Jack Assery's page

I was playing a neat video game called Don't Starve and was wondering how pathfinder could capture the fun of that kind of game. Everything you encounter is a means of survival if properly handled, and there's as many ways to thrive as there is to perish. Is there some means to build that sort of game in Pathfinder? Many elements exist to try but it would take a lot of creating to make a world robust enough to turn the game into a survival one about the heroes and the wilderness. I'm hoping someone knows something I haven't seen or know about to make this kind of game. Are there any supplements on crafting from scratch and world building with those elements at the core?

Jack Assery wrote:

About one page per class, making up 1-2 archetypes and some option for others (rage powers only for barbarian, with only one good power with a level 6 and rp prerequisite). There is a couple options people think are good, like the mutagen fighter or exploit wizard, but it was mostly ineffectual.

So then the majority of the book is still the new classes? :( Sounds like I might just have to get the archetypes off of d20pfsrd or Nethys then... which is sad, I want to support Paizo when I can, but I just can't justify buying an entire book that I am going to more than likely completely ignore 90% of it.

I'm biased but I would not buy the book in hindsight, they made a lot of mistakes and didn't do much for the other classes. There is a few good thing but I would just let it come out on d20pfsrd. I'm like you, I just wanted new options for existing classes, although I was a little excited for new stuff; they just put in the minimal effort into this one.

About one page per class, making up 1-2 archetypes and some option for others (rage powers only for barbarian, with only one good power with a level 6 and rp prerequisite). There is a couple options people think are good, like the mutagen fighter or exploit wizard, but it was mostly ineffectual.

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.

I just want to hear something from someone, I'm the last guy who wants to be that guy, but I am disappointed with a inferior release. It's 250 pages filled with... well filler. What happened in the editing process? Why were have such inferior options included in as far as the archetypes and feats and etc? Who is doing quality control?

Well it's good to see you guys can address flame wars but I am curious as to how you guys are addressing some of the problems with the book?

I know that there is a little powerful options, but you have to sift through sheer tons of junk to find them.

I'm just hedging my bets at the moment, this downtick is very bad timing with the quality and care going into 5E trying outright to win us back. I love Pathfinder, and I'm not into the edition wars thing, I just want a system to play that is right for me; I want to be able to have a system which is creative and until next year I feel "chained" down with tons of stuff that doesn't appeal to me. You are right though, this is forgivable but my first night with this book gave me buyers remorse. I'm not bailing just yet, but I literally cannot afford to make bad purchases, and my confidence is severely damaged. I'm sure I will find a more measured response later, but this is my knee-jerk reaction.

Everything said, it's not a complete loss, I can totally agree that some options are good, just that it's too far in few within the pages. Like I said, make the options good and viable; don't be afraid to make good feats, archetypes, classes, etcetera; I just get so tired of seeing these ineffectual choices. I stated earlier I thought reckless rage was great, and it is kind of, but it is situational, useable only with rage, worse than power attack, doesn't scale with level and I don't even know if reckless abandon even works with it (although I assume it does).

Jack Assery wrote:

*** 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.

***

Yeah, the archetypes in this book continually leave me perplexed. Some of them are really cool options that have needed to exist for a while now, like the Bolt Ace. Others are weird (like the Blade Adept which is apparently specifically intended for Eldritch Knights?), and some are just bad (like the Feral Hunter), or were poorly edited and reconstructed during development (looking at you Ecclesitheurge).

Even the really good ones I have a hard time thinking of as original, like the Vanguard, who cuts out the skill bonuses of the Slayer and replaces them with an upgraded version of the Cavalier's Tactician.

Hmmm...
That may be my biggest hang-up. It feels like the best executed archetypes are the ones that really should have been slam-dunks anyway and didn't require a lot of ingenuity to bring together. These need to be in there and should and do form the backbone of the materials. But all of the really new or original archetypes fall flat, either due to editing, balance, or some other issue. Feral Hunter should have and could have been really good, but instead it gutted the best and most original features of the Hunter class replacing them with mediocre to poor options that look like they were edited by someone who hadn't actually read through the Hunter recently. What we were left with was a poor man's druid where we could have had something really cool.

Exactly my point, I'm all for options but make every option viable. Where is the quality control? I can see someone in the editors office taking a black pen to half of the options just because they aren't good enough to be printed in a book. The sheer amount of useless feats, bland bonuses, small bumps to things is just bad. Another thing: why does rogue lose trapfinding for almost every archetype? Some teams still pick rogues to have a "trap guy" and it seems counter-intuitive to just gut it for any substantial change.

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".

Jack Assery wrote:

would point out that this paladin had no idea what spell was being cast or how powerful said spell was. Also I disagree that only powerful spell casters casting spells are a clear threat; please tell that to the hordes of dead goblins and kobalds of gaming history. A spell being cast by an unknown caster for an unknown purpose, can be viewed as a threat, and rightfully so; what happens if that spell was a save-or-lose? As an example, if you came upon a market-place and someone is arguing and one goes for his component pouch and begins intoning a spell, what would you think that spell is, bless? If you had one standard action to do, would you just wait and see?

