MAJT69's page

please delete this account, please!

Hi, can anyone please advise whether any of the existing APs or one-off adventures deals with interacting with the Shoanti or Varisian traveller cultures? Two of the players are considering taking these ethnicities and wanted to know if there’s any official adventures that involve contact with that culture.

Thanks in advance

Several of you were good enough to help me out on a few issues a month or two back, so I’m asking for a bit more input from Kalindlara and other helpful forum types.

We have bought a fair bit of PF stuff and I’ve been canvassing the players as to what they want to play. A few have some issues with 3.5 and its derivatives. Nothing I think I can’t handle, but I wanted to ask the experts.

This involves both mechanical and narrative elements. Narratively, they want something that is less like a videogame and more like a book or TV series. Less ‘looting’ and grinding fights for XP, more story and character and that kind of thing. A lot of this is up to the players and GM obviously – people like Evil Lincoln have advised me that the ‘grindier’ aspects of the Adventure Paths can be cut and XP awarded for other things. Essentially, it boils down to ‘if this was a TV series or a book, would I show this?’ They want fights, but they want emphasis on other things too. As a GM, I want to encourage negotiation, or even running away as legitimate options, rather than just fighting everything out. Table-time is important, and I don’t want to waste it having to explore every last corner of a dungeon so as to get every last scrap of XP.

There’s also the matter of scaling things, as PF is very balanced with its specific challenges for every level and exact amount of magic item bonuses, etc. Obviously, PF is a very stats-driven game and this appeals to most of its players. But –narratively – characters shouldn’t really know their experience level? Do goblins just disappear from the game world when they are no longer a level-appropriate threat for the PCs? If a 20th level character gets into a bar-room brawl, are all his opponents a level-appropriate challenge? Do only 20th level pickpockets try to steal from him when he goes to the market?

One thing that D&D5 tried to do is flatten that curve a little, with its lack of Wealth By level and ‘bounded accuracy’. I was looking to run a very low-magic game, where items appear about as frequently as in most fantasy novels, rather than a Diablo-type game where the defeat of any NPCs gives the players a big sack of level-appropriate magic items. Magic items will exist, but they will be rare and valuable – even the humble +1/+2 items will give you a bonus you won’t get anywhere else.

There won’t be any stat-boosting items and I was going to keep statistic raises topped out at 20, to encourage more organic-looking characters.

So I guess my question is really about adjusting encounter levels for the PCs, yes? PF assumes you will have the correct booster items at each level, choose the ‘right’ feats and abilities, max your main stat and put your stat raises in that one. Whereas we’ll be looking at characters that resemble earlier editions of D&D like Dragonlance or something.

As there’s no protective magic items and only basic armour, that should keep ogres and things a threat even at slightly higher levels, I assume. Some damage is going to get through, even on high HP characters?

Narratively, the adventure paths are basically a channel into which you put a 1st level character and it comes out the other end as a 17th level one, at which point you retire it and do it all again with another AP. I wanted to keep some of the characters between the various stories, even if that means they are higher level, if possible.

For example, running the initial AP for Runelords for higher-level characters is going to be overly easy, even with few magic items and non-optimised characters. To a degree, I think this is okay; they will expect to thrash the goblins, although these same goblins are dangerous to the townsfolk... And throwing around high-level magic is liable to endanger the townsfolk even more. I can obviously increase the power of Nuala and the other notable NPCs so that they at least present a challenge – I think the book even suggests that. I will keep magic items that are appropriate to the story, such as if the adventure revolves around the recovery of a magic sword or whatever. But not items that just give the correct mechanical bonuses that the NPCs are supposed to have.

With regard to running things like Skull & Shackles as a second AP, I think I’d best just treat the whole thing as a sandbox. If they kill Harrigan and most of the other pirates straight away, take the ship and skip most of the first module, so be it. Likewise, if they take out the Hurricane King and other Shackles NPCs early, they still have to contend with the Chelish invasion and everything. They’ll just do it all out of order, what would be a ‘New Game Plus’ equivalent in a videogame.

Is there anything else I need to be aware of, running this style of game? I should add that everyone is just picking character stuff based on what seems ‘cool’, so there won’t be any optimising of stats, feats, class abilities etc.

Yes, you could say that we won’t really be playing PF at all, and that we may as well play an earlier game system anyway. But we’ve liked the feel of the game, the adventures and the plots, and I think it’s worth a try to amend a few things to our tastes.

Finally... I understand HeroLab is helpful in adjusting encounter levels of existing APs?

A question from a purely mathematical point of view: what would be the right level of encounters for – say – a 20th level fighter with no magic items? I read a thread recently about a PC being surprised while bathing and how long he would last.

Let’s say he (and his party) has standard non-magical weapons, maybe standard non-magical armour, decent stats but not maxed out, broad feats rather than total mastery of one weapon. Is he the equivalent of a tooled-up, optimised 15th level character? A 10th level one? How much does the items, feat selection and the like affect the challenge rating?

So, we've decided to embrace Pathfinder instead of D&D5 for the next few years - thanks in part to the replies I got from you guys a few months ago. Much house-ruling lies ahead, but we're all happy with what we have so far.

So, just a few questions if anyone can help.

1) Quite a few players want to play a Conan/Jack Sparrow/Wyatt Earp character without armour. I could just give out Bracers AC2 to everyone at first level, but I'm exploring alternatives. What archetypes offer unarmoured potential? I can see there's Savage Barbarian, Geisha Bard, Kensai Magus, there's an elf Magus that's unarmoured I think, the Eccleistheurge Cleric... Does anyone know of any other ones? Monk, Wizard, Sorcerer obviously, but I'm thinking of combat roles.

2) Is there any option anywhere for trading out the standard Ability Score increases for any other benefit as D&D5 does?

