InconsistentDM's page

I think the issue here is that the designers see bloodlines as the end all be all for sorcerers. A lot of threads here show that bloodlines shouldn't be the end all be all and some more work needs to go into them. Personally I was thinking that the sorcerer was going to get the spellslinger archetype and I was going to be able to play my duppy but lovable gunmage again... alas it will not be.

No input on the rules, but I will add that gunslinger, gunmage, what ever would be a better fit with a sorcerer. Anyone who knows of Iron Kingdoms and Warmachine knows that a charming bastard with a gun is a gunmage er... Spellslinger : )

Best recap ever.

Also, I applaud your players for buying in to the adventure, thank them for me please. : )

can't wait to hear what happens next.

I feel like this is getting out of hand, my post originally was about asking for some direction with the classes on behalf of my significant other (a play tester of the APG classes) for our Ptolus game.

It was not meant to be antagonistic, damning, dissolutioning, or negative. I'm really sorry if it ended seeming like this.

I really like Paizo and Pathfinder and all the things they are doing. You guys do a great job. I just see areas that I would like more, and by all rights you can say no. I just wanted to get my case out there and see too if others wanted something similar.

I didn't want to come off as being like "Paizo, you need to tell people what to do" I was just looking for a little initial direction because there was some discrepancy in vision between the designer and the play tester which resulted in no play testing for that class but for a different one (in this case the inquisitor).

I still would like to ask for a little initial direction for the classes somewhere in the final product. But it wouldn't be bad at all if you didn't go that route. It would just be nice there for people who WANT it (or even NEED it) and people who don't want it can just ignore it.

I apologize if I'm over stepping my bounds as a play tester : P

I guess then it depends on how one thinks of a playtest. To use your example, I see it more like a peer review. But you do make some valid points about it needing to be, for the paizo crew at least, more like usability testing.

I can speak to the alchemist, though, since I designed that one. And it's role was to fill the niche of a magic-using class that's analogous to the rogue in that the majority of its skills are focused on that character with very little support abilities. And to design a class that's focused on using splash weapons. And to design a class that fills a classic niche that wasn't already filled by a class (the mad scientist/Dr. Jekyll role).

This is the kind of write up I was hoping to see. When I was telling my significant other about the classes in the playtest she thought the Alchemist was the going to be like the Full Metal Alchemist. However when she read through the class she didn't at all know what she was looking at and was kinda put off.

After I read her what you said about the Alchemist it was like she had an epiphany and understood how it all came together. But before that she was not to sure how it was intended to be 'played' or 'conceptualized'.

I do need to know that a car is intended for driving in the countryside, and not making intercontinental flights or taking a cruise around the lake.

I'm not saying that Paizo needs to do a whole anatomy of each design decision (although that would be terribly interesting), just give a better articulation of the goals. The alchemist, witch, summoner, and cavalier in particular suffer from this problem of "What exactly is it that this class is intended to do well? And do poorly?"

This.

But without any idea of what classes are intended to do well or do poorly, the playtesting often flounders.

A Man In Black said it better, me thinks.

Balancing every class to be equally useful in every situation is pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of the type of game Pathfinder is.

I can appreciate this, and I don't want to sound hostile, but I was looking for something to the tune of what you said about the summoner being good in solo play.

Making a statement off the bat saying something like "we wanted the summoner to be good for solo or small group play" is a design intention someone can really test out. Or if the intention was to come up with some great alternate archetypes thats cool too, I'm just looking for some input from the designers.

So I'm a bit stumped after reviewing the new APG classes. I like them and I think that they touch on some neat fluff ideas, but I have one major qualm with them: I don't know what the Paizo team is trying to accomplish with these classes.

For example, I can't say for sure if the Summoner is broken because I don't know what the objective was for giving it the eidolon. Were they trying to make a class that could give a small party a boost? What were they trying to accomplish with the inclusion of each class' features?

I don't really know how to critique these really nice classes, because I don't have any context for them.

Would it be possible to get a short objective from someone on the design team? Or perhaps give future play test products a small objective from the designers so that I (and anyone else) can give a better weigh in on each class given specific contexts or archetypes?

@Hogarth: I started messing around with encounter design last night and I think her first dungeon will be somewhere between CR 4-5 (as she will have a NPC wizard and Fighter Cohort) pretty straight forward dungeon with orcs and a few neutral monsters to do a trial by fire session.

@DM4hire: I have been digging around and found Monte Cooks Book of Experimental Might. He has a optional HP system where its divided into "Grace" and "Health". Health being Con score + con mod per level, and Grace being HP derived from HD (which she is taking max rolls from). Grace heals 1 point per minute, health heals normally. so at 7th level she has 56HP that will be just about always be there.

@Roguerouge: Ill keep "on a timer" encounters out of the game for sure. she is in a big city that has a guild dedicated to "Delvers" and a clause in her membership that says she will be rescued if some one reports her missing. (TPK averted in most cases). And I am feeling the heat already from her being the only one in the game. but I think we can explore an adventure much easier this way.

Maybe Ill start weaving "The Night of Dissolution" into the game... hmm...
Does the PF encounter design work well with 3.5 published adventures? Or am I looking at a per encounter rewrite?

Ok, This is some great advice thank you. Were RPG veterans and I wanted to run a game in Ptolus and she wanted to use a character from a past group. I just never had a chance to run a 3.5 game and she never had a good chance to play a 3.5 character. So after talking with my player she thought her character would best be a Inquisitor of a knowledge god gestalt Draconic Sorc.

I put her at level 7, and she gets a +3 sword with some powers on it and her cohort (rogue) plus a DMPC wizard around for utility.

So my biggest concern was the economy of actions, and CR but NPCs fix the EoA, I just need to eye ball the mobs/traps/general challenges from here on. But I should Aim for a lower CR. k.

Any Advice on dungeon design?

Ok so I'm going to be running a Ptolus game with the pathfinder core rules and its going to be just the one player and me for what seems like an indefinite amount of time. I havn't run a single player 3Ed game before and pathfinder's rules on single player encounter design is a little rough for me to digest. So here are the questions.

1# With one level 7 PC how do I determine an appropriate CR for an encounter? Do I take their APL which I think would be 6 ( or 2,400 XP) and 'buy' monsters with this amount of Xp? or do I shoot for a lower CR? Example 3 CR 3 Ogres would be balanced!? (800xp each 2400xp total)

2# Has anyone done 1 PC adventures before? and if yes, then anything I should be aware of when running these kinds of games in Pathfinder?

3# Leadership feat? do I add the Cohort into the APL/XP division?

Thank you in advance for the help!