Joe Homes's page

Joe Homes wrote:

I have found that a character picking a new class out of nowhere typically indicates that the player's attention is on optimization rather than on who the character is.

Or that who the character is is shaped in part by the player's optimization. There's no wrong way brossif.

Exactly. Which is why I reserve the right to disallow it, but have rarely exercised that right. In fact, I think that just having the threat hanging over their heads has made my players more likely to think in story terms about how their characters become who they are...multiple times, a character who has wanted to multiclass into something like warpriest has made it a personal quest to go find an instructor in a temple, or to meditate until achieving enlightenment, etc.

YMMV, but I've found that even though that hurdle is a bit annoying, the players feel way better about their identities than in games where they can just say "okay, I'm a warpriest now."

*sees a beautiful crossbow across the room*
"OOH, I want that!"

*sees the swinging blade trap attached to the crossbow*
*looks at Valeros*
"...You go get it."

You offer them limitless power*. You offer them immortality*. You offer them tons of gold*...

I love it!

A life eternal*!

*Defined herein as the time from the time of signing until the moment of Signer's bodily death (natural or otherwise). Signer agrees that time is subjective and cannot be meaningfully measured independently of signer's capacity to observe, and that therefore any reference to a time after signer's death (natural or otherwise) is meaningless and arbitrary, and that Signer hereby waives all rights to exist, live, or especially litigate during any such period such as may exist due to unthinkable paradoxes or the natural order of the universe. Neither Signee nor Signee's agents shall have any obligation to attempt to extend Signer's life (natural or otherwise) through any effort, expense, or investment of any sort, nor shall they be bound to refrain from efforts, actions, or thoughts that may be deemed deleterious, harmful, dangerous, or lethal to Signer.
In the event of Signer's undeath, resurrection, or other return to life or demi-life of any kind (natural or otherwise), Signer acknowledges Signee's claim to and shall make every effort to remit to Signee any soul restored to Signer by any applied revivication process whatsoever, in accordance with this agreement. Signer agrees not to rise as an undead under the control of any creature except Signee, and only then at Signee's behest.

---

The Signee hereby agrees to undertake one single, solitary desire of The Signer, the scope of said desire being The Signer's choice...

Ok, great! but what about:

Signee agrees to undertake one single, solitary desire of the Signer, the scope and nature of which shall be defined by the Signee and agreed upon between the Signee and any of the Signee's agents prior to undertaking. Such agreement shall be final and binding, and all parties agree that Signer probably doesn't know what Signer wants to begin with, so it's best this way.

I'm starting an evil campaign soon, and my character is a diabolist in the soul trade. His gimmick is to scam others into assigning him their souls—usually for marginal or nonexistent payment—and then re-sell those contracts at a markup to whoever's buying. (I've cleared this with the GM and the group.)

I'd like to write an actual contract—not an Infernal Contract, per se (since no devil is a party to the agreement), but one that my character will scam NPCs into signing, which forfeits their souls. Of course, I'd like this to be full of humor, confusing clauses, and almost-nonsensical legalese. I can't be the first person to write one of these, but I can't find anything of this kind on the boards.

What are your ideas for clauses to include? Better yet, are there pre-existing contracts out there somewhere that I might use as a launching pad?

(EDIT: I know there's an Infernal Contract in Book of the Damned 1, but that one is geared toward giving a whole bunch of power to the mortal—I'm trying to get souls for NOTHIN'!)

It's a 2-foot-by-4-foot sack. You could get a basketball into a hole that wide... or a smallish person, for that matter. If you're imagining a little belt pouch, you've got it wrong.

But yes, your GM is correct, if you can't fit it through the bag's opening, you can't put it in the bag. There are already enough shenanigans with bags of holding that this limit is fair.

I fudge dice rolls to save PCs when I feel it serves the story well.

Me too. Although I think I've never taken mercy on a PC and not come to regret it. My GMing journey has been one long story of gradually losing empathy for the PCs, and I think my games are more fun because of it.

