Kaftorim's page

Religion, alignment and morality in the game are neither Judeo-Christian nor Pagan. They are Make Believe. They have no significant foundation in the real world, and come entirely from the fevered brains of the various writer/developers over time. Kind of like Scientology (sorry, couldn't resist). Seriously, let's not overthink this. Alignment, pseudo-religion and morality in the game are designed purely to enhance an enjoyable game. If you find they aren't enhancing yours, ditch them. They do enhance mine, so I'll keep them.

I'm glad they help you; they detract from our games to the point that we stopped using them years ago because it's hard to make them feel real. But I'd like to point out that the origins of alignment and the deity system do have significant foundations in the real world. Tolkien created the Lord of the Rings to spread his Catholic faith. This is well documented. Gygax created the game so that people could play Lord of the Rings. It brought many things over with it, including this Tolkien-esque morality system. As the game developed, many deities and even a saint from the real world were brought into the fold as deities in various books and settings. They may not be in the Pathfinder setting right now, but the Pathfinder rules are--as the designers said--intended to be setting-neutral to allow for a variety of settings. Let's not pretend that the real world wasn't a major influence on the game settings, or that the origin of all of this wasn't a series of books written to convert people. Alignment cuts to the heart of that issue, which is why I'd like to see some alternate options where alignment wasn't written into the system as strongly so that we can play a game that isn't about heroes and villains, but about characters that are complex people.

Actually that's an interesting idea, Ultrace. If we were going to keep alignment, I'd probably try it out, as it does actually add a little bit more dynamic to the whole idea.

As far as more clearly defined pigeon holes being more limiting, I don't think many creative types would agree with that. I've studied musical composition extensively (I have an MM in it) and along the way worked with some great artists, playwrights and other dramatists, poets, and choreographers/dancers. I can tell you that having clearly defined parameters can often lead to creativity, not diminish it. Trying to summarise the entirety of human (and non-human) philosophy into nine boxes is not a great system.

Part of the issue here is that what constitutes good and evil is not so clearly defined. It often forces the idea of Judeo-Christian morality onto a game that is generally pagan in religious view. The truth of the matter is that if the religions defined in most settings actually operated under a pagan understanding, they would all practise human sacrifice on some level or another. It was Judaism that forbade it, and only the religions that came out of Judaism that saw it as an evil, with perhaps a few small exceptions, although I cannot think of any.

In light of that, alignment can be too specific and not specific enough at the same time. It's too specific because it tries to bind all of the possible religious/philosophical ideas of the universe into one of nine options and then not specific enough because those nine options are, as a result, nearly meaningless.

Ultimately the better option would probably be to incorporate alignment into the religions, so that each of the nine alignments were given descriptive measures as they apply to any given religious view. In real life terms, a Lawful Good Tibetan Buddhist and a Lawful Good Orthodox Jew would simply not think or act the same way. They might have some overlap, but the ways that some Buddhists legally and religiously deal with dead corpses would be considered vile and corrupt to the Jew.

I'm sure that's not a problem if you are not delving into complex moral issues in your games, but those of us that do often run into the problem that alignment is just not well-suited for this. It comes out of a system where non-humans didn't get classes and there were virtually no non-combat skills. In first edition, the things that happened outside of the dungeon were only to help you to get into the dungeon. If that's still how you play, then there's no need to update alignment because it will function the way that it's supposed to. If you want to make full use of social skills and all of the other things that have been introduced to RPGs since first edition, then alignment becomes problematic.

After reading over the suggestions and counterpoints, I agree that the Rogue's utility depends on how the campaign is run.

That said, the points on others doing the job as well cannot be wholly ignored. These are the changes I plan on making to my rogues in my campaign, though possibly not all.

Firstly, this was a really good suggestion:

Stealth Training (Ex): Your specialized training allows you to fool even non-standard senses. You gain the following benefits as you gain levels.

Hide Scent (3rd) - By rubbing yourself with special oils and herbs, you can mask your scent. When you have prepared yourself in this fashion, creatures with the Scent ability must make a Perception check to detect your scent. Preparing to do this requires 1 minute of preparation, and the effects last for 30 minutes.

Still Movement (9th) - You have learned to move without disturbing the ground beneath you. When you choose to use this benefit, creatures with Tremorsense must make a Perception check (opposed by your Stealth) to detect you. You take a -5 penalty to any Stealth rolls while moving in this fashion.

Vanishing Moves (15th) - You have learned mystical secrets of movement and concealment that allow you to fool even those with Blindsense. While using this benefit, creatures with Blindsense must make Perception rolls to detect you. Because of the difficulty of the movements and techniques, all Perception rolls you make while using this benefit suffer a -10 penalty.

