I had created a thread asking players about what should be in a Code of Conduct for players playing at the gaming table. Now I want to know what sorts of things should be included in a Code of Conduct for the characters in an adventuring party.
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I play with a wide variety of players who usually all have different experiences they want out of the game. What are some rules and guidelines that could be put in a Code of Conduct for the party?
So I'm introducing Pathfinder to a few of my friends. To save time I'm bypassing character creation and just giving them the pre-made iconics character sheet from the Paizo.com. The first thing I noticed when looking over the iconics is how extremely suboptimal they appear to be. Now I wouldn't have a problem if they were all equally suboptimal, as I would just lower the difficulty of the overall session. The problem arises from some characters just lacking in diversity. The gnome druid looked rather sad in comparison to the fighter and that was even with the animal companion. The party consists of the iconic bard, druid, fighter, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard. What can I do to balance out the party?
So I just started a new campaign on Roll20 with some friends I had met at uni. Now the group was rather large with 8 people showing up. Though I felt like I had prepared quite a bit for the session, I was having trouble getting the game to move forward. Had one group of people sharing a computer, and I constantly kept forgetting that certain players were there as I couldn't see their faces, which resulted in some players not getting nearly enough screentime. Does anyone have any tricks to run large groups? I know many will say that I shouldn't and I should break the group up into two groups, but I don't think that's an option at this point. Any other advice on the matter?
Alright, so I'm running a new campaign with a new group who are new to pathfinder. I was able partake in the character creation of most of the group, so I can confidently say that group is pretty optimized. Now I have been informed that there is another player joining the campaign who already has some strict ideas of what she wants her character to be after reading the srd. She wants her character to be a elf nature fang druid with a wolf animal companion. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to contact this player myself to see exactly what she had in mind. So in the meantime, let's assume that this all this player is looking for in her character. How do I optimize this kind of character? All of our party is currently level 1 right now and consists of a half-orc invulnerable barbarian
Large group, I know. I can't really do anything about it right now, but I'm expecting that everyone won't be able to attend every session.
So I just recently started my modified CotCT campaign with an evil party. First session in, one of our players already got himself killed by trying to poison and seduce some city guards, and dealing two damage to them with a coup de grace with a bladed fan on one of the guards she brought back to her room. I had some really good roles for the poisoned, half-drunk guard and both ended up dead by the end of the battle. To avoid slowing down the campaign, the majority of our players opted to have our problem player just use the same character sheet and have them play the twin sister. Unfortunately, scumbag player is playing this character the exact same way and almost got himself killed twice more in the same session. So obviously he has fun playing his character in a certain fashion, though his play style can be disruptive. Should I punish him for playing his characters in a reckless fashion, or adjust the campaign so that he can do so?
So I'm going to be DMing Curse of the Crimson Throne and so beforehand I wanted to know a little bit about our parties composition as the group I'm playing with tend to be a bit unorthodox. I have learned that my whole party will be more or less evil, and I know that once they have an idea like that in their head, they're going to go through with it whether I say yes or no. I've been a lurker on these threads for awhile so I know that the most frequent solutions to these problems is that I either suggest switching campaigns to one more suited to their desires or I simply talk with my group and tell them what will and will not work in this campaign. I'm wondering if there are any alternative solutions. All of the players have backgrounds that tie into the campaign quite well and I want to make sure that they are enjoying themselves as much as I am. What are some of my options to make this all work?
So our Rise of the Runelord Party is level 8 and our party composition is pretty messed up. We have a rogue who has tried to focus on both melee and range, a ninja who focuses on melee, a blaster caster sylph sorcerer, and an undead lord cleric who has been pretty irregular in showing up to our games. I feel like our party is lacking an actual close range fighter type, a intelligence-based caster, and a healer. I just died last session which has given me the opportunity to re-roll a new character. Problem is, our DM penalizes you for dying so I wasn't able to choose where my stats were placed. So I need to make a 8th level character to balance our party, but the problem is this character will have base-stats of 11 STR 12 DEX 13 CON 14 INT 14 WIS and 13 CHA not including the +2 to whatever stat and race bonuses . Any and all advice is appreciated as I have to whip up this character by tomorrow.
I had a friend submit an custom archtype he would like to add to a Barbarian. I am unsure how balanced this archtype is and whether I should allow it. I'll copy/paste the doc he sent to me. Cold Rager
Weapon and Armor Proficiency
Rage (combat trance)
While raging, the Cold Rager gets a +2 focus bonus to strength, AC, and combat maneuvers. While in rage, a Cold Rager cannot use any Charisma, Dexterity, or Intelligence based skills (except Acrobatics, Fly, Intimidate, and Ride and any combat maneuvers) or any ability that requires patience or concentration. A barbarian can end her rage as a free action and is fatigued after rage for a number of rounds equal to 2 times the number of rounds spent in the rage. A barbarian cannot enter a new rage while fatigued or exhausted but can otherwise enter rage multiple times during a single encounter or combat. If a barbarian falls unconscious, her rage immediately ends, placing her in peril of death. Trap Sense (economic movement)
Greater rage
Mighty rage
Rage powers
I'm not sure how game changing this Economic Movement class feature is and if it balances out to the reduction of rage bonuses. Can I get any thoughts? Should I have posted this to the Advice board instead?