In general, I agree that the base assumption of most campaign worlds is that if you are slain in battle, whoever bested you has the right to take your stuff. Like maritime laws of salvage, looting your slain foes is just the law of the land, and thus would be a neutral act. Some particularly lawful characters might even say it's their duty to ensure that the slain person's belongings are put to good use, or back into the economy, or whatever.

You're not really expected to bury your enemies, but you are certainly allowed to take their stuff.

If I were GMing this game and wanted to let my good-aligned PCs feel better about looting, I'd plant something personal, like a silver locket with pictures of the dead combatant's family, on one of the bad guys. That way, the PCs can choose to hawk it, but if they could reasonably return the locket to the family, they would have that option (the bad guy would need to have dog tags or something). I wouldn't punish them for selling it (again, neutral act), but it would certainly be a nice opportunity to RP a good alignment.

I like the game my couple dozen pages of house rules and homebrew material have turned it into.

Same! For me, it's as much a rules sandbox as a rules system!

1. I believe that the character first encountering the Maggot Swarm fights only the copy she encounters. The other two characters at the Canyon must each fight TWO Maggot Swarms, once from the original Maggot Swarm's power and once from the Canyon's power. The summoned Maggot Swarms can't cause more to be summoned.

2. To avoid shuffling a Maggot Swarm into the location deck, you need to beat by 4 only the card that came from the location deck. The other cards came from the box, and to the box they shall return.

Anybody in or around Starfall should be able to tell the PCs that the Technic League security on the mountain is VERY tight, and there is almost certainly no way to get in undetected—and that unauthorized excursions to Silver Mount are highly illegal and punished harshly.

If the PCs take that as a challenge, great! If they manage to make it into the mountain, Unity notifies Ozmyn—Increase their Notoriety in Starfall to 5 or 10. Once the PCs realize they're outclassed within the mountain, they'll find a Starfall whose authorities—and underground—are itching to meet them. The next time they try to get into the mountain, security has doubled.

They won't have the experience of working their way up from unknowns, but they'll have made their choice to jump right onto the Technic League's radar.

Flavor text of Jaunt Boots. "They can be worn up to mid-thigh, or have their cuffs turned down to make knee-high boots."

Great item, AND so fashion forward.

There's a reason for this, actually! Though folded-down boots rapidly became a mere fashion accessory for the gentry, the original idea was that the cuffs could be rolled up during a duel to protect the combatant's delicate knee joints.

Powers:

- You may reveal a card with the Whip trait to move.
- You may discard a card with the Firearm trait to immediately succeed at your check to defeat a monster.
- If you are at a location with a character with the Female trait, add 1d6 to your check.

-Add the Swashbuckling trait to every check.

By the way, my favorite puzzle in a game went like this (I was a player):

The key to exit the room was under a brass-and-glass case on a pedestal in the center of a tall room with three windows. From each window was streaming a colored beam of light: Yellow from one, Red from another, and Blue from the last. Between each pair of windows hung a tapestry in the secondary colors mixing the two windows colors: a green tapestry between the yellow and blue windows, a purple tapestry between the blue and red windows, etc.
Finally, at the back of the room was a statue with huge gems in its eyes. These gems were easily removed and acted as focusing prisms, allowing one to stand in the light from one of the windows, hold a gem aloft, and direct the resulting beam of colored light anywhere in the room.

The solution? The glass case was unlocked. All we had to do was go pick the key up. Still took us 15 minutes to solve, but we had a great time combining light until someone thought to try the case.

YES, puzzles can work! They can they can they can!
That said, there are a lot of pitfalls that GMs frequently run afoul of when mixing RPGs with puzzles, and they can make the experience a bad one, so go forward carefully or not at all.

You have to let the characters breathe in a puzzle encounter. Just like in any RPG encounter, you must avoid forcing a single course of action—something that puzzles do by default. This is why they're so unpopular on this thread, and why they're so dangerous for GMs who go in unprepared for PCs to act like PCs.

