Hark's page

So, Ultimate Intrigue provided us with a wealth of rules to run an Intrigue game and Ultimate Campaign gave us the rules for running a kingdom. However, Pathfinder still seems to be missing on character options for those focused solely on the Intrigue portion of the. Vigilante is a cool and versatile class, but it still doesn't seem to offer the ability to play as the likes of Cercei Lanister, Margaery Tyrell, or Petyr Baelish.

How would one go about making these characters effectively?

The Counterfeit Mage Archetype from Advanced Class Guide has inspired me to attempt to build a viable Fake Mage. Basically, a non-caster filling the role of a Caster, primarily through extensive use of Use Magic Device. Problem is this seems to be a far from optimal build concept, bordering on not even being viable. The ability to raise competence and viability is essential and the primary focus of discussion, but the ability to convince others that the character is a legitimate mage is also desirable.

Obviously, the Counterfeit Mage archetype focuses on Wand use, which is probably a good place for spells that are cast very frequently. However, Wands lack in the versatility area. Staffs are a far better option for versatility, and look cool too, but I don't see a good way for a Counterfeit Mage to actually recharge a Staff. Scrolls also help with making more spells available, but constant use of scrolls can get quite expensive, the same with Wands and Staves. Wands, Scrolls, and Staves are all great, but the character doesn't seem to be able to make any of them either, which would be very nice too and reduce the financial burden.

I've never really spent much time in the item creation rules and the stuff building off of it, so I don't know if there are any ways to bypass these kinds of limitations. Certainly, none that I've found.

Skill unlocks from Unchained seem to be able to offer some fun options, but really are fun tricks not things to build a solid foundation for a character on.

So I'm looking for thoughts and clever ideas for building a Fake Mage.

So looking through the Advanced Class Guide and as the Counterfeit Mage rogue archetype as it got me thinking. Could you actually build an effective character that is nothing but a fake mage? Could you fill the role of party caster?

The ability for a rogue types to use some magic items that are normally limited to casters has been around for ages, but I've never really considered it a viable option. As a result I don't even know where to start looking for options to even consider such a thing.

Is it possible, could a rogue have everybody convinced, his own party included that, they are a great a powerful wizard and still remain a viable character? How would you build the character?

Magic is a subject of great interest to me for a variety of reasons. It just seems to me that we know so very little about it.

I know that Wizards will use spells books and the spell book you have equipped will determine what spells you can cast.
We will be able to craft spell books.
Spells can be cast a limited number of times, but there is some kind of refresh mechanic that allows you to get your spells back.
Necromancy will be a thing.
Enchanting will be a thing.
There are some details on how AOE's will work.
EE will open with only the simplest spell selection.
Sorcerer will be added later, likely during EE.

What else do we know? It's not a lot to go on.

I know the plan for the game is to have training be conducted in Settlements, and to serve as a control for low rep players by limiting advanced training to advanced settlements. I find this quite unsatisfying as there is a lot of meaningful player interaction to be gained through players taking on students and training them themselves.

Since it is fairly easy to imagine how one might do players training players I'll focus on the major pitfall of it and how to address it. The obvious abuse of players training players is that it allows for easy advanced training to low rep characters. As I see it this is also an easy problem to deal with. One can simply link the reputation of the master it his students. If the students do something that lowers their reputation the Master also suffers a reputation hit. If the students do something to raise their reputation the Master may gain a much smaller reputation increase. Reputation changes could be scaled with how much the master has taught a given student. The master would need to be informed of the cause of the reputation changes. If the master finds that he has a problem student that causes serious reputation loss he can abandon the student at the cost of a major reputation hit. If the master decides to forgive a student and take them back they can take another reputation hit to accept the student and train them again.

This link to reputation would in particular benefit the Monk class as it basically encourages players to take members of their own companies and students basically allowing the players to form their own martial arts schools. It also mirrors the way 'honor' plays out in a martial arts school where the actions of a student may disgrace their teacher or reflect well on the master and the school.

