a blasted wasteland where a meteor struck. But then I'm not a fan of sci-fi technology in my games.

I'm less interested in more rule books and more interested in seeing an expanding campaign setting line. The Inner Sea has been covered nicely now let's start seeing the rest of the world.

Classic Dragonlance before the awful Chaos War nonsense.

Eryx_UK wrote:

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Eryx_UK wrote:

leo1925 wrote:

The fact that many people believe (I don't know why) that a nat 1 on a skill check is auto fail (or worse) and that a nat 20 on a skill check is auto success.

My group has always done this, for all D20 rolls, as far back as 1st edition AD&D. It makes sense to us that no matter how skilled you can still screw things up, or you can be an novice but get that lucky break.

I imagine that many groups use this as a house rule rather than getting it wrong.

I will not play in a game with this houserule. No jumps to the moon.

I will not play in a game with critical failure either.

If a DM says that is the houserule, I stand up, and leave.

Every DM I play with now knows this. Put it away, or I won't play.

No, we don't have jumps to the moon. I believe the acrobatics rules do say you can't jump further than a certain distance anyway. Common sense still applies.

If common sense applies, then why is the Monk with +15 Acrobatics failing to jump over a 1 foot gap, 5% of the time?

Because with common sense I wouldn't roll to jump a 1 foot gap.

39 and we'll probably still see more and more. I really think Paizo need to stop looking at new classes and focus on something else for a while.

As GM I ban evil alignments in my games for two reasons. Primarily it is because I want my games to be about heroic adventuring not mercenary murderhoboing. Secondly, I've run enough games where evil PC's have pretty much ruined the entire thing for everyone and cause the game to fall apart.

My experience is that optimization was never really part of role playing games until the late 90's and the release of 3.5 D&D. People just played their characters and told the story that the group was playing.

I put the blame on two things. One is ease of online discussion. By this time nearly every home has an internet connection and suddenly we were all able to share and talk as a global gaming community. From that players learnt what others had done and things started to click into place. Secondly, I put a lot of the "blame" on newcomers to the hobby. Many have come from computer gaming and MMO's where being the best of the best is paramount. The older role-players are moving on, popping their clogs or just not getting involved, and so the vocal new generation are having things changed to their way of playing. Times have changed.

As both player and especially as GM I loath over-optimization. It is certainly impressive what some players can create for their characters but frankly I find that it ruins game sessions when not everyone at the table is interested in the same level of game.

Not interested. PvP is not a game style that I like.

It used to bug me a lot when players would work their characters out all the way to 20th. I had the view that events during the campaign could change the character design or even open up a relevant prestige class or suggest multi-classing. After a while though I decided that simply if a player wants to do so it is their decision and not mine, so now it doesn't bother me anywhere near as much.

Baby Kobold.

Would you rather wake up in the morning as an elf or as a dwarf?

I would like to see Catfolk as a legal choice.

I used to do something similar when I first started role-playing back in the 1980's. I found it useful to understand a module or campaign for when I came to run it properly.

Let's see a deep sea / aquatic AP.

I'm not a fan of the hybrid class concept. Want two classes? Dual class then. But hey.

Arcanist - I can't get my head around this one. My gaming buddies rave about this class but everytime I read through it I just come back to thinking that I'd rather just play a basic sorcerer.

Bloodrager - Another one I just don't get the need for. A fighter/mage (Magus) is fine I suppose but a barbarian/sorcerer just seems unnessecary.

Brawler - Want to play a pugilist type, play a monk.

Hunter - I really want to like this one but I feel the ranger does it better and more enjoyable to play.

Investigator - I like the concept for this one but I don't know how well it fits into a traditional D&D style game. CSI: Pathfinder and you're fine. Still, I have one ready to try out in PFS.

Shaman - A slightly better version of the witch which is no bad thing.

Skald - Interesting class concept that I need to see in action before I can really say anything.

Slayer - I really like this one a lot, but I wish the slayer talents were better.

Swashbuckler - We have a local PFS player who made one of these during the playtest and has converted over to the ACG version. He plays it well but I find the class to be a waste of space. It doesn't hold its own and the pernache mechanic seems weak to me.

Warpriest - Really wanted a strong battle cleric class and this is ok but not what I wanted. Needed to be a bit stronger. As it stands I'd most likely just take a cleric.

The classes are ok in general but I find the book better for it's feats, spells, archetypes and boosts to the core classes.