Here's how a typical puzzle encounter goes, and how it crushes player agency: The GM describes the puzzle; within that description lies the answer (however many layers down); the players analyze the description, parrot the answer to the GM, and are allowed to continue.
You'll notice here that at no point do the players or characters make any choices. Even actions such as "let's try pulling these two levers" aren't really choices in the RP sense, because such actions reflect the desire to "get it right," not to act like a character would. It doesn't matter what kind of character you are or what your character would do—your GM has mandated that this is what your character does.

How To Avoid Crappy Puzzle Encounters
So, first of all, ALWAYS ensure that there is a method of bypassing the puzzle, and be open to creative methods of getting around it. Disable Device on the door/lock is a good place to start, but allow almost ANYTHING the PCs decide to try to affect the environment to some degree. Giving your PCs the genuine choice of whether to engage the puzzle on its terms is as important to your game's RP quality as offering the choice of whether to charge in to battle or set an ambush for a combat encounter.

Second, and this flows from the first point, don't be precious. That's a big lesson to learn for GMs in every environment, but especially during a puzzle encounter. You may have concocted an elegant solution based on your setting, which requires the PCs to re-enact the legend of the wooing of the ancient dragon prince or some such, but you probably have a surly dwarf in the party who just wants to get on bashing things, and suggests using the dragon prince statue as a battering ram to bust on ahead. This is where many GMs get offended at the player's lack of respect and are tempted to strike the PC with lightning, or worse, say "you can't move the statue." Other flavors of this include "there is no other way out," "there are no other items nearby," and "nothing happens." "Nothing happens" is the worst thing you can say during a puzzle encounter, because it means the PCs don't have any actual control over their environment, and thus their choices don't matter. As soon as a player gets a whiff of that, she will tune out exactly as described in other posts on this thread. GMs who require that the players land on the "right" solution end up with empty tables... even when it's a puzzle, and there really IS only one right solution.

Finally, remember that you have more power over the PCs during a puzzle encounter than at any other time. Puzzles rely EXCLUSIVELY on your descriptions, and omitting a clue that a PC could reasonably have discovered is very frustrating and a big no-no. Don't put crucial information behind skill checks that might fail—languages nobody in the party can read, or a lock that can't be bypassed, or some such. The players should have all the information they need when they get to the puzzle, and a few extra hints as well.

So basically, allow your lovely, perfect, elegant puzzle to be completely smashed to pieces, or bypassed in a stupid way, or generally just completely misinterpreted. Don't make it too hard, and never, ever, ever allow yourself to force the "one solution" philosophy on the PCs.

You accept burn as a cost of using your ability, so the burn and all associated bonuses are already in effect when your ability manifests.

My group loves riddles, but I agree that they need to be done right. Here's my outline for a good riddle encounter:

For each riddle, write not only the main riddle ahead of time, but also 3–4 hints, getting progressively more obvious.

1. Hand the players the riddle, and have them read it aloud. Give them time to discuss the riddle, and maybe try one or two solutions if they come up with something quickly. During this time, shut the heck up except to describe their physical surroundings if they ask.

2. If there's no motion within 2 minutes or so, have them lean on their characters by rolling Knowledge checks, Wisdom checks, Perception checks, whatever. For each successful check, give them the next hint in your queue, but only one hint per minute or so. This mechanically represents a character suddenly remembering something about the lore of the dungeon, or the sigil on someone's armor last week, or any number of details that the characters might remember (but the players, let's be honest, probably don't). It's best if you use a few different skills for each hint so the whole party can get involved.

3. If the players still haven't divined the answer after you've given them all the hints, the next character to succeed at a check solves the riddle.

You can add or remove hints based on your players' patience and love of puzzles, but this gives players a chance to feel clever while also having a good chance to get through the encounter.

Of course, if there's no risk, there's no reward, so don't be afraid to punish wrong answers—a sprung trap, a boon withheld, a monster spawned, etc.

I'm one of the fudgy GMs. My encounters are designed to be beaten, and it takes a good deal of bad luck before I'm willing to say that a character dies. I usually aim to have the PCs win, but juuuuust barely—I still want them fearing for their lives.