The reputation link I think would also encourage players to stick with a single master forming a more solid Master/Apprentice relationship which is generally good. And caps on number of students would probably form interesting training lineages where a player might track the history of their training back to some great master.

If you want to encourage Genre conventions you could also link advancement in high end abilities to number of students and how advanced you have trained those students. This works particularly well for monks and wizards which both have strong associations with the Master/Apprentice relationship. Craftsmen also have this kind of relationship, and would work very well if there were links in production between advancement requirements of lower level craftsmen and the material requirements of higher level production (ex. a pre-req of early smithing advancement is the production of 10 steel ingots. It just so happens that it takes 10 steel ingots to product a suit of full plate, and to advance himself the master must produce 10 suits of full plate.)

Why have settlement training at all then? Wise old masters needed to learn from somewhere, not everyone wants the master/apprentice thing, not enough available teachers or teachers don't know the skills/abilities that you want, etc.

I hate that in MMO's clerics are just healers/anti-undead. The characters religion may determine a few special abilities of the character, but that is it. The games do nothing to reflect any kind of religious life or gameplay. I'm not at all interested in a prayer simulator or whatever, but I would like something added that makes religion and its practice a meaningful concept for a cleric, or paladin, or even some hybrid with something else for players that want to play a religious character.

What I would like to see is players able to convert NPC populations to worship of their deity, and tend to their needs to prevent them from running off to some other god. This could be done through many different means, the obvious one is to actually go out and start talking in populated areas about how awesome their religion is.

The game could track the percentage of a settlements population that worships each faith, and at certain population thresholds the people of a faith start making demands to fit the needs of their faith. If those needs are met, a shine, temple, cathedral, etc. they give the settlement some kind of bonus appropriate to the religion. If the demands aren't met the people are unhappy and apply a debuff to the settlement based on how big the population of the faith is compared to the demands that have been met.

A global tracker for have widespread a faith is could also be an interesting tool for driving conflict if you want to actively encourage holy wars.

Certainly, more depth could be added, but his creates a situation where religious gameplay is meaningful and encourages a different kind of PVP as players push to spread their faith, or simply defend their flocks from outsider heresy.

I like the idea of there being more to PVP than smacking people over the head with a sword, or robbing them. Certainly we have competitive merchants and whatnot, but working with a fantasy setting opens up a lot of other options.

I'll try to provide a few suggestions as to what I mean.

A while ago in an Undead thread I mentioned the idea of of Necromancers raising slain players as undead monsters and releasing them into the wild. The idea being to simulate the fantasy adventure scenario where the players track down the evil necromancer that is producing the undead horrors that are harassing the village. This works especially well if the undead monsters come in the varieties that reproduce when they kill someone, potentially creating an escalation type event. This works because it is a player producing content for other players and indeed serving as the content. A player might do this to make an area to dangerous for the locals to effectively operate in it, or simply because the player feels that it would be fun to be the content for other players. It's also not an "Oh my god I just got ganked!" Situation. It creates a "hey lets get together and have a cool adventure situation."

Another suggestion came from a SAD discussion. Basically, the idea of a Black Market. Instead of allowing the players of a settlement to build a Black Market allow outsiders with the appropriate skills to establish a Black Market in other players settlements if the settlement has enough corruption. The Black Market would allow players to trade stolen or illegal goods freely within the settlement so long as they go through the Black Market. The more the Black Market is used the higher the corruption rating of the settlement raises. So long as those using the Black Market get it secret it should be very difficult for the Law Enforcement to track it down and shut down the Black Market. However the Law Enforcement players do need the tools to track this kind of thing down and shut it down. Anyway, it creates a Criminal vs. Law Enforcement dynamic that isn't built around stab the criminal with your sword, and I'm sure there are lots of reasons on outsider might want to raise an enemy settlements Corruption rating.

