Lost Leader's page

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The werewolf and "friend" have a listed AC of those numbers. There were other weaknesses in that scenario which made the encounter much, much easier. That scenario is designed to give the "I wanna hit things and kill it, all the time!" choice a run for it's money. If you bust out a will save...they have negatives in that department.

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As the coordinator of this event...I rely on my GM's to provide the best experience possible, and where they don't...I would love to know so I can sit down with them and go over how to improve.

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My two questions for everyone who gave, or will be giving feedback.

1. What would you do differently? (Some have answered ;p)
2. Will you volunteer next year to assist in GMing at PAX Prime?

1. What would I do differently?

I guess first I would have a few differences in the pre-made classes, at the least I would either add oracle or give the bard access to cure light wounds. Having only the cleric as an option to cure anyone pigeon holes their role; especially when a single hit from a badguy can easily knock a player unconscious.

Second, I would definitely change the zero handouts at the booth thing. A little swag is nice, especially after spending an hour and a half or two at a single exhibit. Walking away with a great memory is nice. Having a little consolation pin or lanyard or maybe even a little goblin figurine or something would be great. 3 of us for a total of 9 shots at the chest and walking away with no little prize or anything was . . . well I was thinking I should've just kept my cool little wooden pathfinder coin.

In response to the comment about the woods scenario, our wizard was a complete PF rookie. The pre-made character didn't have a memorized will save spell. He used his arcane bond for a second magic missile since that was one of the spells that had a description. While his spell book had color spray in it, which would have worked well, how is a rookie player supposed to know to use his arcane bond on a spell in his spell book with no description? The rest of our group was built for healing, stealth, melee and range, we had no one else that had a will save ability. We set up an ambush, used stealth to get a surprise attack, role played and had fun. If our pally hadn't rolled such ridiculously lucky rolls, we would have been annihilated. It worked out, but having an encounter set up so marvelous slanted towards a lucky chance that the party has someone with a will save ability or get some seriously lucky rolls? Also don't forget that these tables tend to be made up of some newer folks and people who don't know each other. There may not be much communication between players.

But like you said, it requires the gm to make or break the scenario, if you design killer scenarios like that. Our gm did an okay job. It was also obvious that the poor guy had had a long weekend, so I am not going to give him too hard a time. By the end of our hour he was laughing with us, and I think we all had a good time.

2. Would I volunteer to Gm at Pax prime?

My gut reaction is, "hell yes!" I would love to GM this type of thing, and if it isn't too immodest to say, I think I would do a damn good job of it. But then after thinking about it, I would honestly answer a tentative . . . maybe.

The truth is that I would want to get something out of it. Simply volunteering my time to GM when I would much rather be cruising PAX and checking out the games, listening to the talks and playing demos rather than running them, would require some form of compensation. That kind of means that I wouldn't entirely be volunteering if I am looking for compensation, eh? Of course, I don't know what it takes to qualify to be a PAX gm, I may not have the credentials.

My plan next year was to attend PAX as someone who knew a little bit more about it for his second time around. Get a full weekend pass instead of a single day, listen in on more of the auditorium talks, stand in longer lines that I skipped due to time constraints, write more stuff on the Cards Against Humanity wall.

So . . . I guess what I am saying is, what do your GMs get in return for donating their time? Do they get a PAX badge? Pathfinder perks? A pat on the back? How much time do they get to cruise the con for themselves? Do they still have enough time to really check out the things they want to check out?

If they really did just volunteer for peanuts, then I would humbly beg their forgiveness for my mildly negative critiques.

P.S. On a slightly related subject, if someone in the know happens to respond, is there any word on whether or not Goblinworks will be at next years PAX to promote PFO?

I would like to share my experience from PAX 2013.

This was a couple of firsts for me. It was a first pax, and it was a first Pathfinder Society. As a matter of fact, it was a first non-homebrew pnp experience, which is saying something since I've been playing tabletop dnd since the late 80's.