To some extent, the answer is YES. The job of a Paladin is not to smite the citizenry when he' not sure of the situation. And that means putting yourself in a bit of a risk. Because that's what you are. You are in TOWN dealing with citizenry. Which mean different rules apply. When you start viewing them in the exact same way as monsters in a dungeon, then you are a PROBLEM, no matter what your class is.

The Paladin in question would be headed for a fall in my game, not because of what he fights, but because he's clearly losing sight of what he's supposed to be fighting for.

To my point, casting a spell AT someone is a hostile act, especially in the context given; even if the spell was charm person to get them to cool down, the point stands. A paladin acting in a moment's notice could hardly be blamed for splattering someone for casting a spell AT them. Being a citizen does not make the matter any different than the orc in a 10x10ft room, that only changes the setting; hell even the hypothetical orc hasn't provoked him like she did. So we established that she was evil, hostile, a criminal; what exactly more did he need?

I am actually pretty harsh but in the other direction, they HAVE to move against evil. If the paladin in this scenario would have done nothing, he would have surely fell. I get that you don't agree that paladins have any authority, I am sure many would agree, but I feel that most goodish cities would allow the paladin to "hunt". The weight of their church might be a factor, the outlook of said city etcetera. I would totally agree that a paladin in a place such as Cheliax for instance would be granted no authority to go about a paladins business, but most places would to some extent.
You probably didn't mean anything by it, and I am by no means offended, but I take some exception to you saying I allow paladin greater clemency; I feel that paladins are called to fight evil, not coax it, not bicker with it, not arrest it. Sure some sub-sects of paladins might be focused on granting mercy, but that's an exception not a rule. Not every time someone is killed in a city is an unjustified murder or example of excessive force, sometimes a PC is justified in acting swiftly and finally. I do agree that we view paladins different, yet I look at the entry and feel completely justified with my interpretation, also it seems to be (in my opinion) far superior in terms of allowing players to have fun. Paladin is not a "no fun" sentence some GM's view it as, and my only real complaint of the OP would be being a paladin in a game that the GM didn't know what a paladin of Torag would do and got his PC in trouble.

Mine is just one of the cooler ones that I saw in my opinion. The mean eyes contrasted with the colorful hair and face paint makes it feel really good; kind of a Ledger Joker feel to it. I don't even remember what AP it's from, just that I sought it out specifically and hoped they had it available. I know my handle comes from my favorite character I played, kind of the Old Man Jenkins of our game table, a Halfling rogue named Jack Assery, or the
Jack of Asses as he was later called.
I don't know what either say about me but I am curious.

Jack Assery wrote:

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 Paladin who can't moderate his responses between passivity and all out assault has quite frankly, a problem. Yes, she cast a spell. Spells by themselves ARE NOT that big a deal, unless...

I would point out that this paladin had no idea what spell was being cast or how powerful said spell was. Also I disagree that only powerful spell casters casting spells are a clear threat; please tell that to the hordes of dead goblins and kobalds of gaming history. A spell being cast by an unknown caster for an unknown purpose, can be viewed as a threat, and rightfully so; what happens if that spell was a save-or-lose? As an example, if you came upon a market-place and someone is arguing and one goes for his component pouch and begins intoning a spell, what would you think that spell is, bless? If you had one standard action to do, would you just wait and see?

@Hamas "Whoever they think deserves it" is a far cry from what happened, an evil person after being found guilty of a crime and being told to surrender, started casting a spell. He acted in defense, asking a PC to run to the city watch after combat has started is ridiculous, no offense intended. In my opinion, the GM should have made it to where he could have had the chance to either go to the guard or have a peaceful solution if he was not happy with her getting smited while casting a spell. I am fully cognizant that maybe the other PC's were trying something and maybe the pally spoiled it by being so blunt, but in the split second of "she begins casting a spell, what do you do?", I believe the OP is fully justified.
As for the paladin having no authority, I would disagree; he is given authority by the gods to find and fight evil, an authority which most cities would recognize. He was also granted further authority by Silver Crusade to investigate the matter, to which in the course of the investigation he found damning evidence, which also intersects with his duty to fight evil. Sending a paladin to do a city watch job would most likely end in this manner, although I would argue that the watch might have been in for a nasty surprise once she started casting spells.
I would also argue that no real authority is necessary to end someone you are arresting once they start casting spells.