That said, I also have a lot of power gamers in my group, and I'm frequently surprised by just how easy they find my "challenges." So I've learned to try to overestimate them by bumping the assumed APL up by one or two when planning my encounters.

Often this ends up right in the sweet spot, but sometimes I realize after a fight has started that the PCs are way overmatched. So I empathize with an inexperienced GM who doesn't realize the danger until after the encounter has begun.

At that point, my reaction is usually to say something like "Hey, you are all welcome to stay and fight, but you should know that this encounter is much tougher than normal." If I can give them a warning and a chance to run, I'll let them die if they choose to stay and fight. The trick is to make sure everyone realizes the danger. If you can do that with in-game description, great. But it's better to break the fourth wall for a moment than to have death suddenly spring upon the players.

For me, the solution to killing a PC "fairly" is giving the PC a few rolls to try and avoid the fate. I killed my player's bloodrager last night, but only after he failed a disarm check and a few other AoOs to disable the baddie... Then the big bad rolled a crit with her bow, and that was it. If the player has rolled only once in the whole encounter before dying (including saves and AoOs), it's going to feel like she didn't have a chance. But there'll be no bad blood if she rolled three attacks and missed (or worse, hit and failed to take the bad guy down, and chose not to run away from a clearly superior foe).

Personally, I allow it in my home game, but in the absence of an official ruling, I wouldn't risk it for PFS.

I treat Dragon Disciple as having been written without the forethought that non-sorcerer characters may gain a draconic bloodline. I have a similar reading of the Taunt feat, which would by RAW not combine with the use of any effect of the form "when you use Intimidate to demoralize an opponent..."
Sometimes rules just get written without full thought toward forward-and-backward compatibility, so if these kinds of conflicts come up, I try to figure out what abuse the rule was trying to prevent, and abide by that, but otherwise allow reasonable flexibility there.

If rules are getting in the way of fun, it's time to change the rules, imo.

That sounds a bit like Zyphus, he's never plotting any big evil, although the plots are typically murderous, given that the "accidents" are supposed to be lethal, but he's never about absolute power or widespread mayhem.

Came here to suggest this. Seconding Zyphus. His full writeup can be found in Pathfinder #89: Palace of Fallen Stars. Accidental deaths are most pleasing to him, but petty inconveniences—especially those that cause harm—are also in his wheelhouse.

As an example, one of his holidays is "The Day of Gritted Teeth," which basically revolves around punking pharasmin priests in petty ways.

Though this is not an official ruling, I'm abusing the fact that Mark is sitting right next to me, and he says that the linked FAQ doesn't allow Double Slice to work for the rogue.

Well, let me tell you what I did, and how it worked. (And yes, I am a HUGE Cad Bane fan.)

Against my party of six 5th-level PCs, I sent a team of three:

Their goal was to fill a bounty on one of the PCs, which meant a kidnapping. Here's how I did it.

I wanted the PCs to feel totally outclassed in the encounter, because I knew that my players would never let one of their own go unless there was no other option (and I wanted to set up a strong rivalry for later, to make them really hate this guy). My gunslinger PC got a x4 crit on the kasatha, and his face was priceless when the bounty hunter just shrugged off the hit and disappeared.

My plan is to have the kasatha recur as a villain (and possibly an occasional ally) throughout the PCs' careers, coming back with more and more cybertech as the PCs level up. He'll probably replace his missing arm with a cyber arm for next time, as well as a new cybernetic eye to replace the one the gunslinger shot out.

I love the bounty hunter idea! He/She could even take up a recurring role troughs the entire AP. When you say Cad Baine-like, do you mean character and personality wise or the fact that he's an alien? Or both I suppose. I like the idea of an alien bounty hunter pulling from Cad Baine and maybe even a little from The X-Files' Alien Bounty Hunter. If you expanded on this you could make him/her/it a doppelgänger...Or perhaps just a hulking cyborg...or may—now you've got me going! :P Man I love this idea!

