G-Zeus's page

In my backpack i keep. The adventure, an alternate adventure in case levels dont match or too many players, maps, markers, some minis, a gm screen, a reroll, pencils, and a ton of dice in a smaller bag.

Big note: have a set or at least one hard to read D20, this will remove your players desire to look at what you roll. Not that you need to cheat but it ruins the dramatics if they realize that youve been hitting because you rolled 4 19s not because the enemies are that good.

I would only suggest doing this with a group you are familiar with and wont take it as a negative. Players are Super Random and can easily spend two hours talking with your throwaway NPC (personal experience) so be weary. It is no longer a fun thing if you have to force their hands to leave something they enjoyed interacting with, and its double problematic if they fail because of it.

For myself, GMing or playing, the biggest annoyance comes from people not getting to the point. In rp its when the player tends to ramble because they feel the need to talk or they will miss their turn. They tend to have 15+ word sentences that dont really go anywhere. They are trying to do it in character but sometimes the mouth is faster than the brain and at these times they should just roll and summarized their intention. In combat this happens either when GMs make every hit a spectacle, even after an hour of the same combat, or when players over analyze their options. Once again the GM should recognize pace and determine when roles should adjust accordingly.

Monk paladin fighter sentinel? Mine works great.

Players first session, just bought the CRB and wanted to play. They needed a reroll or there character would have died in a lame level 1 fashion. I gave them my reroll, i dont think anyone had or would have a problem with me doing this.

Yes and yes. Flavor wise i love it and it helps solidify your character's identity when you choose your faith/belief over power. To me that's literally the point, there are evil deities that will grant you power should you truly desire it and we have chosen not to take the easy power.

I should clarify "new players" are people i havent gamed with before/often enough.

When playing with new players i simply ask us all to do a quick intro. In this i get an idea what to expect and i declare what i took them to mean. If they say they are a blaster sorc ill ask if they have fireball or someother evocation, and 90% of the time theyll correct me with exactly what they have. At the end of intros ill run off a quick checkpist of things weve missed and make sure we got them covered. It honestly doeant take that long all in all 5 minutes while the gm sets up.

If they are missing something like a pot of fly and cant afford one ill offer one for the adventure and if they use it they buy one on their chronicle that they receive and i get my restock.

This way no one is surprised when things pop up and we know ahead of time what we may get stumped by.

Sometimes you arent in the mood to go all out, or figure out a puzzle. In instances like this a 20 in either charisma character should be enough to say hey im just gonna roll it because my character is better at this than me.

The flip side sometimes is true as well. Sometimes you get really into it and say or figure out a puzzle much better or quicker than your character would a 3 shouldnt make you fail even though you were very articulate.

I do it as i see necessary for the concept. I built a Link whose primarily a fighter but dipped witch and alchemist for the bombs and access to a fey familiar (with the feat).
My other characters are single class:
Rogue Paladin Sorcerer Fighter Barbarian Ranger Druid Hunter Warpriest
My mixed are
Monk/paladin/sentinel
Oracle/exalted
Bloodrager/Paladin

The Players, "i take out my sword and charge him"

GM:"Sensing your hostility as you move to draw your blade GMT raises his hand and says, 'It would do you well to remember whom you work for. The society needs me, and as it would appear at the mome,t so do you. We would not want your prestige in the society to be diminished by foolish actions." If this wasnt enough of a hint to let them k,ow they are either about to lose the extra prestige or even the whole mission state it outright. Let them know that they can still fight but they may: die by his guards, fail the mission, get thrown in jail, lose prestige, and/or shift alignment depending on scenario.

A scenario that gets from a to b to c in a logical and unforced manner.

A gm that is clear about what needs to be presented. knowledgeable enough on the rules and scenario to not have giant time lapses breaking the flow of the game to constantly check things. And is fluid enough to change their narrative to best suit the type of play their table is leaning towards (more story, pure mechanics, silly decisions, ect.)

A set of players that can respond off one anothers actions in a positi e and progressing way. Making sure they are aware of what their characters can do as to not make combat drag on. Understanding that sometimes its the player that over prepares and taking a step back and just let the die roll.

I think if all these things are met you will have a great scenario.

My recurring home campaign NPC is called Bob.

Bob's a good guy.

I had a cleric named Fred the good guy. All I did was heal and buff any ally who asked. My gm had two dire bears maul him to death.

you should both have a talk with them about how to better optimize their characters as well as build the best/ most optimised character you can. if they are a joy to play with and the only downside is they cant do squat in combat its time for you to shine. the worst thing thatll happen is that they dont like you being OP in which case itll trigger a conversation where you can help make them better and promising to downplay your character a bit. best case they see how awesome your guy is, take an interest, and either go on their own to improvement or ask you how to improve. in either case it seems like everyone will be better.