Another might be implementation of an actual Ecology. Over harvesting an area could have negative impacts on the ecology, certain plants or animals become rare or non-existent in an area if the ecology isn't strong enough, while rare plants and animals might appear if the ecology is strong enough. You might even go in an burn an enemy's fields of rare plants, or introduce predators to kill off rare animals. Give druids and rangers the ability to work with the environment. You may even end up with Druids and Rangers declaring wars on Civilization because of the damage they do to the eco-system.

Just some thought, anybody else have any ideas for less direct forms of PVP.

Specifically in the case of Huge or Gargantuan Animals. I see that there are actually quite a few very large potential animal companions, in particular Dinosaurs. However, when I look at the rules it seems that these companions only ever get to be large in size.

The confusions is even worse when looking at the Beast Rider Archetype for Cavaliers which uses the animal companion rules specifically mentions huge animals.

I could probably figure it out on my own just fine, but I'm trying to learn the whole game, and this really isn't a high priority for me, so much as a nagging question.

Over they years I have seriously grown to hate healing magic. There are a lot of reasons, but at its simplest, healing magic messes with the setting a lot. A level 1 cleric can have very dramatic effects in a community and there are a lot of level 1 clerics rolling around the world. Also I'm trying to build a world going through an industrial revolution, and advances in medical sciences become much less plausible and significant if any old cleric can walk up to you and say, "Bam, you're better now!"

So I'm looking for suggestions on how to rework the game to either remove healing magic, or because healing is actually a big deal for so gods make it rare and difficult.

Since I'm not very experienced with Pathfinder, though had a lot of experience with S&D 3.0/3.5 years ago, I'm going to the community for ideas.

Also since I'm cutting healing, may as well cut the Inflict spells too, for fairness (also they are boring like the Cure spells.)

Right now I'm keeping it simple by attacking the cleric. I see the variant Channeling rules in Ultimate Magic, which is very helpful. I'm also considering switching out spontaneous casting Heal/Inflict spells for Spontaneous casting domain spells, though that leaves the domain spell slot kind of obsolete.

As for where I want stuff in particular, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it in hope of finding some kind of solution that fits naturally into the rules set. I think I like where Remove disease is at as a level 3 spell. Similarly, delay poison seems well placed. I'm okay with low level spells alleviating symptoms or or giving someone a fighting chance at surviving, but not outright saying "bam! you're better now."

More thoughts from me later after I've had some more time to analyze the rules or get some solid feedback to discuss.

Simple enough question I guess. What other RPG systems would do a good job of representing the Golarion setting?

I love the setting, reading Pathfinder books really draws me in an gets me excited, even the rules books, but the setting in particular. My problem is that over the years I've developed a rather strong distaste for level and class based RPG systems and certain aspects of the d20 system. Pathfinder is certainly the best incarnation of the d20 system out there and if I had to play d20 I would jump for Pathfinder.

So I come here to the fans of Pathfinder and ask If you had to choose another system to faithfully represent Golarion what system would you use.

Because of the Location we will never see serious Sea Trade, Naval Combat, or Major Ports.

Sure we have a fair sized river, but it really isn't the same, rivers aren't terribly big and the location is terrible for trade as it is out of the way and does not bypass any major geographical features. That river actually serves more as a wall to keep us in. I think the fluff for the MMO even mentions difficulty crossing the river.

Not really a huge complaint, just I'm really disappointed that nearest major body of water is some 200 miles South of our location.

Even if the game were to extend that far south you would probably need the map to go another 200 miles west to get any real value out of it, and that would put the vast majority of the game in Ustalav. Setting there would set a very different tone for the game. Lets not even talk about how much work it would require to generate that much content.

For lack of better term I'll use the term in the PnP RPG to describe what I'm talking about, "templates." For those they are a set of modifiers added to a character to describe a change, like becoming a Vampire, Were-wolf, or Lich. Many templates aren't really appropraite, nobody wants to play and unintelligent skeleton or zombie, but people would jump at the opportunity to play a Vampire.

