GMRich's page

Really enjoyed this short tale! Thank you guys for all the web fictions!

in sort yes.

p. 489 has it a bit more streamlined.

You basically decide the degree of difficulty of the encounter (easy, moderete, severe, etc), put in as many creatures as you need to reach the "xp budget" of said encounter, and if the players win, each get that much xp.

in your "So selecting a creature that is -1 (let's say animated broom) would make it worth 30xp ?" keep in mind that "30 xp" is lower than even a "trivial threat" xp budget.

ok thanks , I thought I was on the right track but think I was wayyy to overthinking it. So essentially just keep filling it up until you reach the xp budget.

Hello Everyone ,

I am having a little bit of a brain blurb at the moment. I am reading over the rules for selecting monsters for an encounter and i think it's just not clicking with me. My assumption is when calculating your party's level it's the average level of the party. so say that they are all the same in this case lets say 4 - 1st level characters, the party level for the party would be 1?

So selecting a creature that is -1 (let's say animated broom) would make it worth 30xp ?

I am probably overthinking this by a lot but like I said I have re-read it a few times and going with the example of the 5th level PCs taking on a 2nd level monster this is what makes most sense. Anywho thank you in advance for the clarifications of these rules.

thank you for compiling these all together ! It's been nice to see the different takes on the sheets.

Think i will be tuning in for this.

Hi Rich, welcome to Pathfinder.

It sounds like you have it right the GM rolls perception and disable device checks.

The goal is to make player knowledge and character knowledge align better to facilitate roll-playing. On a failed perception check the character doesn't know that they failed, however if the player rolled a 2 they are pretty sure that they failed so now there is a conflict between what the character and the player know.

A variable DC does not accomplish the same effect. If the player rolls a 10 they might not know if they succeeded or not because they don't know the DC but if they rolled a 2 or a 19 then they can be pretty confident of the result.

As a rule of thumb if failure (or success) is not immediate and obvious then the GM should make the roll for the player.

You can allow characters to make their own stealth rolls since that is an opposed roll (vs the perception). Even if the player rolled a high number there is still a possibility that the Goblin guard also rolled a high number and therefore they have been seen.

Thank you for the welcome. I have been enjoying going through system , and looking forward to running my first game.

Thank you for writing that clarification as it really helps me make sense of it now. I feel that I better understand the whole GM skill check roll and feel that I can finally get my brain on the right track. thank you for the insight.

The idea is that the player says he searches for traps, and the GM rolls a d20, and the player doesn't know if he rolled low or high. Did he not find traps because they're well hidden? Because there weren't any? Or because he messed up?

But I'd advise letting the players roll for themselves unless you can see a good reason not to. Most players like rolling dice.

ah ok thank you , i kind of was going to lean that way , but wanted to make sure i did understand the rule . the line of thought behind it make sense though , it just threw me through a loop lol.

Hello everyone , I am new to the Pathfinder RPG but not new to RPGs, so i do apologize if this questions seems simple, but having a tough time making sure I understand using skill checks correctly :

As it is I understand when a player wants to see if his character succeeds at doing a certain task he or she must make a skill check. To do so they would roll a d20 and add all appropriate modifiers. This part is common between RPGs that I have played and grasp that part, but here is where I am a little thrown off, certain skill checks such as Disable Device , perception ( as in players searching for traps) and stealth the GM makes. So i guess the questions I have are , 1st off do I understand that correctly ? the GM rolls for these checks?, and 2nd when do you decide when the player or GM would roll for the check? I know it says when you don't want the player to know that they didn't find any traps because there isn't any , or because they rolled too low , or because they don't know how stealthy they are being , but wouldn't you achieve the same effect by using the DC ?

I might be putting way too much thought into this and over analyzing the rule , but if any vets out there could shed some light into this that would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks you!

happy holidays to everyone over at Paizo!

Kinda figured it was an older thing , so I'll refrain from looking at older guides.
Thank you guys for your help !

So I tried searching this question before I asked but couldn't find answer.

Regarding Skill points at 1st level : For a rogue I get 8 + my int mod which is a 0 due to my score being a 10. So using this the number of skill points i should have 8 skill points to spend right ?
Why on some guides do i see that this number has to be x4 ? Was this an old rule or was this in regards to something else ?
Any help would be appreciated

Thank you all for the great advice , it clears ut up real well for me :)

Hello everyone , I just got into the pathfinder RPG recently and I am getting ready to start making my first PC.
So I'm looking to make a Half Elf ranger using the classic ability generation. So when distributing my scores should I make them in tune with my class abilities with the higher being in Wis? I just didn't want to get half WA through creation and find out my scores should have been distributed another way.