Krowbar's page

Ranks "invested" or ranks "chosen" or "granted" all mean the same thing.

Ranks, and you have them.

Nothing makes you treat them different.

Hey, that's better for the player so I'm all for that. :)

Either you have ranks or you do not. The book says the headband gives you ranks. There is no such thing as pseudo ranks.

Nobody said anything about pseudo ranks. Rather, whether those granted by the headband counted as ranks "invested" by the player.

I think they do.

You get skill ranks. Skill ranks in class skills enable the bonus.

The only thing I see disagreeing with that is Core p86 which states the following

If the skill you're using is a class skill (and you have invested ranks into that skill), you gain a +3 bonus on the check.

Does wearing a headband count as "investing ranks into that skill"? I would think not.

Simple question, do the ranks granted by an Int Headband fulfill the requirements for a class skill's +3 "trained" bonus?
Random example:
Level 3 + Int Headband
(NON-class skill) 1 rank + 3 headband bonus = +3 bonus
(NON-class skill) 0 ranks + 3 headband bonus = +3 bonus
(class skill) 1 rank + 3 headband bonus + 3 training bonus = +6 bonus
(class skill) 0 ranks + 3 headband bonus + ?? training bonus = +3/+6 bonus?

My expectation is that ranks from the headband do NOT get you the class skill training. This would mean that a player's best option would be to put a single rank into these class skills in order to get the training bonus.

Thanks for any clarification! I already did a quick search in the forums but couldn't find an answer.
-Krowbar

Thanks to everyone who left comments! I read each and every one of them. It seems that the XP system is still in a bit of discussion / debate among many players but I'm glad to see that people aren't willing to make it a point of division.
Our XP-less campaign has gone pretty well so far!
During our last session, we managed to take down a young red drake in an arena we were trapped in. Afterward.
Party member: Phew! That was pretty tough for a party level of two!
Me: (Trying to hint) What party level?
Party member: Two
Me: (Trying to hint again) Oh. What party level?
GM: (overhearing) Two
Me: (feigning disappointed): Oh. Ok.
GM: (finally getting it): Oh. OOOHHH! Yeah, three.
Whole party: Yaaaay!

It's logical that the bonus is more valuable when your chance to hit is minimal. When you hit with 3+, a +1 to hit doesn't have a big impact. when you hit with 20s, a +1 to hit doubles your chances

Yup. For those of us who are mathematically minded, it is quite obvious and logical. However, some people do still benefit from the graphical representation (and I thought it looked cool, to boot!) Getting the specific numbers was interesting, as well.

You might consider using Hero Points from Advanced Player Guide as a reward for RP. You can tweak which uses of Hero are available in your game to suit your needs.

Sweet! I like how that looks. It feels real close to the concept of Fate Points in the FATE system (except rarer and more powerful).

I don't track XP, because I don't want games where it's just one sequence of ever tougher beasties to kill. My games involve rescuing damsels, stealing eggs, scaling edifices, outsmarting unscrupulous town officials and more. In my current campaign I have a pacifist monk emissary, a gnome paladin vegetarian animal rights activist, a charlatan seductress and a half orc wild mage. They'd all be dead before they got enough XP to level up if I did it the official way.

Ha! Awesome. Sounds like you've had some pretty amazing campaigns with some hilarious players. It's a shame that RAW seem to punish players who want to be creative with their character's story or personality or who don't build them as they're "supposed to" be built.

-KaptainKrowbar

It depends on the campaign whether or not XP should be used.

Look at Papers & Pencils: Simple Experience Points. It is a nice way to handle it while still having people feel rewarded.

Very nice article! I got pretty much the same values he had in his encounter table in a spreadsheet I worked up a while ago. I like how he normalized that into an exp chart. I'll have to ask my group what they think of that.

One reason I still see for using player exp is for rewarding good RP'ing players. Honest question here, without exp, what should be used by the GM to reward good RP? Small circumstance bonuses to skill rolls? What else?
EDIT: And what rewards should be given for good RP that would put the player at a disadvantage?

edit: Superfast xp like every adventure = lvl up...doesn't work for me. Your character will feel disposable and the levels you gain won't feel an accomplishment. I'll never get a real attachment to my characters that way. No time and no real events to get a bond with them.

We wanted to do a superfast campaign since none of us have been in a D20 campaign that got PCs past around level 6 yet we're all (somewhat) experienced RPG'ers. Since Pathfinder would be new to several of us, we didn't want to dive in at, say, level 5 but have a gradual (while rapid) progression.

Looking at your table it seems that a +1 bonus is most valuable when your chance to hit is minimal.

Yup. If, for example, you are only able to hit a target on a 19 or 20, increasing your attack bonus by +1 will allow you to hit on 18,19,or 20 (which is a 50% increase!)

