Jack Assery's page

I wonder if it is asking too much for an admission of rushing the copy out as an excuse for the editing problems. I don't want to be a jerk but the book is selling like hot cakes and people are getting a book with major problems. I want to be assured that something happened and it is being addressed. I understand not everyone will agree with me when I say some of the options are just bad, but I want to know the design philosophy behind it so I can either adjust my expectations or find a new system.

I've mentioned it before, but I'm really pleased the ACG doesn't break the game. An edition of a game that was popular from 2003-2008 had issues where material from new sourcebooks could be combined with material from other non-core sourcebooks to create 'broken' builds. ACG adds a lot of options, without creating any that that are game-breakingly powerful. It's been mentioned Paizo makes great APs (which looks to be their business model, make a profit by selling APs rather than by selling sourcebooks). I'm looking forward to Iron Gods, and really like WotR (and others, but those are the two new-product support APs recently).

For all the concerns over typos and not-necessarily-complete archetypes, there's nothing I will ban from my games. In other games (not just d20-based games) there are often sourcebooks with material that has to be excluded. PF has nothing I say 'that breaks the game,' which is an accomplishment.

I would rather not include 250 feats that are inferior to the previous feats before them than have ineffectual feats and options. I'm not asking for game-breakers, just to be around equally as powerful as other things of there names. A feat should be as powerful as a feat, one archetype should be balanced to the rest. Too much filler to sift through to even find viable options.

My knee-jerk reaction? I bought this book for reckless rage so far, there's other good stuff but they keep going in a direction that is left-field of what I want. I want good archetypes, not useless filler types, leave them out; I just get sick looking at over a hundred feats and finding only a few good crunch ones. It just seems to me like the old classes are going to be on life support until they get unleashed or whatever next year; I guess I was hoping for more archetypes than mutagen this and divine that; did they fire the people who made the invulnerable rager or the quiggong monk? Where is the creativity with the rules and options we've been hearing about, it's all just mixing and matching what we already have. Don't get me wrong, these new classes seem fun and all, hell I've been waiting for a viable assassin for years; but where's the beef? I feel like they wasted a lot of page space on utter garbage and facile choices, and we are still left starving for some crunch.
Like I said, it's a first-take; I may feel differently later but the first impression left me sick at wasting 40 bones.
Last thing, there where some awesome items though, just too few considering the wasted space within.

Let me quote myself from an old thread for clarity:

Still say
1:detect evil
2:smite evil
3:rinse, repeat as necessary
and if needed
4:leave the philosophy to the philosophers.
The moral implications of eradicating an entire LE town is the same exact implications of eradicating a dungeon of LE people; it's just called an "urban" or "rural" backdrop.
He's 15th level, he's got s*** to do; he can't be bothered to figure out EVERY nefarious plot; just detect evil, destroy evil, keep on truckin. Detect evil is at will, who needs circumstances and backdrop? They didn't give him insight into why people turn to evil; just wipe it off the map before they destroy the neighboring GOOD (meaning neutral but bearable, barely) town.
Plus he probably dump-stat'd Int anyways so unless he's got some "investigative-type" around, he probably needn't bother looking for a reason, evil is reason enough. Probably best if he doesn't even bother trying to figure out reasons, smite evil don't give one s*** about reasons. What's the exact difference between a Paladin going into a dungeon or BBEG's lair and "forcing his LG morality" upon them? Setting? Most well built dungeons are akin to small establishments, especially the LE variety. I say it's the same thing, no problem; after all they're LE, he was breaking up SOME nefarious plot by doing so; does it matter if he doesn't know or care what it was?
This is a black & white topic, moral implications need not apply. Next people will be telling me that my pally destroying the cult's shrine to Dagon "was reprehensible destruction of their cultural heritage" or stopping them from opening a portal to the Old Ones "was interjecting my unrealistic standards upon them".