Kasatha with cybernetics and spellcasting, I'm thinking. (He'll need escape spells, otherwise the bloodrager will pin him, the gunslingers will fill him with lead, and my great recurring character will end up dead in 3 rounds.)

My players just ran through the haunted valley, and I ended up stealing Solomani's Many-As-One plot hook when I realized that an entire room (area P3) was essentially empty. I let the bloodrager lick the Numerian fluids there to give him temporary telepathy, which then attracted the rat king, who was scattered around Scrapwall. Many-As-One formed and addressed the PCs more or less as Solomani described. The bloodrager was the only one who could communicate with the rats (off-the-cuff table ruling), and the translation errors were pretty hilarious.

One of my PCs loves animal buddies, so I'm planning on giving her a psychic rat from among Many-As-One as a familiar once they complete the quest (in addition to the commune boon, which will be a godsend since my players never think to use divinations).

In addition, I ended up turning the entire dungeon on its side, so the entry pointed up into the sky and the characters had to lower themselves down into it. I built a rough map out of shoeboxes that I cut and taped together in about an hour. The players responded pretty well to the gimmick. The battle with the skeletal technicians was especially awesome; enemies were dropping from the tanks above or climbing up from below, and the players had fun jumping from tank to tank.

You're kinder than I am. I'd have made his shot trigger the low-intensity radiation field as described in Meyanda's battle plans—bet he wasn't exactly expecting that!

Falling unconscious next to that generator led to my first (and so far, only) PC death.

Something that doesn't seem to have been brought up is the value of friendly NPCs (or GMPCs—the line between the two can get blurry) as red-shirt teaching tools. As DM Blake was saying, it can be hard to teach the players lessons without killing them... so have the NPCs pay the ultimate tuition.

This works especially well if the PCs already know and trust the NPCs. If you're going to kill off your cleric, don't just take her out—use her death as a teaching tactic. Have her get in over her head in a zerg rush, then give them a "fly, you fools!" moment right before she gets murderized. Or have her fall prey to a trap that they should have been watching out for.

Since Pathfinder is so often a mix of players of different skill levels, one of the main ways players learn what is and isn't possible is by watching their other players. If you as a GM want to teach them that scouting missions might be a good idea, or that you can take a withdraw action without actually retreating from combat, or that you can use cover and terrain to your advantage, or any number of other things, show them it's possible by having your NPCs set an example!

I adore GMPCs for this reason, as my newer players need someone to watch and learn from sometimes. If I know I have a new player, I make an NPC with a few similar class features, just to show them what can be done. The Advanced Class Guide classes are great for this now, since I can show a ranger a few tricks with a hunter or slayer without directly stepping on their toes.

The caveat is that you HAVE to get rid of the NPC, otherwise the PCs will start getting overshadowed. Give your tutorial NPC a maximum of 2 sessions of combat and example out-of-combat encounters before either having her bail on the party and return to town as a standard NPC or die in an especially educational way.

For those who are interested, here is my stat block and verbatim homebrew rules for the settlement.

SCRAPWALL
CN Small Town
Qualities: Notorious, Anarchic
Crime +6; Lore +1; Law –7; Corruption +4; Economy –4; Society –4
Danger +30
Purchase Limit = 7,500*(Scrapworth/10)
Base Price = 1,300*(Scrapworth/10)

•The base price can be exceeded (up to 2,000) by succeeding at a Diplomacy check (DC = 10 + (10 – Scrapworth) + (1 per 500gp by which your current limit is exceeded).

•This check is modified by Scrapwall’s Society stat (–4), unless you’re asking someone who is already friendly or helpful to get the item for you. Offering a bribe of at least 1/10 the requested item’s value instead modifies this check by Scrapwall’s Corruption stat (+4).

•It takes 1d2 days to procure the item, and there is a 30% chance that someone tries to rob the guy getting it for you, taking either the money or the item. The mugging doesn’t auto-succeed, but you might have to go get your property back.