In my games, only the foolhardy or the absolute best would even try to trick or hide in plain sight against a paladin; doubly so if she was an actual high wisdom class such as a cleric. Paladins are noted for being able to root out evil and sense evil motives, it's their thing. Were I running the game and the lady knew a paladin was on her tail, she would have been laying low, or if she was caught by you, would have either went hostile or threw herself at the mercy of the rest of the party.
In my games people treat paladins with explicit respect and implicit fear, especially neutral NPC's. They might fear meeting the paladins knowing gaze; and seeing all of their little evils reflected in those eyes which see altogether too much. The people would fear saying the wrong thing, or be seen doing something wrong. On the other hand, evil NPC's would have heard the tales and made themselves real scarce, knowing that any contact with the paladin will eventually lead to one of them falling. They would have excuses for being absent, their not being able to meet with the PC's, using underlings to try to stop them from ever locking eyes with such a powerful weapon of good and law. Not every NPC is this smart but most evil people have heard of paladins.

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.

Agreed, essentially a high level fighter is a really good one-trick pony. Not to start a flame war but the rogue has it even worse, you need everything to line up like an eclipse before they are even effective.

In light of PF Unchained, my hopes are soaring high at the moment; all I wanted was a rogue that was vaguely playable and now I'm hearing that several other classes are getting tuned up as well. I really hope this is the book I have been hoping for, but I'm sure everyone will find something missing. Personally, I never felt fighters were under-powered, just a bit lacking in flavor and needing ridiculous feats to even make an attept at one good feat.

I have to wait for it to hit the shelves, but it sounds like it is awesome, though a definite power-creep. How is the feats, if any of you subscribers are willing to divulge? I always loved looking at feats first, then items so I can start figuring on NPC builds.

I really do need to invest in some index cards just to try them out while it is back to school season; I've never tried them but it sounds so essential to so many that I feel like I'm missing out.

It often does end mid-fight in my experience, and man I've had to retcon entire fights because of bad book-keeping or some other issue, and just start the thing over. I love the creative aspect to writing and even approaching writing adventures; it's good to see that others do as well, I look at table-time as sort of an unveiling of the mad creation I came up with. Over the years I've had some good, others not so much, but it's fun to see the players interact. The time constraint is somewhat of a bummer from time to time, but we always plot and scheme for next time.

For as prepared as I am at the table, I usually go by my internal clock for pacing; my players have made comments to the effect that it feels either high octane or foreboding. I probably have two ways of describing events: visceral or emotive; and that's the cards I play, it's frenetic fight-for-your-life combat punctuated by a dread of the unknown. I usually write out read aloud texts beforehand but sometimes I can embellish on the fly. The thing is that I as a GM don't really keep a clock on what time we stop, and leave that to my buddies by how long their personal time constraints allow them to play; I usually have far more prepared than is necessary thankfully. Thing is that I only do a small amount of high level games and the players get real slowed down if we do play high level; my last game was 14th level and lasted two encounters during the whole play session, minus the backdrop and inn stuff.

I'm playing a CN Barbarian built like Guts from Berserk; a real mean dude, with a large adamantine greatsword. We're in Nirmathis trying to get close to the cult of Razmir; and the brain of our group comes up with the plan to split us into three groups:
-the rest joins the cult
-the fighter and I join the town guard
- the rogue is "the wildcard"
and we all leave notes with the innkeep. I join the guard no problem, but need to make a name for myself quick to get selected by the cult. The rest of the party join with few surprises; meanwhile the "wildcard" is furiously scribbling notes and passing it to the GM. So the night they all go to the admission ceremony thing, I skip my duty and "guard" the front of the establishment. I see my friends drugged and carried into a secret tunnel. At this point my PC sees two things: the "wildcard" casing the cult's establishment, and a barfight break out across the street. I run over to the barfight and start beating up all the participants; some lady screams, I punch her too. The guards come over and try to calm me down, I notice our "wildcard" just slipped over the wall, gotta buy more time; I start beating up the guards who "were preventing me from stopping street violence". It cuts to the "wildcard", after it gets back to me the scene is over, except for me seeing some masked cultists avidly watching my show I put on; guards that should've been watching the wall. I get back to the inn, leave a message for the "wildcard" about the secret tunnel, wake up and head into the guard barracks, the chief wanted to see me. Inside was all the guards I beat up, the chief and they were all glowering at me; also was a masked cultist. The chief looks at the paper in his hands, the tightens his fist around it, it has the Razmiran seal on it; he says "I was going to have you hanged today, but your 'showing' last night must have impressed the right people; you're being reassigned to the church of Razmir.". So now I'm in the church, but I'm not being watched like the new acolytes are; I have a run of the place, except for then 2nd floor. Meanwhile the "wildcard" has made his way in as well; he took out one of the higher ups and is disguised as him. Our mastermind player is part of the "helpless" acolytes and never had to lift a finger yet; I recently smuggled him his spell component pouch though so things are looking good.

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.