I have zero problem with how you handled the situation; she was asked to surrender, and immediately started hostile actions: casting a spell. If a police officer tells someone that they are under arrest and they go for a gun, then the officer has justifiable cause for lethal defense. Sadly I feel that the people at the table and on the thread are busy moralizing over your decision when they weren't in your shoes; you made a choice to use lethal force to end the threat. Some people might feel that the situation caused for nonlethal force, but they weren't there; you were and felt lethal approach was best. Go back to the example I gave of the officer arresting someone who then tries to pull a gun; was it loaded? Could the officer have used less lethal means, such as mace? It could be viewed as commendable if such an officer were to risk his life to save this person who was pulling out a gun, but he wasn't forced to, he had all the justification needed to end the person.
On a side note, I have played many a paladin over the years; my friends say that's my iconic class. I would have likely done something similar. I always find it crazy when people try to shackle paladins by their code and atonements, when it was clear that it was strictly meant for chaotic and evil acts; a paladin falling would never happen in such a scenario. I believe that in this system, evil is very clear and means something: that it is a clear threat, even if it isn't entirely clear what threat. I would be entirely fine with a paladin making an enemy of any evil he encounters, although his code would be intact, his reputation may not be. The code was meant to keep the paladin from evil and corruption, not as red-tape to obstruct him from smiting the evil the Gods called him to smite, that is counter-intuitive.

A metro-sexual gnome bard: Metronome.

He doesn't always hit on your real life girlfriend "in character", but when he does, you will be getting yelled at about it the rest of the week.

He doesn't always meta-game, but when he does, you know he read the adventure.

He doesn't always write a backstory, but when he does, it gives him an artifact.

He doesn't always play a new character, but when he does, he has no actual clue how it works.

I've been playing with my group now for almost a decade, and we're all best friends now, but I've been there bud. We all met at a card shop and had a group of about 20 or so, and ran the gamut from incompetent to sociopath; some were awesome people, others were scumbags, but we all met for various games from Thursday night to Sunday. I ran some, played in others, made friends, kicked others from my table, and eventually it came down to a core of players; normally I am an inclusive person, I would have let most of them at my table, but a few of the players became real close friends and started playing at my one friends house. At someone's house, it becomes a lot different, more of a close knit game; we couldn't invite just anyone to play anymore, and had to be choosy about those that did.
Playing at someone's house is different in the fact that at a store almost everyone is acceptable, but we all have people we know we wouldn't want to bring around our houses, spouses, kids etc; and some have proven that they haven't been able to do that. I have few perfect examples:
- The guy who crushes on someone's girl at the table: inexcusable behavior, but it happens from time to time.
-The thief: not to be confused with the rogue, which although underpowered is a boon to any group; this guy would steal from people who would consider him a friend.
- The mooch: our group is very generous to each other and this could be taken advantage of by unscrupulous people. If someone doesn't have money for food, we will get them food, but it is usually a habit of abusiveness towards people in the form of taking advantage of generosity; people having smoking habits which they want others to support etc.
-The douchebag; along the lines of the sociopath friends I mentioned earlier, these guys take fantasy roleplay to dark areas of their psyche, they're usually very hard to get along with at the table as well; being rude, abusive, anti-social and superior in stance.
-The drama-queen: this person is always starting stuff, bad-mouthing people, making arguments, shifting blame, making it impossible to blow off steam which is what our gaming ritual is there for.
-The incompetent: generally this one is tolerable to us, we have one or two which we look at like our little brothers; but man they can be a pain in the hind-quarters, they don't read the material, they don't understand what's happening, usually have attention deficit and don't try hard to do better.
The thing to remember is that aside from the role playing element (which is central focus), game night is essentially sitting at a table and socializing, that is why people's character flaws come to the fore. If someone is hard to get along with under normal conditions it is amplified under intense social situations such as gaming. Even the most adjusted of us tend to let our problems show from time to time because gaming is time intensive and socially intense. I know more about the people I game with than any other friend, because it is such quality time spent gaming; we've been to hell and back, but that experience can be rained on by the wrong personalities at the table.

Yeah I'm thinking the BAB's are basically tied to everything, so I will have to have the full, 3/4 and 1/2, and separate the abilities into those categories, thus giving the point to disperse based on that choice. So in essence boiling down the classes to three with "ability trees" to specialize in. It sounds very watered down but might still be worth just toying with.