So I'm running a Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign and my players tried to book it out of Korvosa on the initial night of a certain character's death. It made sense to do this, but I was afraid if they ran out they wouldn't come back. I had the Hellknights from Citadel Vraid ordered to not let anyone across the bridges. Now does this make sense? I reasoned it out in my mind that the city would like to limit access of who comes and goes from the city until things settle down, but I'm not sure how much sense this actually makes. Would there have been any better way of keeping my players in the city aside from telling them to stay in the city?
The one thing I have learned in my D&D games is the importance of detailed descriptions. It may temporarily slow down the game to describe every nook and cranny in detail, but not adding enough detail leads players to ask lots of clarifying questions. More importantly, it helps immerse the players in the environment. My problem is that I can never find words to describe buildings. There is so much architectural terminology that I am unfamiliar with, but it key to describing any real structure in my games and I'm wondering if there is a site or source I can use to brush up on my terminology. Currently running a CotCT campaign, which takes place mostly in a cityscape so knowing my architectural terms is key. Can I get any help?
So I'm currently running a Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign and I am having difficulties making the city feel like a city. The PC's in my campaign more or less fast travel to whatever location they are going to, which seems to destroy the whole giant metropolitan vibe I feel Korvosa should have. Now I have the Guide to Korvosa so it's not an issue of adding more unique buildings and landmarks to the city, but other ways of adding a feeling of depth and vastness to this rich area without boring my players and making city travel tedious. Does anyone have any suggestions?
So I may be creating a new character for a party I am currently in, though I have no idea what to create. The current party is level 8 and composed of A sylph elemental sorcerer who is has demonstrated to be more of a blaster type
Let's avoid 3rd party classes and for the sake of avoiding party too much conflict in the party, paladin is out of the question. I have thought of a cleric of some sort, but I am unsure if we will need a frontline fighter with all the undead present. What should I choose?
So I think our party for Rise of the Runelord is near the point where some of our characters will have to die or just suddenly switch alignments out of nowhere for us to cooperate. Essentially, we have a rogue who claims to be chaotic evil who keeps most of the loot he finds secret from the party and he's been doing a pretty good job of it in-game, an undead lord cleric of Urgothoa who joined our party late and ended up with a large sum of money due to getting the amount of money he should have as a level 6 character while the rest of the party has been way behind the character wealth limit. Then we have our ninja catfolk who is on the line between chaotic evil who seems to be in cahoots with the necromancer and finally me as LN magus/monk who worships Asmodeus and a CG Sylph sorcerer. So this is the whole situation that played out last night. Rise of the Runelord:
So we had just fought out way through the Graul residence and our rogue like always managed to get most of the loot. It's been somewhat annoying at the table so far, but character-wise I have given him warning that swift justice will be dealt out if my super lawful magus ever finds out. We ended up saving the Black Arrow rangers in the barn who after hearing that we had just cleared out the house inquired about their gear. Apparently, most of their gear wasn't worth much so our rogue returned most of it except a bow, which apparently was worth some gold. They inquired after the bow, and he said that he didn't have it. I rolled Sense Motive as it seemed suspicious and ended up getting a 31 total. For the first time this whole campaign, I beat his Bluff check. My character was somewhat exasperated with the rogue and decided to get the bow back for the rangers, in quickly doing so, he discovered that this rogue had a whole lot more than the bow and had been keeping a lot of wealth for himself. After being discovered, the rogue threw down the bow and used a vanishing trick (which he got as a rogue talent) and ran away. I quickly cast glitterdust and hit and then the necromancer cast dispel magic and got rid of the glitterdust. There is now this really uncomfortable tension in our party. We then went back to Turtle Ferry (or what was left of it after our necromancer decided to play show and tell at the local schoolhouse with a few burning skeletons) and we are currently planning on how to take the Fort back. Our necromancer tried to send out a message to our rogue using some magical spell to meet us there at the Fort, but he has been captured by ogre's and is being held at the Fort right now. Essentially, we are at the point where my super lawful character is going to feel obligated to kill this guy off and it may come to a part split as both the ninja and the necromancer are wanted men in Magnimar for killing a few town guards. I'm most confident that I would lose if things came down to an all out fight, and frankly that wouldn't be the worst situation as I could just roll up a character with the right alignment for this party. What I'm afraid of is killing one of these player characters and then having them just creating another bad character to come back into the game and kill me for some BS reason and for this to become a personal thing. I should also note that I am kind of the outsider in this group as I was originally brought in by the DM who is a good friend of mine, but the other three evil members in the party are all high school buddies of his. Now I've become pretty good friends with these guys, but I have a feeling that things will get messy if I kill off a character of theirs. So what should I do? I know I'm going to get a lot of people wanting me to talk to the DM about this, but I'm pretty sure he knows what is going on and is just leaving it to the players to figure out. I talked to some players letting them know that my character would feel a moral obligation to kill them and they seemed to take this somewhat personally with retorts like "You seriously think you can win against all of us?" I know people are also going to suggest that I find another group, but aside from these few things, I've really enjoyed this group for the most part and the number of readily available friends I have who play Pathfinder regularly are non-existent aside from these guys. Any other advice?