Furthermore, SA damage is multiplied on crits and there is no range limit. Also considering full BAB, and a feat or rogue talent that allows flanking at range.

Fixed and fun?

That depends on whether or not you want your rogues to out DPR your fighters regularly. The lower BAB (actually having a chance of missing, since it's the rogue BAB that is used to give a rough idea of AC by CR), and the restrictions on SA damage are what keep the rogue from being a BA combatant and a great skills character. If I were I fighter and you modded the rules for the rogue like that, I'd be demanding more skill points.

Kaftorim wrote:

We don't use the monk either, or any other Asian-themed super class.

At this point I lost all ability to take your opinion on game balance remotely seriously. The monk is an super class? I geniunely cannot stop laughing.

Right. I've seen a lot of threads about how weak the monk is. I've read them carefully. I've never seen any credible evidence to suggest that flurry of blows is anything but OVER powered, especially when mixed with magical monk weapons. I have seen PF monks destroy PF fighters in combat at the local game store. The whole monks need a full BAB holds no water with me. They have a full BAB when they use flurry of blows, which they use all the time. BAB only really matters for them for feat prerequisites and CMB. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors put up by power gamers to complain about how monks, who should be able to do anything and kill anyone, can't.

1. What type of character do I want to play (i.e. melee/caster/ranged/FoP/skillmonkey/etc.) <--- Roughly translated - what kind of fun am I looking for
2. What class/feats help me get to that character type? <--- Mechanical mumbo-jumbo - This is a short list, typically 2-3 feats long
3. What is my character's personality/backstory? <--- Essential RP fluff
4. What feats/skills make the most sense for the personality/backstory? <--- Merging 1-3

This isn't a bad little start, but I'd actually flip 2 and 3 in order. You need a basic idea of what kind of character you want to play, but from there I usually start asking questions of a different, more penetrating type: Where was he born? What kind of culture did he grow up in? What were some major people/places/events in his early life? Why did he decide to become a warrior/magic-user/priest/etc? Who were his heroes, especially in his field? These things will help you custom fit a class/feat selection that makes sense for a character.

If you know what kind of person he is, and what the people around him growing up were like, you probably know how he functions and what he holds dear. That should make class/feat/spell selection simple, because you know what he needs to be the person you see him as being.

Warning: you will not be tweaked out by this approach. Characters built this way make more sense as people, but will probably have lower numbers. If you enjoy high numbers more than depth, abandoned all and go right to a tweaking guide for a strong build.

I think the rogue becomes less underpowered the further you can get Pathfinder away from being a 'pen and paper computer game'. It is the GM's job to try and engage every character in turn, wherever possible. If you have a rogue at your table that doesn't feel useful, chances are you can fix it with a single adventure. The examples aren't hard to imagine, and many good ones have already been listed in this thread.

That being said, the rest of the argument starts getting pretty thin. It basically boils down to 'my character can be out munchkined' or 'my friends are playing a competitive (rather than cooperative) game'. I'd suggest that ANY character choice is susceptible to these types of issues.

This is right on the money, and it kills me that so many of the posts on these boards are so focused on the idea that Pathfinder is a Pen and Paper computer game and it is your job to design your character for PvP against the other player characters. The things that I like about roleplaying games are the things that make them different from MMOs. If I wanted to use randomly generate numbers to kill a series of similar creatures for four hours to prove how big my numbers were, I'd go play a computer game. I want some real story and intrigue and skill use and things mixed into the combat. I can go sessions without combat and be happy. The rogue isn't the only class suited for that, but it's well suited for that, and when the plot is what matters, he's usually got a good story.

Of course we'll never use the ninja class no matter how good it is. We're playing in a European setting. We don't use the monk either, or any other Asian-themed super class. The basic problem with the Eastern classes is always the same: they make their western equivalents look bad because balance goes out the window to create an anime flare. That doesn't mean that the rogue is broken. To me it suggests that the ninja is, but that is what I would expect from an RPG.

Grick's theory sounds good, but the ability states that the guard is rolling Bluff using your modifier instead of his own. That makes no sense, because the guard would never roll Bluff just to tell the captain what happened. As far as he knows or believes, it's not a lie - he would never roll Bluff in the first place.

I like the idea behind the ability, but it makes absolutely no sense as-written. I think it was meant to "force" the guard to make a Bluff check (using your modifier) unkowingly.

One, is that the word for word entry from the book?