As a half-measure, you may wish to look at the old Generic Classes in the 3rd Edition book Unearthed Arcana. Alternatively, the newer game Legends has something vaguely similar, I'm told.

The major problem is not just that "people have classes" - it's that everything - everything - in the game is fundamentally tied to the groupings of classes. Skill points, hit points, attack bonus, saves, feats (and access to them) magic growth, etc.

That said, I've been mentally tinkering around with the ideas of moving BAB into a form of skill growth (and increasing skills all-'round). I separated it into several categories: melee adjacent, melee reach, ranged thrown, and ranged loosed.

Characters gain the following: full attack classes gain 4 skills, moderate attack classes gain 2 skills, and worst attack classes gain 1 skill.

The problem, of course, is that this doesn't eliminate classes - just class-based attack bonus.

The system is actually more complex than that: it involves requiring tools for most skill use and proficiency in a tool's use (such as with weapons) to avoid taking penalties, with masterwork tools (including weapons) granting a +2 bonus instead and lots of other tweaks and changes... but you've got the gist of it there.

Further, magic growth could be modified substantially if you borrowed from psionics and used points instead of prepared or spontaneous slots.

You may (or may not) be interested in modifying the action economy.

Each of these changes bring you further away from Pathfinder, though, even if you end up with compatible interactions.

Leave it to Tacticslion to give me some good crunch when I was feeling hopeless after a few comments; thanks bro, this bud's for you.

I always wanted to do a Dark Soul's-esque game, at least with the themes of fallen god's, ancient land of the gods, after their age has died out. Seeing the big bad god as a shell of himself and hollow was really impactful.

I'm playing a dump stat barbarian and having a blast.
"So the bandits stole the thingy two days ago and it's six days away; they have over ten days on us!"
NPC:"..."
Cleric buddy: "For the love of the gods, don't correct him!"
The GM isn't being a jerk about it, and it's pretty fun.

So I'm playing in a game where the Pathfinder Society Patron was paying us a crazy amount of loot to hunt down bandits who stole a small worthless trinket, mainly off the principle that they wouldn't be trifled with, to send a message sort of; and he hired us, a hardcore anti-hero type group of crazy CN sorts. We find out on the voyage that the rogue wound up stealing a small fortune off of the guy the night before we left when the rest of us were in a brutal bar fight my barbarian started with half the town over someone sitting "in my spot". The hammer hasn't dropped yet, but that's where it left off.

One thing about video games being to blame; there exists plenty of great sandbox games that have a great example of how to let players decide their own path; take the dark souls trilogy, you can pretty much go about exploring on your own pace. A lot of my friends and myself went different ways and fought different bosses in different orders, we explored different areas first, addressed different things; the only difference is the level of difficulty in some areas relative to the players level. It's an awesome concept for how to give players a "path" to make decisions compared to their power level.
In my own sandbox game, I gave plot hooks to things they "should" face at way higher levels, and the PC's had to figure if they could possibly tackle such things at that point. If they were 5th level and had the option of finding some derro who've abducted citizens, taking on ninja to find info on a BBEG or finding drow who are sacrificing pious priests, they can make a decision on what is realistic for them to tackle. Sometimes it gets a little more hard to figure lol and they had to retreat from some things to address later, and it was pretty successful in that respect.
One thing is maybe those decisions might've been a sort of metagame knowledge, I would argue that but it doesn't matter, they had fun and owned their decisions.
In answer to should bad players have fun; that's the point of playing, right? In your examples, given the info you provided (granted that there was likely more for the players), it seemed like a relative decision; the choices seemed equally urgent, and choosing one seemed to have consequences for the rest. It's seemed very hard to divine which decision was best or more pressing in general, they might have not been able to figure out a good choice because it seemed like leaving the others to their fates. I'm not saying that's a bad approach, but maybe they needed more info or more options to give them time to accomplish all of them.