Lg:2
Ln:4
NG:0
N:1
Cg:2
Cn:2

My "non combat" animals have been ignored while still maintaining a space on the board. This way when things happen that they need to be accounted for we know where they are.

Mostly because you are desecrating a once living being. If you want to summon monster flaming skeleton and can do so you probably won't get as much flack as raising a flaming zombie off your buddy's still warm corpse.

So between this and the threads on slavery, how does one even play anything other than a true neutral fighter with no ties. I seriously want to know. I see threads where even the thought of raising the dead should have you kicked out of the game. But having strong religious beliefs could also be being a jerk. Owning slaves is being a jerk and needs to be abolished, but if you press your anti-slavery Andoran feelings to hard its also a problem. Is this more of a board thing or is playing anything with a belief system possibly asking for trouble.

The hard lines are definitely more prominent on the boards, i think its because we arent constrained to a set timelimit and are able to go over every and any possibility we feel may pop up.

I have no problem with animal companions. I have an Enormous problem with slow combat. If combat is slow because its complicated and dynamically progressing making it so every turn changes the entirety of the battlefield, fine. If its slow because when it gets to you and your animal companions turn you take 5 minutes reviewing all the things you could do, Not fine.
If you have trouble taking care of your own PC dont add an animal.

G-Zeus wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

And if your cleric had decided on a whole lot of create water?

Then you are actively not cooperative which is against the pathfinder tenets

This is insane. Refusing to co-operate with some lunatic plan, indeed actively working against it, is not against the societies tenets simply because the rest of the group think it is a good idea.

Co-operate is an ideal, it is not a straight jacket to force people to follow the loudest/most popular idea regardless of how idiotic it might be.

If the plan was objectively horrid or insane working actively against it may not be uncooperative but if the party wants to do something and you actively make it more challenging to accomplish you are in the wrong.

And if your cleric had decided on a whole lot of create water?

Then you are actively not cooperative which is against the pathfinder tenets

Isnt there a druid that speaks with swarm?

Ive created characters on the spot for pfs before, what i mormally write down on my blank paper is:
All attributes, ac (next to it how i obtained it), FRW saves, Hp, Bab, Class and archtype, Traits, Feats, Weapons/items, and any skills in which ive put a rank into.

My lannister character wanted to kiss his ironkin but i told him thatd be ironsin. When he did it i threw him in the ironbin and started drinking irongin, looks like no one got an ironwin now that we lost our ironskin.

I thought this was about drunk players.

The gaming store I play PFS at serves craft beers(and ice cream), and on occasion, have seen a player have just a little too much to drink.

I, myself, have ended up playing half a scenario buzzed.

Some of those heavy specialty beers are surprisingly strong.

I have a character that i now refuse to play without first having some drinks. I do this because by happenstance i played the first 17 scenarios with her while drinking and i cannot let the tradition die.

The gm starts the fight with three surprise round crits, then wins initiative in a 1-5.

i only use it on kittens and unicorns....

Having seen the unicorn goddess' art, I would not hesitate to kill her.

Okay i guess the only part that was tripping me up is "the ability to cast" because as a 19th level sorc i am able to cast the spell. You are saying that the original class the spell derives from must be of appropriate level in order to cast the spell.

Okay so i cant cast it as a wizard, but once scribed into my spellbook i could scribe scroll it using my sorcerer levels as my CL could i not? Fromt here i could just cast it as a scroll.

Okay thank you everyone. My last question is if he were to increase his wizard CL without taking any more wizard levels could he use the higher level spells from the other wizards spell book?

Is this true even if they were already scribed by another wizard? Can he cast the other wizards spells using caster level checks as he can understand them being a wizard?

Lets assume that a level 1 wizard 19 sorcerer were to kill a level 15 wizard and take his spellbook. Obviously he being a level 19 sorcerer is able to cast 9th level spells and lower. Him being a level 1 wizard gets him a spell book. Can he then being able to cast these spells inscribe them into his spellbook? Can he cast them? Could he make those spells into scrolls and cast them? What CL would the spells be cast at?
Thank you for taking time to answer.

A number of these tests can be trivialised by the use of magic which will be commonly available to level 3-7 PC's. How are people intending to handle someone who spider climbs up the column for example?

I havent yet decided whether I will treat it as "rewarding clever gameplay" and give them the success or "this is a test of your strength not your mind" and fail them.