Ok guys, big bombshell here but I want to know how people feel about player experience points and whether or not they are actually "necessary" for a successful campaign. After recently starting a Pathfinder campaign with some friends (that I'm a player in) we decided as a group to completely eschew player exp for purposes of leveling up during this campaign.
To give a little background, my group of friends and I have played several GURPS campaigns (which give points after successful sessions with which you can buy stats/abilities for your character) and a Dresden RPG (based on FATE based on FUDGE) campaign (which allows players to modify/improve their characters after story "milestones"). We all really liked the FATE model and decided to let the GM arbitrarily choose when we level up (updating us after sessions with phrases like "1/2 way to level 3"). We decided on this for several reasons:

• Big numbers scare us (except for gold count)
  
• We have a new GM who doesn't have a physical beastiary book with monster EXP
  
• We are all planning on attending all sessions
  
• It gives the GM a tighter hold on party progression
  
• Easier for GM to balance encounters when everyone is always on the same level
  
• We have a mix of combat and non-combat oriented PCs who don't want to play straight up "KILL all the things for EXP!"
  
• We're planning on a super fast leveling campaign (1 session got us to lvl 2, 2-3 sessions will get us to 3, etc).
  
• It's not like this is early D&D where EXP is directly used for making potions / crafting things.
  

What are all y'alls thoughts on this? Has anyone else done it this way? Should we be tarred and feathered for thinking such nonsense? Comments are welcome!
-KaptainKrowbar

Curse you faulty clipboard! :blush: Thanks for the catch. URL updated.

Since my last spreadsheet posted to the forum received a decent amount of positive feedback, I decided to post another.
In our current campaign, my friend is playing a Bard (who has several +1 buffs/-1 debuffs) and I wanted to see the impact those made during combat so I made a chart to show how increasing Attack Bonus by +1 or decreasing AC by 1 affected the to-hit chance. See the following link:

Pathfinder - Attack and AC Charts

• The first table shows the benefit an attacker receives when increasing their Attack Bonus by +1 against different target ACs.
  
• The second table shows the benefit of reducing a target's AC by 1 when attacked by different Attack Bonuses.
  
• Either table can be read backward to get "Defense benefits of decreasing Attack Bonus" and "Defense benefits of increasing AC"
  
• Both tables are player/enemy agnostic, don't account for other special modifiers, and only show benefits for +1/-1 shifts.
  

Comments and suggestions are welcome! My last charts were well worded and improved greatly from suggestions people made. Thanks!
-KaptainKrowbar

As it stands, the spreadsheet feels pretty "done" to me. I'm probably not going to mess around with it anymore. However, if anyone has suggestions for more features, columns, variables, etc, I'd be happy to hear them.

Nice work Krowbar. Your efforts are appreciated.

This is Spectacular! I'm going to be referencing this constantly as I build a new homebrew campaign!

Thanks! That really means a lot for my first submission on the forum and I can't deny the fact that you like me! (Or at least my work!)

Since I can't figure out how to edit my first post, I'll just note here that you can download the sheet either as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or as an Open Document Spreadsheet. No promises as to whether the formatting and calculations will be preserved correctly...
(Sorry for the double post)

I just realized that I made an incredible mistake when doing some of the calculations. Table 3-1 on page 30 of core rulebook states how many TOTAL xp is needed to get to that level, and not how much MORE xp is needed from your last level up. (Forgive me for being such a newb!) If you have referenced this table before, please look at it again! Thankfully, all the numbers are referencing the values in "Levels" tab so a few quick changes should straighten things out!
EDIT: Obviously after refactoring the "Levels" tab things have become much more consistent! It really is quite beautiful how close values in the columns are. The chart should now display how many level-appropriate encounters are needed to level up. I love maths!

Ok, I just made several changes.
#1. Updated the labels on the "Encounters" tab to be more explicit/readable.
#2. Changed some calculations to now reference "Difficulty" tab to correctly apply APL modifiers

Note that nowhere does this table care about any individual MONSTER CR. It cares about the whole ENCOUNTER CR. In order to craft an appropriately challenging encounter (and find it's CR) reference the core rulebook p.397-398 (and tables).

Baroh Steelcleave wrote:

What are columns B, F, J, N & R indicating? Total encounter XP for that difficulty? And everything in between would be the player's individual XP for the encounter or?

** spoiler omitted **

Your presentation is a bit confusing :(

If you look at the cells they are pulling the EXP for the appropriate CR monster. For example Cell B2 = EXP!D6. If you go to the EXP sheet cell D6 is the total exp for a CR 1/8 monster.

@Krowbar, your labels do need a bit of work. I like the idea, though.

Agreed and agreed. I actually just put this together a few hours ago and thought I'd have another day before anyone took the time to look at it. ;) I'll try and make the tables a bit more readable.

Hello friends! Here's my very first post on the forums!
Since some friends and I are planning on starting a Pathfinder campaign, I thought to pull together a little spreadsheet.

The purpose of this spreadsheet is to help your GM:

• Pick the proper pacing
  
• Pick the proper CR per encounter

• How many party members you have
  
• How much time you're planning on spending on your campaign
  
• What level you're hoping to attain by the end of the campaign

The spreadsheet will tell you how many encounters of a particular difficulty it will take at any given level to attain the next level. You can divide this by what you think will be encounters/session and sessions/week in order to get a rough estimate of your pace. It already takes the CR shift into account for large parties. Of course, you can always take more or less challenging encounters to change the pace.

The spreadsheet can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgsaQxa1UIRRdDlSZy0wamYyZVFzOF dLQ20tMFl0U3c
I don't know if anyone else will find this useful, but I just thought I'd throw it out here. It's still in an incomplete form but I plan on finishing it (based on the reception it receives).
-KaptainKrowbar