Thanks fellas, I do have GURPS on a pdf file somewhere and might check it out; but a new system would be rough, not for just me but players as well. I might have to just scrap the idea or just make the idea of a dark souls game more in line with the traditional rules of PF; because we are all heavily invested in PF. I can see the validity of the point that it's very class-based, almost inextricable; but I do wish to try and figure it out. I have made most of the areas, monsters and story already using standard PF rules and could run it vanilla PF no problem; I was just hoping to give a more free-form experience to my players without just abandoning the system we're all several hundreds of dollars into.

Thanks for the compliment Mark, it's very much appreciated, as the example I gave was vague and wasn't the best. Funny story: the whole knight storyline came off of my inability to make this Lord I spoke of stand out at all, so I started making the Legend of his greatest knight, and then I felt (because the theme of the game is exploring the ruins of this kingdom that fell) that it wasn't the whole story, so I made the legend and then did revisionist history of it, coming to what I described. It's a sidetrek, just to shed insight into the state of real affairs; but it netted me a dungeon, a princess, four knights (I know I only described three but I like to compile loose threads for later), an area, fully lored out items and characters, and some insight into where I was stuck, namely the Lord.

One of the biggest problems I can see coming is that some classes just aren't comparative to each other, meaning some are just flat out better objectively and so it might be a balancing issue.

You might be right, yet I want to give it a try. I just see options that could and should be completely reasonable but locked behind a class "door" that you can't open without a super-heavy investment to get there, and getting there means falling behind on something far more important to the concept such as channeling or sneak attack. So such concepts can never be done or must be done poorly to work. My intent is similar to maybe the quiggong monk concept of a list of stuff you can have, just broadened to everyone. It does sound labor intensive, but that's really just the making of the list, once I have the formula of what exactly a level breaks down to I can work off of that principle and then the only work is list compiling. I think most of it will be rather intuitive after the level breakdown is done.

I'm sure there exists some formulae that ties into leveling, and it would just be a bit of deconstruction to break it down to the formula so the players can freely choose what exact abilities they want.

I'm thinking it would just be heavy on the prerequisites, and maybe point tie in; as in you get X points to spend on your BAB, saves, spellcasting and class abilities, but are free to choose where to allocate those points.

I want to run a dark souls type game, but really don't want to run in a new system, but rather remove classes from the system itself and award class-based Perks at each level, and trying to grade them.
Ok, so I've noticed the relative power of class powers are tied to BaB, it seems like 3/4 really get the cream of the abilities (opinion). Do you guys think a tree based system would be possible where you could buy class abilities or would it just hopelessly break the game? Any help would be greatly appreciated and if I could somehow make it a classless system I would make it a free pdf for anyone interested in trying it.

I used to run the same way, and it seemed my players preferred it, but a potential bugaboo popped up for me; namely if something does go wrong, is it unfair to pull back and say "dem's the dice"? In other words, they know you intervened before, and they might want to resort to that if all else fails, and get angry or feel cheated if something bad happens and you don't intervene. It's all in what you guys want out of the game though, but that's why I just started letting the dice dictate the action. Players still get mad (last session a guy was yelling at his die 20), but not at me.

The all dwarf/underdark thing sounds fun.

SCP is good, but it's a derivative of creepypasta's which imo are really good ideas to look at for inspiration.

Maybe I read that wrong, I reread it and I didn't see the actual use of the domain, but check it out and see what you think.

But essentially it gives you a domain for a trait, a great value; plus use of it's 1st level spell for added value.

http://www.archivesofnethys.com/TraitDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Touched%20by%20D ivinity Not sure if your GM is going to let you have it lol

I know I always do the small stuff like writing a backstory for someone or an item or place to start, that leads into maybe a theme or something to build off of. I'm making a prison in a graveyard that was meant for a knight, thought to be a his grave but really a prison made for his betrayal of his Lord; his legend was preserved while he was really imprisoned for his love of the Lord's daughter. I was stuck, so I started making surviving NPC's that knew the knight, his fellow three other Lord Knights; and made some interesting conclusions: another knight loved him but she knew that he had eyes only for the princess, while his brother loved the knight who loved him. That was interesting but didn't lead to much, until I went and started making the prison where he was tormented, and driven to the abyss; his place of torment was twisted by his eventual darkening of spirit, twisting his captors into abyssal versions of themselves. He lies deep below, in an Iron Maiden, revisiting his pain upon those who dared to ruin him. All that together made me envision a failed attempt at his rescue by the two knights mentioned earlier, which culminated in a dire betrayal of them; he had a choice, escape in a shattered body and mind, or to embrace the darkness and truly repay his captives. It lead to a lot of extra lore and new NPC's being introduced which will give the scene more impact. I just wanted to share an example to illustrate my process, it's not a great example I know, but hopefully it helped.

A dip into cleric gives strength domain. Gauntlets of skilled maneuver give a bonus for CMB strength. I might be able to come up with more.