Two, what's there in the post says he uses your Bluff modifier for the roll. It doesn't say he makes a bluff check with your modifier. It says he uses your Bluff modifier for his roll. I assume this is intentionally written to sidestep the issue that he is actually using your Bluff modifier for a Diplomacy roll, if any roll would even need to be made. You are effectively allowing other people to Bluff for you, even though they don't realise that they're Bluffing.

That's a really great rogue ability. I see the issue that you are raising, but there's a numerical issue at play here too that is equally as important.

Say you use your Bluff with a +20 modifier to lie to the guard. The guard believes you, so he should be making a Diplomacy check from there on out, but what check he makes doesn't matter so much because he is using your Bluff MODIFIER to his roll. In essence, your +20 Bluff modifier replaces his +5 Diplomacy modifier because your story was just that good. He's not bluffing; he's using his Diplomacy skill to tell the truth, so to speak, but he's not using his numbers; he's using your Bluff modifier for the roll.

That actually works to prevent a very common problem with bluffing: once you convince the peon to let you do something, he goes and tells the higher-ups and they realise he's been duped. Now you are using your Bluff modifier (so all those ranks and your CHA and the feats and other modifiers that you've worked so hard to get) to keep anyone from ever figuring out that it's a lie.

All I can say is I want that if our party's rogue and my bard could both get that ability, no one in our game would ever know up from down.

Kaftorim wrote:

So I don't see the point in changing to rules to beef them up, as long as the GM is writing quests with the rogue's abilities in mind, but a good GM should be taking into account everyone's abilities.

A GM doesn't have to to out of their way in any way to make a fighter, cleric, or wizard useful (for example). If anything, he'd have to go out of his way to make any of these classes NOT useful.

"Rogues are fine as long as you don't use published adventures and tailor the adventure so they're good, even though most classes are just fine always" isn't a very compelling position.

Fighters are designed to kill. You put a monster in front of a fighter--any monster--and they kill it. If you run a quest without combat (which I've run and played in several), then the fighter is next to useless. If all you look at is the dungeon part of the published adventures, you will miss the parts where the fighter is useless. That doesn't mean that they aren't there.

The cleric's main role is to heal. They have lots of other minor things that they can do, but the reason that the cleric is always useful is largely the same reason that the fighter is perceived that way: he heals the damage that the fighter takes while fighting monsters. Of course the cleric is a more well-rounded class, because it does allow for some non-combat options.

Wizards are more versatile, but they have a certain number of spells per day and that's it. A skilled character being able to use social skills in lieu of charm and sneak in lieu of invisibility and detect and disarm a trap in lieu of those spells has just saved the spell caster four spells that can be used on other things. By the way, anti-magic spells and effects make the wizard useless in a moment.

I'm not saying that the other classes are worse than the rogue; rogue isn't even my favourite class. I'm just saying that it has it's purpose in the group just like any other class, and it is better at skills than anyone else is. I don't think it's under powered over all, so much as it may be under powered in the very specific act of combat. I suppose if your GM doesn't include traps, doesn't lock doors in dungeons, and doesn't ever allow for stealthy tactics and such then the rogue falls behind further, but that's the GM's fault, not the game designers'.

It can be a lot of different things, but here are some possible ideas borrowed from the Christian tradition:

1.) A spell could be an ancient prayer or part of an ancient ritual that has been lost or suppressed. This has a certain flare to it, and it allows for some further options. A lost ritual or prayer might have once been important, but later fell into disuse because its relevance was lost for a time. Relatively new prayers (less than 200 years old) are often suppressed because they are seen as innovations to the ancient tradition (assuming the tradition is more than 200 years old), especially if they allow for some new ideas. These prayers (like Eucharistic Prayer II in the modern Catholic mass) are sometimes dug out centuries later, when they look ancient and venerable to modern eyes, and suddenly be given pride of place because of their age, even though in their own time they had been abandoned. Of course they could have been suppressed because they were dangerous. The Gnostic texts were destroyed to keep the ideas of a condemned heresy from spreading any further, and were only uncovered again in modern times.

2.) A spell could be part of another tradition than the one to which the priest belongs. This could mean that it is part of an heretical cult, but it could just as easily be the difference between the Slavic usage of Byzantine rituals and the Greek usage. I would think that Slavic peoples in a fantasy setting might have some protection from cold as part of their magic, for example, but yet this would be silly to bother with in Greek lands. A Greek priest could, never the less, research it and borrow it from another tradition that is still part of his faith without having to deal with the problems that arise from taking things from an heretical group.

