Green of Skin, Round of Buttock's page

Y'know, I'm aware that people work very hard writing some of this stuff but . . . ugh.

That this class is unbalanced is the least of its problems. No, this is Cultural. My reaction to a would-be player putting something like this before me with hopeful, puppy-dog eyes would be, "No. In fact, not just no, but that's it for Pathfinder: We're going to be playing WEG's D6 Fantasy from now on. Want to 'customize' your character? Great. Describe him in intricate, flowing prose. Want to do some incredibly artful thing in combat? Great. Make a basic to-hit roll and, if you hit, describe it using 6 adjectives. There, happy?"

This is like the worst days of 4E when I'd be playing in a party of 6 as the Halfling Cleric or Bard or something and *everyone else* would be a Human Avenger or dual-wielding Ranger. Ugh, We Get It: You want to be Kratos or Riddick. You want to be them *every, friggin', time*. Just go ahead and name your character "Phoenix Dark the XXVIIth".

I guess I should emphasize that my banning of specific books usually is about 49% anti-optimization, 51% I-don't-want-to-figure-out-how-this-fits-into-the-campaign-world sentiment on my part. I should have added that we don't play on Golarion. Our world is scratchbuilt by me and, as I said, I tend to want everything that gets used to have an 'ecology' behind it--a specific and plausible-sounding way it fits into the world.

Should have included: I think the evil trifecta of Advanced Player's Guide/Advanced Class Guide/Ultimate Combat is what I seek to banhammer most savagely.

Chiming in quite late here but: This *is* a problem. Certainly it was a huge problem in 4E (ugh, that game was worth killing off just to avoid having to again be handed the character sheet for ANOTHER Human Avenger with a Ravenclaw Warblade and a stock image of Vin Diesel for his character portrait).

Optimization is rife and it *is* problematic. The solution for it is for DMs to take things in hand and start disallowing rulebooks left and right. No, you cannot use the Advanced Player's Guide or Class Guide or Ultimate Combat. Just full stop: No. We all played Pathfinder using nothing but the Core Rulebook at one point and thought it was more than adequately fun. We're going back to those days.

It also is necessary, especially when running PF Society or Adventure Path modules, to actually climb into the guts of the machine and, y'know, 1.) maybe add monsters

2.) maybe make monsters smarter (i.e. maybe they *don't* all rush into a big open space with the PCs)

3.) actually require something other than combat to solve problems

In Pathfinder, I currently only let players use the Core Rule Book and Advanced Race Guide. Pretty much full-stop.

Mostly this is because I've looked at the optimization forums here and it's just stupid: I'm sure there's some "crack" one can exploit with a variant dhampir cavalier/magus/alchemist or some silly sh*t to do 550 damage per round at second level. Not having it, though. And then there's the world-building: I just don't feel like making 'room' for all the various splatbook silliness out there. If Witch is a permissible class, then I as a DM feel compelled to work out how Witches fit into this world since there are obviously more than just this one PC one. And I don't feel like doing that.

I even do the same thing when I'm playing--limit myself to the Core Rule Book and *maybe* the Race Book if I'm bored of dwarves or something--just for fairness reasons (can't complain as a DM if I am doing the same thing as a player myself) and also because I dislike Splatbook Bloat: If the rules to adjudicate my character are spread across four books, it strikes me as being, um, sloppy.

Other folks: What books do you absolutely refuse to use, either as a DM or PC?

Also some of the problem might be that you have 3 ships. At this stage you should really only have one.

We aren't sailing 3 ships at present: We just *captured* 3 (including the Wormwood). The other 2 we brought back to one or another of the ports and sold them. One of them--a Chelish cutter--we deliberately defaced (viz. did rude things to the lady on the bowsprit figurine) but did *not* have squibbed so as to increase our infamy. Something about the cheek of just pulling up the dock with a Chelish naval ship in tow and saying, "What are we bid for this thing?" just appealed to us.

But that's sort of the point: We have had almost *no* difficulty taking targets we set our sights on (well, once or twice we really flubbed some Sailor rolls and ships got away, but once we're in battle, it's all over...).

Something similar: I'm playing a Ratfolk Ranger with Sharpclaw feat (x2 natural attacks, +2 to hit, 1d4 damage each), and *Humans* as my favored enemy. And I have Darkvision.

Locked me in the hold, 'unarmed' (but I basically have 2 daggers in the form of my claws). I immediately smashed the lantern and slammed the hatch shut. So they're blind, but I can see just fine. Tore them to pieces in about 4 rounds. Nearly got executed for killing shipmates.

(the Spoilerman cometh)

Hi,
I'm a player in a current Skull & Shackles campaign. We're on to Book 2. We've mutinied (and frankly we made such short work of Plugg we wondered why we didn't do it sooner), we've captured not one, not two, but THREE ships. We're in the building-up-Infamy-and-Plunder stage and . . . so . . . BORED.

I can't speak for the other 3-4 people in the group, but based on how I feel and the general mood at the table, we are Bored With This. Going to the island to rescue Sundara was good--especially after several sessions of being bossed around on the ship--and so were the adventures around Rickety's Squibs. But now, in this unstructured new part where we're just sailing around raiding it is *deadly*. We do not care about this. I really want to tell our DM: Get to whatever the next scripted part is. Give us a clue where we need to go next. Or whatever level of Plunder or Infamy we need to get to so we can get to it as absolutely fast as possible.

But for now, our DM seems in no rush. We're on session 3 of Wandering Around the Ocean. Frankly the charm of even playing pirate characters is starting wear off. I mean, heck: We're raiding defenseless fishing villages--where do some of us get off having good alignments anymore? (I've switched from NG to True Neutral myself just for consistency's sake, not that I'm happy about it).

Anyone else have this problem? Is there just nothing for it but for us to 'mutiny' against or DM?