Basically, I feel that some kind of equivalent mechanism should exist in PFO. If a player is bitten by a Vampire or Were-Creature the player should become one with all of the advantages and disadvantages associated with it. Same if the player researches and performs the ritual to become a Lich.

This could be a huge power boost, so keeping negatives associated with the templates would be important. I also think that it be possible to lose a template, with the power associated with it a template is something like a piece of equipment. In the PnP most ways you defeat a vampire just result in the Vampire waking up the next morning in its coffin, but there are a few ways to permanently kill a vampire. Stake through the heart, burning up in sun light, etc. If a vampire player were to die one of these methods that can permanently kill a vampire the player would instead respawn as normal character without the template as though they had died a normal death. The same thing could be don't with were-creatures killed with Silver.

The Lich transformation comes with an item called a Phylactery containing the characters soul. If the Lich dies it respawns at the Phylactery. If the character doesn't care about the chance to have the phylactery destroyed by some other player he can try to hide it someplace safe to serve as a spawn point. Since this transformation would cost vast quantities of wealth a character might not want to risk it being destroyed he can keep the phylactery on his person and use most or all of his threads so that it cannot be looted. This results in a permanent Lich transformation, but all of the Liches other equipment becomes lootable.

Thoughts?

I hate how in pretty much every mmo you get mounts, but you can't fight on them. Fighting from the back of a mount is something that happens in fantasy and it happened in reality.

I'm not sure how to effectively model it though. In my opinion Mount & Blade has the best mounted combat out there, but I'm not sure how viable that model would be in an MMO like PFO. The is also the issue of GW wants to make formation combat viable, but Mount & Blade was actually pretty terrible at formation fighting. At the other end of the spectrum what I don't want to see is mounted combat the works exactly like combat in the few games I seen try it, which is exactly the same as normal combat, just standing there swinging your sword at the other guy, but your character is sitting on the back of the horse.

Obviously, we don't want to make it over powered so that it is the only viable combat model. The obvious advantage of mounted combat is forward momentum, speed, and elevation. The less obvious weaknesses are very slow backward movement, slow turning, and the mount itself is generally pretty vulnerable.

Maybe a mounted combat skill tree would help. I don't know.

Ideas anyone?

I've seen a lot of discussion about alignment lately, even some discussion topics about, but none dedicated specifically to the mechanical impact of Alignment and how it can be used to encourage specific play styles.

I'll keep my thoughts very general so that everybody else can share their thought on the topic too.

In very general terms both Lawful and Good alignments should be better at teamwork while Chaotic and Evil Alignments should be better at operating as individuals.

This creates a continuum in which Chaotic Evil is the ultimate Soloist alignment and Lawful Good is the ultimate group play alignment. With more balanced approaches represent by everything in between.

What this means that in One on One or even small group combat the Chaotic Evil are probably at a significant advantage, while in Large Group combat Lawful Good is clearly at an advantage.

Now how are Alignments gained, or at least encouraged?

I see Good being gained by helping others. While Evil is gain by inflicting your will on others. Law is gained by working with others and taking actions that support the whole group, Chaos is gained by working by yourself and taking actions that only benefit yourself.

Thoughts?

Especially in an Sandbox MMO it is an issue that needs to be addressed. In a realistic world supplying people with enough food and drink to live is a massive industry.

In MMO's this tends not to be the case and all of them have different ways to handle it.

1. Ignore it, Food and Drink are non-issues. Players don't prepare stuff to eat and drink and no industry for them exists. Easiest model, though it adds the least to the game.

2. Food and Drink are required for survival. The character slowly gets hungry and thirty and slowly suffers debuffs the longer they go without food or water in extreme cases the character may even die of deprivation. In these games food and drink become something a tax on the player, draining their resources. It's usually more of a hassle than anything else, and because the players get nothing out of it. Also because it is so critical NPC food/drink merchants are readily available removing any hope of a Player based food industry.

3. Food and Drink serve strictly as a buff. Higher quality foods tend to give bigger and longer buffs. This does create a player industry, but it tends to be small as it is a non-essential part of the game.