3.) When new needs arise, new prayers are written. This is usually the purview of mystics and great theologians, who later are made saints to give further dignity to these new texts. This would be the equivalent of prayer and meditation on a topic to create a new spell. Sometimes things like visions of God, angels, or saints accompany this. Other times they are a product of automatic writing, still others an extension of a deep spiritual understanding that is reached, coupled with an acute understanding of liturgical poetry. This would likely be something that the author would want to share with his faith and would spread quickly, especially if it is an important new ability.

4.) Inspiration could also be gathered by the undertaking of a fast or a pilgrimage, especially when the cleric knows the problem but cannot figure out a solution. Because fasting for longer than a couple of days has some psychological effects, it was often tied to mysticism, but it's not exactly the same thing. To me this would be a great solution if the character knows he needs a new spell to overcome a problem, but he doesn't know what that spell should be and is looking for the GM (playing the role of his deity) to intervene with a spell that would be particularly appropriate.

Just some thoughts. I hope that helps.

I guess I'd like more information/description of the 'outdated' point of view. How do you figure? And what makes this concept any more or less 'old' than that of an elf being good at using bows? Or hit points? Spell slots? Etc, etc, etc?

I see alignment as a tool that keeps all your characters from simply being copies of yourself. If you play a character that just 'does what feels right', then you're only roleplaying on the first level. There's SO MUCH MORE to the game when you start to consider how differently someone with another ethical and moral mindset might behave. Alignment helps you do that without needing a minor in Philosophy.

So, again, why is this 'old'?

It's old because it has passed from first edition down through the years without ever being updated and expanded. I don't think people would be as anti-alignment if it were able to address a wider variety of ideas and lifestyles. Let's look at the elf and his bow. The archetype stays the same, but the rules have evolved around it. An elf may still get bonuses to his bow use, but the elf has evolved from a single race/class thing in first edition to a race that can be combined with any class. The bow has gone from being a single weapon to a variety of different weapons with different statistics. The concept is the same, but the details are very different.

Hit points and spell slots have also been tweaked along the way. They may operate under the same premise as they always have, but there are additional feats and, in the case of spell slots, some new rules that have allowed them to function in new ways (meta-magic feats, for example). And both hp and spell slots have also taken some flack over the years by other systems. Spell points seems to be a routine change for spell slots. While I've seen other damage systems, hit points keep coming back because lots of other things have been tried and they just don't work as well.

But alignments aren't like that. They've been sacrosanct in the d20 style games from the beginning. They're too limiting and they don't tell you enough about your character to be a useful roleplaying tool because they are abstract and there are too few of them. If there were a third axis added in to allow for another set of options (that would be 18 more options than the current system, for a total of 27 different philosophies of life), it might begin to feel more relevant and up-to-date.

I'm not sure what that third axis would be, but that's because we've addressed the whole thing with a house ruled set of virtues and vices that allows for more than a thousand different permutations based on every character having to choose a major and minor virtue and vice from a list of roughly 20 each. For example, a character might have fidelity (loyalty) and charity (generosity) as his virtues and deceit and wrath for his vices. He is loyal to his own and takes care of the needs of the oppressed, but he's hot headed and willing to lie to get to those ends. What alignment is that?

I don't buy any of it, just like I don't buy that the monk is under-powered. It's very tempting to pit the fighter, whose main job is fighting, against the rogue and see that the rogue comes up lacking, but the rogue is not just a combatant. He has other abilities, some of them close to unique.

It's tempting to pit magic against rogue abilities and see that the magic is equal or better every time, but spells have a finite number of uses per day and skills do not. If his skills allowed him to do things that were the equivalent of using a level 1 spell at will, people would think that was broken.

Rogues have a mixture of things; they well rounded, not pointy like fighters or wizards. They don't need a full BAB because this is not an MMO and rogues are not designed to just be DPR. There are ways of tweaking them within the rules to do that, as people have pointed out, but it seems some people just want the rogue to simply be better at combat without sacrificing other things. The reason the fighter is better at combat is that that's all he gets. Take a fighter out of combat and his 2 skills and no class abilities or feats that aren't related to combat don't allow for very much.

If you don't roleplay and you have hardly any traps, then the rogue is going to seem less powerful than he should. That's because you've eliminated the things that make a rogue good, not because it's not a balanced class, and I've had some players--even first time players-- figure out quickly how to make their rogues shine as an important party member.

So I don't see the point in changing to rules to beef them up, as long as the GM is writing quests with the rogue's abilities in mind, but a good GM should be taking into account everyone's abilities. And as for simplifying stealth, what's so hard about an opposed roll? I actually like the suggestion for circumventing the things that overcome stealth (scent, tremorsense, etc.), and I think that would make a great rogue talent, but I don't see why you would need to change the rules. Rogue rolls a d20 and adds his bonus. That becomes the DC to see him. How hard is that?

