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How many of you as GMs allow evil characters in your standard non-evil campaign? How many of you as players have played alongside or as the token evil teammate? What roles do you guys find most fitting for the TET in terms of group dynamics? Alignment? Classes? I'm always sort of fond of the TET characters. Be they Jayne from Firefly, Alice Morgan from Luther, Loki from the most recent Thor movie, Jack from ME2, Morrigan from Dragon Age- I feel like the TET can provide a valuable perspective to an otherwise monolithic group of "heroes" (or muderhobos, depending on your group). They can give the opportunity, if played well, of interpersonal friction within the party that doesn't necessarily lead to blows. You can redeem 'em! You can fall to their level! They can provide a pragmatic counterpoint to an otherwise circuitous plan! Just not in a party with a Paladin. Ever.
One of my favorite aspects of Pathfinder are the wide variety of faiths, and the practices associated with them. I eagerly awaited Inner Sea Gods, and have greatly enjoyed reading and digesting what all I can from that book. That said, I still find myself turning to other sources for additional fluff for various faiths. Just recently, in my Jade Regent campaign, we had a party member die. Now the Cleric and the Ranger (my character) were both devotees of Cayden Cailean, and the departed was something of a layman of the faith as well. To honor his depart, we sang The Parting Glass. Likewise, I play a Cleric of Sarenrae in a Reign of Winter campaign, and when I need words of wisdom to impart on my fellow players about loss, death, sadness, and joy, I started to incorporate poetry from Khalil Gibran, and attributing it to the Birth of Truth and Light. It got me wondering what other sources players use to flesh out the day-to-day aspects of worship in Golarion. Where do you guys draw inspiration, and how do you incorporate it into your games?
I was just reviewing the Alchemist class, and I had a question: They get the feat Throw Anything. The text of Throw Anything states "You receive a +1 circumstantial bonus on attack rolls made with thrown splash weapons." Does this +1 bonus apply to the Alchemist bombs? The text for Bomb reads "Thrown bombs have a range of 20 feet and use the Throw Splash Weapon special attack." If I'm reading that correctly, it would mean that an alchemist automatically gets a +1 to hit with his bombs from the start of the game. Am I wrong?
I recently had a discussion about the potential for a Token Evil Teammate, and what alignments would work best. We both agreed CE was probably right out, but differed with regards to LE versus NE. He was of the opinion that LE would be the only workable Token Evil Teammate because he could be trusted at his word to basically play within the team structure. In his opinion, NE wouldn't. He basically claimed that NE was Evil with a personal agenda, and would be focused on opportunities as they present themselves for advancement. If that meant betraying the party, they would. In his words, "They lack the order enforced by the Laful nature of LE to be anything beyond the opportunistic individual." I don't see NE in that way at all. I've always considered NE to be "Pragmatic Evil" Regardless of the reason why (sociopathy, personal advancement of an overall agenda, selfishness) they are evil, they choose how to be evil, and can even suspend being evil if it will advance their own personal goals more at the time. I believe the best NE characters have long term goals- they don't care who gets hurt on the way, generally, but that doesn't mean they can't do the calculus to see when the immediate evil wouldn't pay off as much as playing nice or neutral would. In my opinion, a NE character could operate in a party so long as they remained convinced it was in their best long-term interest to be a part of the party, or because they selfishly want to be a part of the party (say for romantic/familiar/friendship reasons). How do you guys see NE?
My group just started up a ROTRL campaign, and so it fell to me to be the team mom/group healer. The group is fairly dysfunctional and really lacks skills as well. I decided to make a Varisian priestess of Desna, but decided that in keeping with the Varisian feel of this woman, I wanted to take some Rogue levels as well. I spoke to my GM and was allowed to restat her marginally. Here's where I am so far. Str 10
Cleric 1- Selective Channel, Point Blank Shot
Basically, I intend to have her maxing out Bluff, with stealth,sleight of hand, diplomacy, profession Fortune Telling (stealthy/social kinda thief, in keeping with a Varisian camp-girl idea) and using a buckler and crossbow until folks get close enough to where I can begin using Star Knives and Daggers (thrown and melee both). I don't know exactly how to best go with it past that point, though. I would welcome any advice ya'll could give me. I'm not going for pure optimization, but I also don't want to be ineffectual going forward, you know?
I've got an idea percolating in my head about a Dwarven Barbarian Invulnerable Rager, but I'm still too new to PF to really know how well the build will shake out. I was hoping to get a little feedback as to how you would go about drawing up this guy. I see him as a classic Beserker type, who does two-handed axes and utilizes armor spikes and over-run a lot. Here's what I have so far : Baliel the Ax-Mad
20 point buy:
Replacing Stability with Relentless
IR 1 – Power Attack
Any advice you guys can give me as to a more efficient build? Order of powers? Different powers? I'd appreciate any build advice I can get. |