EvolvingMonkey's page

Definitely interested - I love random dungeon crawls, especially when there is some story with them.

What are you looking for as far as applying? Full-on character sheet or just some base information?

AT&T 3G worked just fine.

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Ew, I think I just got CatBunnyGnome tears on my computer. :)

I apologize...I in no way intended to disparage the efforts of prior organizers.

S'all good Bob, didn't mean to sound accusatory to ya - just thought I'd point it out, that's all. Once again thanks for your (and the other VCs/VLs) hard work this year at getting things organized, getting prizes there, participating and more (and I guess I'll thank Thea too....well on second thought...........heh heh).

We're here and slot one is running in earnest. Last year the convention hosted roughly three tables of PFS...for the entire con! This year, slot one, we sat seven tables alone, and there are still six more slots to go. Woot!

Great job, great fun as always...but I have to disagree with what you say about last year...I alone played 6 slots of PFS last year, and looking at Warhorn (and off of memory), there were at least 16 tables that made during the reg period, not counting at least 5-10 more that made once everyone showed up those days.

So yeah, there were a lot more this year, no doubt (and NONE of that nasty other d20 fantasy rpg that's out there.....), but I don't think anyone wants to discount what the previous organizers of the con have done in the past - each year since PFS came out they've been getting more and more active.

In any case, thanks to all the organizers and judges for another great Winter War!

One thing I'll ask for Bestiary 2 is a list of new possible summons if possible, especially the elementals if nothing else. It would be fun to have a whole list of new ones to be added on the Summon Monster/Nature's Ally though!!

Don't know if this is possible, but it would be pretty nice if it can be!

You know, I really think this is going to be a case-by-case thing. Last year at a local con, they ran Godsmouth, I believe starting around 2pm Friday afternoon (when the first slot started) and planned for around 8-10 hours for it, and from what I remember, made it in that time.

However, the GM had run it before, prepped well, and had maps made out already - which, if anything like this is to be tried, I would only do it if that were the case.

While I am personally on the side of the fence that - in general - wants more challenge to mods, I also see the purpose in running them as they are written - it standardizes things and levels the playing field, well, at least in theory it does....

Combining that idea with something TK said:

And there are a lot of posters who have experienced the opposite where the "tweaks" resulted in PC deaths or excessive use of resources. Either way, the player can claim they were treated unfairly in comparison to others who played the same scenario.

I still see a problem. For instance...I had a character killed once because the GM messed up the rules, even though he was following tactics, etc. This wasn't found out until much later, and c'est la vie, I had paid my due and didn't really care. I have seen this happen in other ways as well.

My point being that running with "GM Caveat" or having a GM screwing up a mod they are running "as written" or even having a lucky GM can all lead to someone feeling they were treated unfairly.

But you know what? I'm going to go back to something we all forget...that's life, sometimes it's unfair, and so are games.

What I do believe as well though, is that if GMs understand rules and use a little common sense along with running the mods "as written", that many times you can make a great experience for your players and still stay within "the box." It just takes a little appropriate creativity within that box.

Lamplighter, there's a complicated version of that which I ... sort of ... approve of: everybody at the table gets a d12. Every time you do something cool, like help out a new player or contribute to a good plan, or suffer a critical, you get another d12. At the end of the session, you can hand your d12s to another layer if you want. Everybody rolls their d12s, and the high roll gets the boon.

It's a combination of "suck up to the GM" and "random chance". I like the way it negates the scummy tactic of a bloc of players deciding ahead of time to vote for a particular player: it doesn't affect the luck of the bloc as a whole.

I really like this idea Chris - I think the next time I know we'll be doing this (like at a con or such) I may just employ this idea.

First off, just want to agree with....

A bunch of great points...

Secondly, as far as difficulty goes, I tend to think the majority of mods are softballed, but part of me wants to step back and think on that idea. (and so I listened to that part of me...)

My group of gamers are basically powergamers - we like to play more for the strategy of the game than the RP (though we do that too). I have the least amount of experience among us (the rest were strong LG players "back in the day"), and even I have gotten to be decent at making strong characters -- and this is how we like to play. So, when we sit down at a table, you can be pretty sure that you are ok, even if you're like a level 3 playing at 10-11. :)

Not to say there haven't been close calls and even some deaths, but as another post mentioned, this was pretty much due to stupid or foolish or RP-based tactics on our part. Most of the time, we can walk through mods.

So yes, a chunk of it is based on character build, party make-up and number of players.

But then there's the other side that I see when I GM, and that's the poor tactic builds, lack of proper monster/NPC integration and poor spell lists. It's not in all mods, and some of the tactics and such I realize are designed for RP/plot flavor; I can accept that. But when, for example was the last time a caster had an empowered fireball (or even a regular fireball) prepped to blast the perfectly templated PCs into a fiery mess? Or have a nasty summoned creature(s) ready to go at the start of a fight (rather than take the time during). Or have a bunch of invisible ambushers?

Mods need to have more mod-long penalties, like "if this guy flees, the PCs get a -2 initiative the rest of the mod due to him telling everyone else about them coming" or things like that that can beef up the mod while not really "increasing the CR level". Mods should be scary - maybe not at tier 1-2, maybe not even so much at 3-4 except for a few "oh god" moments here and there. We want the player base to grow, and killing people early when they have neither the gold or prestige/fame won't help things - but later on...please...my second 11th level character has like 146 prestige or something like that -- he hasn't had to use any yet. Even my other 11th level who has died twice could still die two more times and not spend a dime outside of prestige.

Anyway, that was a long post that probably like two people will read. But, I thought I'd post it anyway. :)

I didn't read through every post here to see if someone else happened to mention it, but here was the tactic our table ended up using for the goblins when we played it at Brewfest, which we all found hilarious and quite useful:

Came across a build this weekend at a Con and wanted to know if it was legal per rules or not.

It was a druid with an animal companion (ape) who had an INT of 3, and had taken Additional Traits as one of the animal's feats. With that, he took Heirloom Weapon (Lucerne Hammer) as one of the traits.

Is this really legal??