So, for whoever may give a damn, here is how Paizo and Pathfinder represented itself at what is supposed to be a pretty big deal gamer expo:

Paizo/Pathfinder had a small area in a general commons area, difficult to find for a PAX newbie, but findable for a guy who wanted to find it. The table had a few gents working at it who didn't know much about Paizo or Pathfinder, but were nice guys and able to direct you to people who knew enough to answers questions.

There were no freebies at the booth, but you could join a short tabletop scenario or card game for a pull of a random key from a grab bag, which had a chance to open a chest. The chest contained some goblin plushies, pathfinder novels, maybe other goodies. If you completed all 6 scenarios you got a PFS boon.

So my buddies and I joined the line to play a scenario. Only had to wait about 30 minutes, which isn't too bad considering some of the lines at pax. We went to the table with our GM, one of many tables in the room.

During our wait we were told to choose one of the 1st level pre-made characters. Choices were cleric, barbarian, rogue, sorcerer, wizard, bard, fighter, paladin, ranger, monk, gunslinger, ninja and samurai.

My buddies and I chose fighter, ranger and rogue. The three random folks who joined us for our scenario chose cleric, paladin and wizard.

Our scenario was given the nickname "woods". Our GM stumbled through the introduction text, he was pretty textbook, "read the dialogue and stick to the script" which is. . . well its different than I am used to, but it was a new experience for me which was fun. My group plays a couple of weekly tabletop games of pathfinder, so we felt we were fairly familiar with the rules. The three joining us were rusty on the rules but very intelligent folks who picked it all up right away. Our gm seemed to have his rules down fairly well.

The story was shaky at best. We were read a short script that we were in a bar, the bartender spoke to a random npc who entered then bar. The npc said something to the effect of "I own a farm. My farm and a couple of neighbors' have been attacked by a werewolf the last couple of nights. Do something." The bartender then looked at us and said,"you heard him, go handle it."

We basically said, "why should we?" and were told if we didn't that we would get beat up by some big important local official. Fair enough. This is supposed to be a demo, after all, so I can handle being told what to do. We are told to go buy some silver weapons from the local blacksmith. We head over to the blacksmith, buy all two of the weapons and 50 crossbow bolts that he has, and head to the farm where the werewolf has been.

We spent some time setting up an ambush for the wolf. Our ambush sucked and was ignored. Were wolf and some random guy traveling with the werewolf show up and start ransacking the house. We attack. We find out very quickly we are outmatched.

Meta-game speaking, the Were wolf has an AC of 21 and the dude with him an AC of 23. most of us have a +4 to hit. The paladin did a bit better, +6 with smite. Badguy's minimum damage was 7. We ranged from 10 to 16 HPs. It was definitely a get our ass kicked scenario.

Suffice to say, we got lucky. Our pally decided to roll a 19, 20, 19 on three attack rolls in a row, the rest of us managed 2 hits total, plus a couple of magic missiles and some helpful healing from our cleric. Our dm said that he had killed a lot of people that day, the way the encounter was set up.

My thoughts on the experience? Well, I feel our DM could have known his short script a bit better, and given it some personality instead of just stuttering through a crap script. I also felt he didn't know some of his rules thoroughly, but that's just me nitpicking, and all in all I thought he had a great sense of humor and I appreciated what he was doing. I felt the scenario was designed for people familiar with pathfinder. It would have sucked for newbies, with badguys who had an AC high enough that most of us needed to roll an 18 or more to hit. Also, the badguys hit hard enough to easily drop us with a single swing. We definitely won against the odds.

In the end, we only did one scenario. We got 9 cracks at the loot safe, of course we didn't win anything. Meh.

Final thoughts: the gaming was a fun and new experience for me, but railroad story and rookie unfriendly. The pre-made characters were okay, but the only character with any healing ability was the cleric. No oracle and bard had no cure spell. With badguy hitting hard enough to drop an ally in a single hit, limited curing was a bit rough. No reward for playing was crappy. Not even a little pin or lanyard. I got more from wizards of the coast for having them take a picture of us: a pin, and a costume goggles. I hope paizo does better in the future. I really hope Goblinworks has a presence for PFO in upcoming years.