Sidikus Kane CN Duergar Fighter10
He was a Dark Knight version of Bane, after I saw the movie, I knew I wanted to use him in my Kaer Maga campaign. He was introduced to the PC's as a people's champ by publically murdering a crime-lord the PC's had a lot of problems with. Right after the PC's reached a sort of peace with him, Kane publically murdered him, leaving the PC's kind of knowing he was trouble but unable to find fault with his results. He then took over the Freeman's Guild and lead a bloody slave revolt in the meat gate. They set up defenses in the district to defend from the different gangs retaliation. He gave speeches of following the PC's heroic example to free the people from the criminal oligarchs; it put the PC's in an akward position. He was so huge that he was large, and had a secret addiction to steroid-like mutagens to grow even larger and stronger. When bloodied, his mutagen tank would rupture and lose his massive strength. He wielded a pair of gauntlets that looked like dragons and could topple foes if he struck the ground, they could also do one breath weapon per gauntlet.
His plan was to destabilize the Xoriat District to lead his people (secretly the Scions brotherhood of the seal) into the brotherhood vault to open the seal. The PC's had to track his past down to even figure out what he had planned, dealing with ninja's and eventually finding an old prison he grew up in.

I got two:
One player triggers a teleport trap, leading into a crypt. He says "uh oh, Spaghetti-o..."
I drop a Pit Fiend mini onto the map and go "Who dares to summon the Dark Lord Spaghetti-o?!?"
The other:
The players are in the under dark in 3.5, I run an encounter with a Beholder, who uses anti-magic eye. He spends a round gloating and being superior; the rogue throw a pint of oil on him exasperated. He goes "Your petty lubricants cannot effect the mighty Lord Zox!!!"

I'm back, took me only ten minutes to read tacticslion's manifesto; I got honorable mention :)

Hey guys, been following the thread.

It's gone in some different directions like whether ad&d was any good, whether anyone playing PF should go for that old-school vibe, whether it's possible to do so, which way is better, yadda-yadda.

That's all fine and interesting but is anyone else already past that?

I mean the thread title doesn't say "Should I recapture the essence of AD&D in Pathfinder?" or "Is it possible to recapture the essence of AD&D in Pathfinder?" or "Did AD&D suck?".

I've given this plenty of thought, you know what I mean? I played AD&D and I liked it. I'm playing PF now and I see that d20/3.x added some things I consider improvements. I know I don't want to switch to a retro-clone, but I want to get back a certain vibe, a certain feel.

Would anyone want to collaborate on a project to do that? Something that brings together a set of house-rules with a more formal declaration of the kinds of "gentlemen's agreements" and play-style approaches that lend themselves to that experience?

We could start by looking at the OSR and retro-clones and figuring out why we are still here playing pathfinder. Figure out what to keep and what to peel away.

Could be a fun community project.

I would like to help. Drop me a link in my message box to the tread and I will help in any way I can. I would also like to introduce that style to my players and have tried recently in some ways.

The healer isn't a needed role, they only need access to HEALING; also I play clerics frequently yet I never played a healer. If a party feels they need a healer when I play cleric, they'll be sorely disappointed. Healers are underpowered, have to expend more resources than other players, and less fun to play. Players should be responsible to keep themselves from dropping, and have some healing themselves, a player should not burden a cleric with keeping them alive, that's not fun for the cleric. Also, it sounds as if some parties rely too much on the GM to give them stuff like buffs, healing, and de-buffs; that's playing on easy-mode. If my players don't have a guy for front-line, they don't have a front-line, same for the rest. A party should be self sufficient enough to survive without relying on GM fiat or learn to do without. If nothing else, it'll encourage a party to play to a dynamic.

Is it ok for a hetero to comment on here? I game and am friends with a transsexual player. We have a large group with many games but he only shows up for mine, because I do RP mainly but am also totally ok and don't let people mess with him also. Don't get me wrong, dude don't need protecting, I saw him blow up on someone who said something out of line; but I won't tolerate people out-grouping my friends either.
He actually wasn't (or didn't realize he was Idk) he was trans when we first met, but I honestly think RP made him comfortable enough to just go for it. He is one of my favorite players as a GM, he always does over-the-top action stuff in fights and RP's like a champ; he knows all the rules (a big thing in my games) and is one of the better personalities at the table. I just wanted to share my experiences at my game table when I saw the post as my table can relate to some of the stuff that pops up.

And merchants aren't wizards. Anyone remember Mercane's?