No. Absolutely not.

Pathfinder does not need a new edition as yet.

I want to play a Goblin Monk, I have a good idea of how to RP a Goblin Monk, why restrict me from playing a Goblin Monk?

The reason I would restrict it is because in my game worlds Goblins are monsters. They wouldn't get five feet into a town or village before someone had put a crossbow bolt or an axe in it's head. Same could be said for many of the options in the ARG in my opinion.

If you are playing a game world where goblins are more part and parcel of the races of the world that's fine, but I think many GMs would share my view that they just aren't acceptable for regular game worlds.

If the only options available to you were Fighter, Rogue, Wizard and Cleric and the only races Human, Elf, Dwarf and Halfling, would you be able to enjoy Pathfinder/Fantasy role-play.

Sounds awesome to me. I'd be very happy.

I'm still a Dungeon Master and always will be.

I don't see the problem with all this. Give players what they want but keep it simple and make them earn it. Just do something easy such as every 20 scenarios that you GM and/or play opens up a new race from the ARG just block naturally evil things like Drow, Goblins and Orcs. When the player adds that PC to his portfolio on the Paizo site it resets the total back to zero and the player has eo do another 20 scenarios to get another. That's what I would do anyway.

2nd edition was an awesome system. I loved it and would happily play it again now despite my love of D20/Pathfinder.

I don't worry about at my table. It's a game and doesn't need some justification for multi-classing.

He runs PFS as a venture lieutenant and that's how paladins are ran there. He uses the same ruling in his home games. Like I said, for a paladin I wouldn't make it an issue. For any other class where such things are purely roleplay I frankly don't care about that rule.

You shouldn't ignore your GM's rules. Don't like them then don't play otherwise go with how they run their game. it's their call not yours.

My point was really that Murderhobo has a couple applications. It can be applied to indiscriminate or barely discriminate killing for the acquisition of wealth. But it also applies to the default adventurer's lifestyle, regardless of his/her intentions.

What happened to just calling them adventurers?

I hate the term Murderhobo. I hate it with a passion because it paints adventurers in a bad light. While some are going to be mercenaries for all intents and purposes, most players in my experience play their characters as heroes. There is a "kill the monster and take it's stuff" mentality but not to the point where I would use such a derogative nickname.

Mainly I have seen the term come from PFS. The Society (not the organised play society) is not represented as it is in the source materials. Under PFS the Pathfinders and, due to the nature of some scenarios, the characters, are represented as unscrupulous thieves and agents rather than the lore keepers and archaeologists that the society is shown to be in the game books. PFS plays more like the Aspis Consortium is portrayed.

Masterwork Tools has been a godsend. I can read up anything regardless where I am.

Pacific Rim was an awesome movie. However, I have no clue why people want giant science fiction robots in a game like Pathfinder. Science fiction really doesn't belong in a faux-medieval world of swords and sorcery.

Level 1 (see Thornkeep, which throws that very monster at level 1 characters).

Played that one and we lost a third of the party to it. It is too strong an encounter, even as a boss fight, for a 1st level party.

I'm a little confused. There will be sharks, right?

Eryx_UK wrote:

A middle ground between Pathfinder and Lord of the Rings. If only I could fathom out how to do it.

Fletch wrote:

Frankly, I miss the "Middle Ages" premise of early D&D.

I'd like a rock-solid setting with kings and knights, the occasional court or village wizard, and a whole heap of the unknown both within your own borders and in vague realms off the map.

Same here. I think that is part of my problem with modern fantasy RPGs. The idea of a faux-medieval world has been lost in trying to bring the setting up to the level of the rules system.

I always figured that it got lost because it was trite, cliche, boring, and done-to-freakin'-death.

Maybe but it is certainly what I prefer for my fantasy roleplaying. The new direction of campaign settings is too fantastical (best word I can think of). Either that or too much gets changed from the default game. Spoils it all for me.

A middle ground between Pathfinder and Lord of the Rings. If only I could fathom out how to do it.

Frankly, I miss the "Middle Ages" premise of early D&D.

I'd like a rock-solid setting with kings and knights, the occasional court or village wizard, and a whole heap of the unknown both within your own borders and in vague realms off the map.

Same here. I think that is part of my problem with modern fantasy RPGs. The idea of a faux-medieval world has been lost in trying to bring the setting up to the level of the rules system.