4. Combine 2 and 3. I don't recall ever seeing this model used, but it could in theory create quite the industry because everybody will need it, and a well fed character would be getting buffs. But you still get the situation where a player forgot to stock up on food and suddenly sucks because of all of the debuffs. It's still a hassle just now you get a reward for dealing with it.

Are there any other models out there that I missed? What model do you like best? Personally I think model 4 probably sounds the best to me so long as I'm not constantly hunting for good.

One of the weaknesses of sandbox game relaying on player crafting has to build the best equipment, in my opinion, has always been that you never end up with anything exceptional. In the end everyone always ends up with the same stuff, so you lose the stories told about mighty artifacts and people going to war to acquire them simply deny the enemy access to them. You also lose out on the hunt for such mighty artifacts lost to history.

That is kind of the trust of this post, allow players the ability to rarely craft truly exceptional items that could tip the balance in order to get players to fight and compete for possession of the item. There are other interesting consequences to the ideas I'm going to propose, but the general goal if to generate storytelling opportunities through extremely rare items.

I guess first we need player to be able to make these artifact items, so we can start there. Obviously to encourage conflict I want these artifacts to be exceptionally powerful and rare. To build an artifact you would need an exceptionally rare crafting component. Ideally these would be very rare drops in dungeons and possibly more valuable than an artifact that has been build because you could potentially make many different kinds of artifacts with it. If an adventuring company were to announce that they had acquired such a component and were looking to sell it people all factions would be sending thieves, assassins, mountains of money and everything else in their power to try and get this component. If the acquisition of this component became the main thrust player generated story on the server I would not be upset.

You then of course need to choose the right craftsman, but I think the whole crafting phase should probably be pretty straight forward, with the possibility of the craftsman customizing the artifact. You might want to balance the skill of your craftsman with trustworthiness. The better the craftsman, the better the artifact, but you want to be sure the craftsman will build the artifact you want built.

On to death, in particular, what happens to your loot when you die. As a proposal I would like to see some or all equipment that isn't acquired by the looter to end up in the possession of monsters, npc's, and dungeon loot piles in the area. This helps add something of a storied history to an area. A dungeon that lots of adventurers die in could have vast treasure hordes with an actual story to tell. This is relevant to artifacts because they are the kind of thing you want to stay in the world. Artifacts would always end up in the possession of another player, in a dungeon loot pile or wielded by some boss monster in a dungeon. Since it is very likely that people will be killed just to acquire artifacts they possess I propose giving players a limited time in which to loot a body during which the artifact is automatically acquired, after which it has a progressively large chance of being lost the longer it goes unrecovered. This adds to the artifacts lost to history and rediscovered aspect.

The little NPC's bit is slightly related to the death point, but also is somewhat tangential. I would like to see NPC's using player crafted gear. Obviously in the case of dead players losing gear this would mean some monsters running around in player gear. Large numbers of unlucky players could produce some very well equipped monsters. But this can also be extended economically. Craftsmen are likely to produce far more equipment than the player market is able to absorb. Some of this could go to equipping NPC guards and soldiers, other just might get dumped into merchants for cash. Either way it would be really cool to see NPC's running around wielding the custom designed gear of a prodigious craftsmen.

Also just for the purpose of promoting story, I think it would be cool if artifacts tracked the history of who owned them and what major events they were used in so that players can see the story and history behind them.

So I've been away from D&D for a long time, Loved 3.0/3.5, hate 4th edition with a passion. Anyway, I just found out that this Pathfinder game I've been seeing is an updated and improved 3.5. I've been doing research and finding lots of good stuff. Now is the time to ask the question I'm almost certain I'm going to regret asking, but need to ask to get a complete picture of what I'm considering getting into.

What are the problems with Pathfinder? What do its detractors say they don't like about it? What did it lose in its conversion from 3.5 that takes away from the game?

Please don't make this into a flame war.