I would be interested in other peoples views especially as I am running this in a week or so.

My group was going to do things like potions ect. Instead of telling yhem no i simply made it overly obvious that there actions were being disapproved of and reminded them that they want to have the best of relations. As they werent 100% diplomatic earlier this nonthreat worked (not that any of he dcs are too challenging). I also to further incentivizr i played up the honest accomplishments way more so by the third trial no one botherrd to attempt magic.

Rogue 11
Paladin 11
Sorcerer 8
Fighter 7
Oracle/exalted 12/15
Monk/paladin/sentinel 10
Warpriest 10
Bard 5
Wizard 2
Ranger 2(core)
Barbarian 4

Bonekeep 2s story ib by far my favorite. Its opening is amazing.

Its only, or at least should only, be frowned upon when people choose to play less equipped characters or characters that dont benefit party makeup because they want the boon. This was also a problem with faction specific missions where people only played their faction character even when they had another character in tier who would benefit everyone.
I do find it slightly annoying that my two handed fighter has a talking sheild and longsword she will never use, and my bard has access to really cool familiar and mounts he will never qualify for but it is what it is. I have no problem with people looking for rewards so long as it doeant remove enjoyment from the game im playing.

In theory you should be. There are so many ways to get around it that it should really be a non issue.

I have a player in my area who has decided to go paladin, the only problem is his character is Cn and level three. So because he is actively working towards reforming his ways we track his alignment. All the gm's are happy to do it and it makes sense. That said unless there is an Omg moment I won't be tracking alignment.

I am currently running it and beforehand i asked my players if they wanted to run with their factions and they said no. The scenarios are great without it and I've taken the liberty to faction flavor where relevant. They seem to be enjoying it nonetheless.

I would like to see a 1-12 race like at a convention or something. You set up your team and run though a set number of scenarios that would get your characters through to lvl 12. It doesnt matter if youve played the scenario before nor if you finish it so long as the primary objective is complete and you qualify for 1xp. The scenarios can be preset by the coordinator so that everyone has equal footing or there can be several lists of chains people can do so not everyone is on the same track. Buying and selling is done at the end of each part as normal but because you can end one adventure early you may not be at appropriate gold per level. Each character would have to be pfs legal but things like ongoing conditions and alignment drop dont have to be handled at the end of each part, as the idea is the entire race is "one scenario".
Shorter versions of this type of race would be acceptable as well such as first from lvl 5-8 or first to complete the entire emerald spire. There would be a Lot of gm prep but this would most likely be its own thing at a convention or the likes so people would be very committed if participating. I encourage any suggestions.

I have a ranger because that was the next thing on my list, just so happened to be core.
In my area we are very diverse, even a rogue and monk.

Said it before and I'll say it again. I'll heal you after the fight. My war priest

Raglum will help you more at 2d6 + 13 damage rather than 1d8 + 5 healing.

It's a lot more subjective than that. Say my hp is at seven, the enemy averages eight and isn't very hurt. I'm sure as he'll thinking a d8+5 healing is the better option. Because on a high heal you just got three turns of an ally still up and at worst two rounds of me actively doing something tò help, even if it's just giving flank.

The biggest thing I think I do to help gm's is getting the group back on track so they don't have to. Either by just slightly loudly reestablishing the mission and progress or just happening to mention the time any time the gm begins to cool down from side talk isa big help.
If the gm is doing a "job" then it's not right for us to constantly stop him from being able to adequately complete it.

Some of the best tables I've been at had no healer PCs.

I agree, also just look at how many classes are "healing" classes compared to not. In the CRB there is only 2 classes out of the 11 capable of healing at level 1. This just means by playing averages you won't see one.

The assist classes. Not just the bards but any class that helps out your fellow players. There are feats and classes based on increasing ac, saves,to hits. Also you can position yourself and do things ike flank. You only need a ten to assist and a 1d2-3 natural attack still threatens.

That's actually not a bad idea, thank you.

Because every time the entire party gets to go before the bbeg and one shots him after box text nobody is really satisfied. Especially if every encounter has been first rounded because of high init and one shot abilities.
Wanderer had it pretty much down pat, with the buffer wanting to go first as well.

I just write core on the chronicle then photocopy it with my handwriting on it. I don't want to have to spend more money than necessary.

The only time you are allowed to switch orders of encounters are when the party has changed the order in which they encounter them. An example being the team enters through the basement where the bbeg is instead of the front door where the first encounter is supposed to happen. (Is does not mean you switch where the bbeg is but rather they fight him first instead of last)

Performance feats or bard dervish dancer or both would do it.