In case you come back and read this response, here's how it usually works: a business offers services or products for compensation. The model of how the compensation and work flow back and forth between business and customer varies. Try telling a contractor you'll pay him in full after he's finished remodeling your bathroom and you know if you like it, and see how that goes over.

Even Paizo often takes money before they do the work, it's called a pre-order.

And what we offered was more than a book, it was involvement in a process. Anyone who wished to would be able to buy in, and watch, comment, and participate in the creation of the book. That would, simply not be possible to offer after-the-fact, since you can't participate in a completed process. A thread hundreds of posts...

This is a false comparison, Owen. I've worked construction projects. Most of the money that gets paid up front goes to paying for supplies and the rest is a good faith payment to prove that the buyers can afford to get the work done. You don't need to give a good faith payment for a $50 book. And I know lots of companies do pre-orders, but that's also not the same thing because they aren't ever asking for more than the price of the book. There's no $500 pre-order option where $50 goes to the book and the rest is just a donation to the company that you love so much.

I'm sure I'm a little late for the P20 Modern discussion, but I'm going to chime in anyway, since I've been looking over some rule sets to start planning a campaign along these lines.

First, I have to say this: I don't really care who does the conversion, as long as it's good. I doubt that there are really that many Paizo-only people around, especially considering that Paizo started out as a third-party publisher. That said, I think setting up a charity to create a book that will be sold for profit is a scam. I may well avoid even looking at the final "P20 Modern" project simply because of their business plan, which to me is offensive, as they are essentially a for-profit company disguising themselves as a charity. In case any of the designers of that book are reading this, here's how it usually works: first you write the book and then you convince someone that it's good enough to publish and then the people give you money because they like what you did and want to own a copy.

Second, it looks like Kevin has already done the easy, but tedious part of the conversion (I'd love to see that, by the way. It'd save me a ton of time). Kevin also did a nice job identifying the main two sticking points: wealth and classes.

As for wealth, I think it obviously needs an update, but the entire concept behind it seems solid to me. Modern characters will have credit cards, utility bills, and rent. This makes dollars and cents a bad route for money, unless you really want to spend time working out finances every session. I don't have the answer yet (but I'm working on one).

As for the classes, I've been starting to brainstorm some real modern classes like the normal d20 classes. Ruins and Wastelands had a start to this, and some of them might even work, but to me they lack the whole flavour of modern as they are still so obviously conversions of the fantasy classes. I'm starting this work right now, Kevin, so if you'd like to team up on it, shoot me a message.

Besides posting and telling us where in the world you are you can check out sites like This one

Good luck.

I'm in Albany, NY, but I figured the likelihood of finding someone randomly through a message board wasn't very likely. Thanks a lot for the site, though. It was very helpful. If you know of any others that would also be fabulous.

One of the guys in our playing group just bailed on us rather unexpectedly (something about his wife wanting him home more often) and now we are scrambling for new players. We've tried our best to find old rpg buddies and such, but so far no luck. I'm just wondering if anyone knows any social sites to find players, since we're not big fans of our local rpg shop and don't really feel like playing with many of the people there. (It's nothing personal; we just like to roleplay and they like to roll dice and put bigger numbers on their character sheets, which is fine, but not a good match for us). Any suggestions?

A good druid name? Something Celtic, since druids are a Celtic phenomenon. You can pretty easily find a bunch of good pagan names that would work for such a thing. http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/welsh-names.html has a pretty good list of them.

Pathfinder doesn't work with fairy tales.

It's brutal, but not brutal enough. ;-)

Brutality is all a matter of the way the DM runs his game. If you want to give off the brutal fairy tale vibe, have fewer, more powerful monsters and don't be afraid to describe every last thing that happens to the characters. What this game really needs is some tweaked starting races and monsters, since everything in Pathfinder, as with D&D, comes from Tolkien via Gygax with extra layers of D&D mythos that evolve with every edition. I'm working out some things right now to strip the Tolkien/Gygax stuff off of the Norse races and make them Norse again, then add in some actual fairy races from Celtic folklore. It's a lot of extra work to do this, but if you want your fairy tales to be, well, fairy tales, it's the first thing to do.

Strength 18
Dexterity 18
Constitution 14
Intelligence 14
Wisdom 17
Charisma 15

Are you kidding me? There's no way that you rolled that or used any point by system in the book to get those scores. If you want to re-examine your character, perhaps re-examine the fact that he has the attribute scores of a god?