Ok, I again misspoke, sorry; buy my point was missed I think; I was saying that in my game, it's the players prerogative to fit into the story (the chelish teifling was my example), and if not, then hey it cool. I got a game now running that is a mixed bag, players being intimately tied to the story and a dwarf who heard there was goblins in them thar hills. Nobody (even the player I think) know where he comes from or even cares other than to joke about it. Sometimes (but admittedly out front not always) it's ok to just play something unrelated to the story was my point. I however don't think it's ok for a person to try to play a different game than the one planned (such as trying to figure out where all the D*** Tengus went), they should be willing to participate in the game the GM has made for them.

I think that this is the main reason I play my games in Golarion; because it incorporates the Pathfinder game material in an inclusive way. If you found it in a PF book, then it exists in Golarion. I totally get that other stories can be had using the PF "engine" to facilitate it; and that is, was and will always be a valid option for a GM looking to tell a story; I'm not saying Golarion is in any way better than any concept a GM has. I am saying that players can come into my game and expect (to the extent of my knowledge) that they know what game they're playing; heck they can read up on it and bring new questions and campaign gold into the game. They already know the options, they already have a ton of info on the world, they don't always have to fit exactly what the GM is looking for. We might be playing a Cheliax intrigue game with an Ulfen Barbarian, a person from Nidal who only saw the sun right before the game starts, and a teifling outcast who picked regional feats, has a few contacts, knows his way around, and NPC's would have a certain reaction (ewww a teifling), on top of a Tengu gunslinger from earth, time-travelling from Palestine lol.

Anzyr wrote:

Gunpowder was around in 9th Century China, seems like it fits quite nicely really all things considered.

No, it doesn't. It's an 1,800 year gap between Solomonic Israel and Chinese gunpowder ... and though I have read Erik Von Daniken, I find the "aliens are gods" perspective suspect on a number of levels.

Sorry, but ... tengu gunslinger in that period is a no go, and continues to be so. You're not even close to making your case.

What if......ALIENS? O_o

I would even try to make it a MLPathfinder game, if we all agreed it'd be awesome. 20% cooler by far :)

Trogdar wrote:

the gm adjudicates mechanics conflicts. No GM has authority over players. If you think you have authority over me, then you are running under a misconception.

Any player who doesn't acknowledge a DM's authority over the players as relates to the game should be tossed out on his presumptuous ass.

Really? No, REALLY?? What makes a GM so powerful? What ever happened to impartial referee types? When did GM apotheosis occur? Not just over characters, BUT PLAYERS?

Sorry, this thread is rather old and when I joined in about a week ago, it was talking about ways to make a PF game feel old school. I can understand now why people thought I was saying "mine is better than yours"; I'm not. I said way back that I think it's possible have an old school approach in PF, but new school players might feel adrift. I've played games that had that old school feel, and try to quantify what it is exactly, it wasn't the rules. I feel it was the GM and players approach to the game. Now most games are purely narrative driven, whereas in the older games it was driven by.... Idk, exploration? The GM's of yesterday made worlds, and let the PC's act on them as they will; not all GM's but in my estimation the majority. The GM could be as creative as he wished during world/dungeon building, but the carryover from wargaming was the trust that the GM was an impartial referee. It left the players in control at the table creatively, and the GM with the pride of the PC's interacting with a "realistic" world.
Nowadays everything comes down to plot, GM's fudge, Deus Ex Machina, Patrons are the GM in disguise; older GM's would probably bristle at this.
The old school GM I have been referring to sat in and watched one of my games and we talked about our differing approaches, both are valid, but aren't in the same ballpark of game.

Fair enough, but I was just pointing out that they show an investment into that form of RP; and sometimes a player might not be as charismatic as his character. I know in my game I have a player that is definitely not as smart as his character is and he looks as if his PC is a dip-stick when its the player. The opposite is also true, lovable people dump-stating their charisma and trying to charm their way into everything; having a mechanic helps is all I'm saying; otherwise the most popular personalities at the table would always run the show because they RP well, even if they dumped any face abilities to show some investment.

Kudaku wrote:

@GreyWolfLord

There are a few issues with your post, let's see if we can spot them all.