Many thanks if you can help.

Hi, after enjoying playing the new D&D edition for about 6 months, my group have expressed dissatisfaction with the way WotC will be developing the game going forward. While we are happy with the rules, it seems like D&D will mostly be represented by minis, boardgames and the MMO rather than the tabletop game. So we are looking for an alternative. Most of us have played 3.5, didn’t like 4E, and some of us have played Pathfinder about 3 years ago with various results. The one thing PF clearly has going for it is support from Paizo and plenty of monthly material. However, some of the players have reservations, so as GM I am coming here to voice a few concerns, tap into the experience of PFs many players and see if the game would be right for us, as opposed to 13th Age or something.

I’m not really looking to get into ‘edition wars’ or anything – just trying to get a handle on the state of play of PF three years after I last played it, and see it’s a fit for what we are looking for.

There seem to be two main sticking points, as we are all happy with the quality of production, art, supplements, etc. PF looks very healthy and well-supported, which is ideal. I played 3rd edition for years so I’m familiar with the pros and cons of d20 in general.

The problems are these: wealth-by-level, and the adventure paths. I’ll try and cover them separately as they really are two different things.

Here, I want to ask about the Adventure Paths. They seem beautifully produced, but the players have a number of concerns.

Firstly, d20 in general seems very much based around the combat. You level up after 12-13 fights, so the adventures mostly exist to give you those 12-13 fights for every level. The complaint from the players is that the ones they saw were very linear and almost wholly dungeon-bashing and combat.

Are there any adventure paths with a decent mix of fighting and role-playing opportunities? (Yes, you can say you can role-play anything , but I mean an adventure where the interaction is part of the plot, not just ad-libbed while you’re killing things). I wouldn’t expect a d20 game to lack ANY kind of combat, we’d be happy with a mix.

Are there any APs that offer decision points, consequences of choices – like making allies of a former foe, or upsetting NPCs that are supposed to be friendly to the point they become enemies? The players are used to games like Dragon Age or Mass Effect, so they would enjoy something that actually impacts the plot, for good or bad. (And yes, a GM can always change things on the fly, but I’m wondering if there are any PCs where player decisions actually impact the game at any point). One of the players said that he felt the PF APs were like Final Fantasy style games, where you could play out a linear story that was enjoyable, but you had no choices to make or impact on the plot beyond what to fight. So I was hoping that at least one of the APs might cater to a different style of play. I’m not necessarily asking for a ‘sandbox’ - ‘linear’ is fine if there are choices along the way.

The final concern is that the ‘end bosses’ for the APs seem to be considered thematically weak. I remember there was some argument about 3 years ago where someone said ‘Golarion is all set-up and no payoff’. That although the characters were high level by the end of the AP, they fought only second-string bad guys and never faced off against the ‘Big Names’ of the setting. I think Paizo mentioned this was mostly due to then then-lack of Epic rules. Now these seem to be out, is there any change in the final battles of the APs? Can the players shake the world, kill off enemies who are actually important in the narrative rather than high-statistic nobodies in terms of setting? The equivalent of Orcus, rather than the ‘underling of Orcus’?

Anyway, these are our concerns – thanks in advance if anyone could offer suggestions as to which (if any) AP s or even one-off adventures could suit our playing needs.

Hi, after enjoying playing the new D&D edition for about 6 months, my group have expressed dissatisfaction with the way WotC will be developing the game going forward. While we are happy with the rules, it seems like D&D will mostly be represented by minis, boardgames and the MMO rather than the tabletop game. So we are looking for an alternative. Most of us have played 3.5, didn’t like 4E, and some of us have played Pathfinder about 3 years ago with various degrees of success. The one thing PF clearly has going for it is support from Paizo and plenty of monthly material. However, some of the players have reservations, so as GM I am coming here to voice a few concerns, tap into the experience of PFs many players and see if the game would be right for us, as opposed to 13th Age or something.

I’m not really looking to get into ‘edition wars’ or anything – just trying to get a handle on the state of play of PF three years after I last played it, and see it’s a fit for what we are looking for.

There seem to be two main sticking points, as we are all happy with the quality of production, art, supplements, etc. PF looks very healthy and well-supported, which is ideal. I played 3rd edition for years so I’m familiar with the pros and cons of d20 in general.

The problems are these: wealth-by-level, and the adventure paths. I’ll try and cover them separately as they really are two different things.

Here, I want to ask about the ‘Christmas Tree Syndrome’. One of the things that turned many of us off 3rd edition was the laundry-lists of magic items, because they had the combat bonuses required to function at given levels. This felt like everyone just ended up with the same items with little variation, and nobody went for something cool and offbeat because it was essential to get the ‘Big Six’. Also, players disliked having to trade in their items every few levels, which seemed like a videogame rather than the kind of stories found in books or films, where you just don’t see that happening. Also, one of the things we liked about 5E was that you could start a character with a powerful heirloom which he might keep for his career, or you could go for a Conan-style game where high level characters didn’t have magic items at all.

So I guess I wanted to ask – is there any OFFICIAL cure for this?

In all the various books and rules out there, is there any kind of alternate system that removes magic items from the equation, or some sort of ‘Unearthed Arcana’ book that offers alternate rules? If the need for items is baked into the rules, is there any way to reverse-engineer this? I recall 4E had something like that with their Dark Sun version.

I dimly recall there was some kind of ‘vow of poverty’ feat that offered bonuses instead of magic items, which might work for the Conan or Grey Mouser types?

Or the old ‘Weapons of Legacy’ 3.5 rules that allowed your items to ‘level up‘ with you so they weren’t constantly being replaced like some JRPG.

Are there any such options available at present? Is this something they may change with Pathfinder 2?

Thanks in advance for any input.