• Exceeding the base price for your Scrapworth means flashing around more tech/cash than you have a reputation for being able to defend, so there is a cumulative +10% chance of random encounters for the next 24 hours for each transaction that exceeds your base price.

• Gold is valued at 1/10 its usual value. Silverdisks are valued at half their value (5 effective gp). Gear is traded at full value (not half, as usual), though there is a limit to how many daggers and studded leather armors one guy will buy; there is no such limit on useful consumables. Thus, bullets are the most stable coin of the realm.

Just thought I'd leave an update on how the economy is working after a few Scrapwall sessions. Essentially, I ended up going with prison economy logic: cash is no good—people trade with things they can use.

I incorporated the suggestion to trade using equipment; in fact, gold is nearly worthless in my Scrapwall (1/10 its usual value). Conversely, most equipment is traded at full value, not sold for half. There's a limit on this—one guy is only going to want to trade for so many studded leather armors—but it's really driven my players to get down and scavenge! Consumables hold their value better, and those that don't expire are most valuable of all. Thus, bullets are the most stable currency for trading.

Finding the goods they want to buy is a challenge for the PCs as well, and has been getting easier as scrapworth improves (base values go up, DCs for checks to find expensive items go down). It always takes at least a day after talking to/bribing the right people to get the items they need, and sometimes the item just won't be available.

The Steel Hawks have been the main fence for my party, as that gang controls the front gate and gets first pick of any goods coming in. There's a significant markup on most things as the Hawks gouge the prices, but the fact that the PCs can trade equipment for full value typically balances things out.

Sometimes, you just need to say "no."

Follow that with "this is for the good of the campaign. You're not wrong, it is awesome, but it will break everything, so no."

It helps to be a nice guy while you're saying this.

And a consolation prize of some kind might be in order.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Perhaps changing the weight to 500 pounds (or even more!) and making it unwieldy to carry around will take care of a lot of these issues. They can't easily sell it, they can't easily carry it, they can't easily use it. That might just make it too much of a pain for the PCs to bother with until later when they are more powerful.

Agreed. I think that the PCs are just not in a place to make use of this thing when they first find it. They'll have to leave it behind, carry it with them, or try to sell it.

It's already pretty hefty at 50 pounds, and judging by the art it doesn't exactly slip into a backpack. Someone would have to haul it in a trunk, or strapped to his back. I like the idea that bookrat had... carrying this thing around in public would definitely attract the wrong kind of attention, and trying to sell it would get them in pretty deep with the Technic League.

I imagine it'd be like if an average person today found a suitcase full of cocaine and tried to get cash for it—they'd be way out of their depth pretty fast, and anyone with any real connections would probably take the first opportunity to rob and murderize them. Better to keep the suitcase safe at home, until you... get more connections? With drug lords? This metaphor got away from me.

This caused a lot of grief and snap judgments as I was trying to fumble through this at my table, but ultimately I came up with the following.

I ran this gun's pull as a drag combat maneuver, allowing 5 feet on a successful check plus another 5 feet for each 5 by which the +16 CMB check exceeded the target's CMD. If the CMB check failed, the wielder had to succeed at a Reflex save to hang onto the gun (and be dragged along himself) or drop the gun, which then retracted itself back to its harpoon in the enemy. If he failed the CMB check or Reflex save by 5 or more, he was also knocked prone, regardless of whether he maintained his grip on the gun.

The size of the creature that could be affected depended on the gun's size (M), not the size of the wielder. A Small creature can't use the Medium two-handed gun anyway.

There's another question, which is "what happens after the enemy is dragged toward you?" Presumably, it's still got this harpoon stuck in it. I let the enemy take a move action (that didn't provoke) to remove the harpoon. If it chose not to, and tried to move farther away from the gun's wielder, the wielder had a choice to either let the reel out or lock the reel in place and attempt an opposed Strength check to keep the enemy from moving farther away. If the wielder failed this Strength check, I treated it as if he had failed the CMB check to pull.

Thanks for the welcoming words! It's great to be here!