GreyWolfLord wrote:

I have like 20 traps in a small dungeon...more than that in a large one.

Not sure if you're aware of this, but traps award XP as if they were encounters. Let's say the party is four PCs of level 5 on the medium advancement track, and are facing 20 lvl 5 traps. Each trap disabled or avoided awards the party 1600XP, or 400 xp apiece. So each time your party goes through a small dungeon, avoiding all the enemies (and fun combat) and wait around while the rogue takes 10 on a perception check and rolls a disable device check, they gain 8000 XP each. The difference between level 5 and level 6 is, whadya know, 8000 XP. So your party just leveled up by going through a single small dungeon, and having no meaningful interaction with anything except disabling traps. You better give them some treasure soon though, since they're now 22k behind the expected WBL.

GreyWolfLord wrote:

That wizard is going through a lot of scrolls and other things trying to be a rogue.

The typical wizard (or sage sorcerer, for that matter) will not be using scrolls to disable traps. That said, this thread is not about replacing rogues with other classes - there is a cornucopia somewhere churning out those threads already, no point to turn this thread into one as well.

GreyWolfLord wrote:

Also, if they create an alarm...every door is going to be locked, much less the chests and drawers.

Gonna stink when they have to fight the enemies as well and except for a few higher level spells, the wizard turns out to be absolutely worthless compared to my fully prepped NPC sorcerer...

Awesome! Finally something the fighter can do instead of waiting around while the rogue rolls 40 skill checks. As a bonus, killing level-appropriate mobs has a decent chance of giving them treasure.

GreyWolfLord wrote:

This looks like a thing of a caster with over 60 spells....

...

In my experience, traps/puzzles can be awesome, it was a real shortcoming of the newer additions to relegate them to mere "hit point taxes for doing X", further it actively discourages exploration. I have been trying to make multi-layered several things happen traps that do more than simply give the rogue busy work. Admittedly it has varying degrees of success, some are a hit, some are still boring; it's a work in progress, but I haven't hit my stride yet.

This is a black & white topic, moral implications need not apply. Next people will be telling me that my pally destroying the cult's shrine to Dagon "was reprehensible destruction of their cultural heritage" or stopping them from opening a portal to the Old Ones "was interjecting my unrealistic standards upon them".

Unrelated but I ran a game while reading the Erevus Cale books and made one of my PC's a chosen of Olidamarra in a game; it was his favorite character unsurprisingly, "The Seraph of Thieves"; I understand why he loved it so much, having his PC feel so beast. He even got an Olidamarra tattoo because of it.

Caldax Godelyl, Drow Rogue. It was a 4E game, and because of some things the DM pulled (like making all races look human with just a little but of differences and banning Elves and such) I made jim just to be crazy. Evil alignment bordering on Chaotic Fabulous. Gave no s$&%s. By the time he was killed by some Gricks (or Grells, can't remember, he was probably public enemy number one in several cities in the 'archepeligo empire' of the tieflings. Murdered folks for minor slights, robbed folks for lesser. Killed a bunch of youthful acolytes (in his defense, the act may have saved his party and the kids were worshipping Asmodeus...). Stole ancient relics, bought a pirate ship, forced a transformation potion down a sailor's throat just to see what would happen. Tried to murder a pawn shop owner, their pregnant daughter and her fiance (captain of the city guard). Twice!

Not including the many other crimes he's wanted for in just his background! And I only played him from level 4 to 6. Game tapered off after that when two of the players had to move. But one day, oh, one day he shall rise again!

That's my favorite submission yet, although I do have a penchant for liking evil characters (too much time as a GM). Most GM's would've had a fit lol, but yours seems to let thing get dark; it's all in fun though. Good character, mind if he shows up as a villain in my Kaer Maga game? They're learning to hate drow in it and he'd fit in awesomely.

I am also currently running a RotRL AE game and it is one of the very best AP's ever written; and would feel comfortable recommending it to anyone, especially someone interested in running a game for the first time as it is very iconic of what is so fun about the genre. It's very easy to run and is a great place to start. I would try to read as much rules as you can, but mainly just focus on the story. The biggest thing is to familiarize yourself with what rules are most likmely to be encountered during a session, if a bad guy has a spell, read the entry, if they have to climb, check it out (or skip it). A lot of the people talking about the daunting nature of the rules are meaning nuances or stuff that is rarely a problem, the rules IMO are very intuitive on most things, and never be shy from fudging it, just roll a dice, pretend to look at it and say "Yes".

Btw +10 points for even mentioning DragonLance around me; I LOVE them so much and it was my first experience to D&D.

Agreed on the win-win. My buddy used Thornkeep as his beginners area. It's somewhere in actual Golarion, but idk where and so far no real interference with the complicated stuff that we see. I really liked the simplistic approach of Thornkeep and I think that was the goal: for it to be simple but PF. I haven't actually found the MMO that it was supposed to be about, but it had that "old" magic to it, with the comforts of playing the game we all sat at the table to play. BTW it was ran by a first-time GM and newer player overall, and with using just the beginners rules, it went smoother than my games do sometimes.

I actually suggested to one of my players looking to run a game for the first time to run the Beginner Box set, he loved the idea because the rules were so daunting to him. He ran his first game the other day and it was a blast.

Oh and don't pass around class features that are the draw of playing a certain class to everyone at the party, such as trapfinding and sneak attack to every other class, and cleric's channel to full BAB pally's; these should be replaced with other abilities to keep the original classes as the sole beneficiary's of their abilities.

1st level characters are perfectly competent. the key to understanding this is to understand that "IRL" humans basically level cap at 6th.

For example the way I think about the game, a karate black belt is a 1st level commoner (or expert, or whatever) with improved unarmed strike and probably has a good dex score to boot (i.e. 12 to 13). An olympic level Judo-ka gold medalist probably has 2 to 3 levels of fighter and a very impressive array of physical stats (15 to 16). a legendary duelist and swordsman like Musashi was probably a 6th level fighter, one with an impressive ability array.

Player characters are routinely spectacular.

My opinion.

Totally agree. BTW epic handle, I lol'd after reading the name.

I want trade-off options, replaceable class features that could be swapped out, instead of the archetype system currently used.

Here's another point about knowing the rules, it's not like they came out yesterday. Pathfinder is a minor reworking of 3.5 which was a reworking of 3rd ed, we've been playing these games for years, if that's your main hobby over the last 10-15 years, it's not asking a lot to be familiar with the system. I have a group of about ten players, broke up over four games, one I play, one I run. I only allow the people I know I want in my game in mine, which is about five; and that's the best five players in my opinion. Some are too unfamiliar with the game, some are personalities I don't wish to spend hours around, some are just derps. But this "group" has been together for around six years, in that time they should have enough experience with the rules to at least make legal characters choices and know enough to be able to play; that's not asking too much. Like I said, the players I had the problems with, in roleplay and rollplay, were the ones who can't be bothered with the time it takes to be good. They put minimal effort into character creation, make retarded tactical decisions, can't RP, and it all boils down to the rules and knowing what they could do.

Jack Assery wrote:

I think the most often problem I see with GM's and encounter design is a lack of getting or even not knowing the rules. You can still challenge optimized characters, it just takes an understanding of the ruleset.

Translation: It takes more work on the part of the person who's doing the most work of all trying to keep the game running. He's in a competitive "rules eating" contest with someone who DOESN'T have to write up the NPC motivations, make sure that every character gets a chance to grab some spotlight time, and do all the prep needed to make combat worthwhile.

Sure, it's possible - but the optimizer is making things harder for the GM, and that's, at the very least, inconsiderate.

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Calling fluff or RP to challenge them is just bull crap. I also think that the perception of a player who is good within the ruleset is skewed, it doesn't make them bad RPers, hell knowing the rules is a huge time investment.

My experience is that people who spend time devouring rulebooks might be good roleplayers - but they usually tend to be a poor audience member when it isn't their turn to shine; they b@~#& about all the "wasted time" while the gnome alchemist talked the NPC around when, clearly, the party could've just stomped him into gnome mush.

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Maybe its just my group, but the ones I have trouble with in RP are the same one the aren't up on the rules. The ones that make bad feat selections do so because they don't understand, not flavor.

Because this hobby should be held for people who have time to absorb three college textbooks on how to play it?

Mechanics don't make your character unique. Your character's motives and personality make your character unique. Because of the premium that Pathfinder puts on optimization, there's a lot of emphasis on "builds" over "character."

Roleplaying is what happens when you play with other people. We all have terms for what happens when you play with yourself, and your favorite spreadsheet/Hero...

For the most part, I GM for my group, so me favoring optimization isn't inconsiderate at all. I've never had one problem with players who know the rules, they get the unenviable position of carrying the others in the group to make things less hard for me. I delegate rules lawyers in my game so I don't always have to check sheets and etc, so in that regard they're an added boon. Also when I play, I never compete, argue, rules lawyer, if I don't like their style I don't return to their game, I try to help in any way possible, keeping init tracked, taking extensive notes, even optimizers can be boon companions if you give them the opportunity. Also to the audience remark, how does knowing the rules make one a poor audience? My style of characters usually aren't the DPR guys, they're usually whatever the party needs most. Being a spotlight hog is something completely separate from optimizing, and if you encounter these people, I suggest talking to them privately; again this isn't a real mark against "roll-players", as a matter of fact, the spotlight hogs are usually the "face" types, and RP players usually cry about others taking the spotlight. Yes the rules are a massive beast to read, but credit where credit is due, bro; I don't understand how knowing the rules is a mark against you in your view. A lot of your perception of optimizers is patently false, your reasoning is fallacious. You gave examples of separate problems and just titled them optimizers, even though what you described isn't an optimizer.

Can someone tell me if this thread ever gets back on topic?

I kind of hate appeals to the GM's sense of "that was creative enough for me to fudge it", to me, it undermines the challenge the players are facing, and I've seen players in my own game try this out and try to use it as a crutch. To me, I'd rather someone try not to fluff me about how they can see in the dark or etcetera. Its too much like praying to the GM, like doing a rain dance or something. This is I guess what makes me new school also, I'm not going to allow someone to fluff past a challenge or fudge out of the rules; to me I want to see some goggle of nightvision if you want to see in the dark.

I think the most often problem I see with GM's and encounter design is a lack of getting or even not knowing the rules. You can still challenge optimized characters, it just takes an understanding of the ruleset. Calling fluff or RP to challenge them is just bull crap. I also think that the perception of a player who is good within the ruleset is skewed, it doesn't make them bad RPers, hell knowing the rules is a huge time investment. In my encounters with players who optimize, they're the RP backbone of the group, staying in character, coming up with real solutions, not just ones that appeal to the GM's sense of what's "creative enough" benchmark. Maybe its just my group, but the ones I have trouble with in RP are the same one the aren't up on the rules. The ones that make bad feat selections do so because they don't understand, not flavor.

Clerics: now have a paladin like code for their deity/alignment combo

BOOOO!!!!

I personally think the "change" has more to do with GMing style than the rules expansion. to me, the new rules are a net positive, we lost some creativity but got some nice rules for people to understand. The new combat (3rd ed style) was likewise better, more robust, even on a grid. The thing people "lost" was the impartial referee type, who prided himself on DESIGNING not DIRECTING; the older players might understand this but the newer players expect GM's to do this to a degree. I'm sadly a newer gamer in the sense that I'm not the impartial designer, my players hate those GM's; they call them reactionary or punisher GM's. They also have not been playing as long as me to see the magic of leaving the GM creativity in the design and playing the game as an impartial ref their to let them experience the world. The magic was left to the players in the old school GM's, they didn't fudge rolls for the players or the monsters, that was the trust. Now people can get butt-hurt over "the GM killed my PC" because it was entirely in the GM's arsenal to save them, or not have an OP encounter, and players expectations moved with, or rather gravitated to the new style. Players now play knowing the GM isn't impartial, and if something happens, the GM was ultimately culpable, the older players I've played with were usually more cautious and creative, newer players are more thematic and are more akin to actors, bolder, more brash, playing up to the GM's style. Put those new school players in a game with an old school GM and they will probably die and cry foul.