Alright, so I never planned this character all the way through and I'm starting to realize that this was a mistake. I'm wondering how I should build my character from here. MoMS Monk/Quarterstaff Magus: Van Leer
RotRL:
So after a year my DM just restarted his RotRL campaign and our party left off. We just got are investigating the Skinsaw Murders and we had just been contacted about the scarecrows killing people at the farm. The sheriff offered to send four guards with our party to help us, but after the experience that my character had with the guards and the fact that they ran away from the last encounter they were suppose to help us with, we declined their help. We then proceeded to get thoroughly stomped by the large infestation of ghouls. Granted, half of our party split up and got themselves into a sticky situation, but if it wasn't for some DM intervention via some help from Asmodeus, we would have been dead. Now I will be the first to acknowledge that our party made a lot of stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, I don't think this will be the last time they make stupid mistakes. So I'm wondering what I can do better mechanics-wise to prevent some of these situations from happening again. Party Composition My character: Monk Master of Many Styles 2/ Magus 3 Quarterstaff Master: Big focus on using crane style for defense while dealing out the damage.
Some of the many things that went wrong last time:
Sorcerer and Barbarian both got paralyzed just about instantly by ghouls.
So what can I do on my end to make an encounter like this survivable without Infernal Intervention. I've already prepared the spells Shield and Vanish for my spells for the day so that should buy me some time to get some of those essential buffs down to start dealing with the large amounts of baddies. All suggestions appreciated!
Rules for the character. Can only use Paizo material. Must be a core race. Anything else goes. I'm wanting to see if I can make something creepy. Psychological horror comes to mind specifically. I'm open for any suggestions that falls within these rulesets. Think of that one person who people mysteriously die around, or the sweet happy-go-lucky serial killer. Maybe the girl who wakes up every morning to find something dead underneath the sheets. The more creative the better. I want to see what the minds of this forum can produce.
So I'm currently going to be jumping into a RotRL campaign at level 4. I'm playing with a fairly inexperienced party so I usually come up with a few characters before the first session and then choose one of my selections that best compliments the party. Now for this character I rolled a 11, 18, 17, 15, 13, and 15. These stats can be moved around and do not have to be in this order. I also have 6000 gp to spend on equipment. I thought it would be really fun to try out a Human Duel-Cursed Wrecker/Haunted Oracle for a RotRL campaign. I have my mind set on having him have the Dark Tapestry mystery and having spouts of insanity during the session. Unfortunately, I have no idea how I can build him. He will most likely take the role of the party controller if I do end up playing him. I currently need help with feats and equipment as I have no idea what to add onto this guy. All help is appreciated!
Make me a character with these stats. 11, 18, 17, 15, 13, 15. I would like to choose something unique that would make my allies look good without stealing all the glory for myself. I also have 6000gp with no clue what to buy. I would love to slip a prestige class into this build eventually, but that is just a thought. If anyone has any builds that would be great!
Hey, I had a thread about creating an effective non-mounted cavalier a week or so ago and here it. Havel Marxson
Now I'm not quite sure how to progress my character from here. The two things that I need advice on is how to spend the 6,600+ gold I have and what feats to take. I plan on taking Bodyguard at level 7, but I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Any suggestions?
So I am currently building a human cavalier for a RotRL campaign. I'm coming in at level 5 with 6000 gold. I would like to have him focus on reach weapon and getting in multiple AoE. We are using the roll 4d6 for each stat and drop the lowest roll. I have rolled a 17, 16, 14, 13, 12 and 11. I also have my mind set on either Order of the Dragon or Order of the Sword. Other than that, I would some advice on how to optimize what I already have. The party I am joining consists of a 2-handed weapon fighting Paladin, a rogue who doesn't really know what he's doing, a gnome magus who is usually quite timid about actually jumping into harms way, and a dwarven druid who is focused on spell casting with a velociraptor animal companion. I would like my character to make them look good and keep us all alive at the same time. Any and all advice is appreciated!
So I am currently playing a tiefling beastmorph vivisectionist alchemist. I took the Maw or Claw alternative racial trait instead of having darkness as a SLA. I am planning on taking feral mutagen when I reach level 2. I currently have 2 claw attacks that deal 1d4 damage each. I was reading the description for feral mutagen and it says "Whenever the alchemist imbibes a mutagen, he gains two claw attacks and a bite attack." So the question is, if I already have 2 claw attacks do I get an additional 2 claw attacks and a bite attack? The claws from feral mutagen deal 1d6 damage each and it would make more sense if I would just up the damage on the claw attacks I already have, but the wording of the question made me wonder if I could get away with more.
I'm looking to device a way that instead of having the summoner form an attachment with another worldly being, it instead forms an attachment with another PC. I'm looking to keep the summoner spell-list and remove the summon monster. Right now, I'm looking for 2 variations. One where the summoner has a bond with just one of the PCs and another where the summoner has a bond with all of the PCs. How would I balance this out?
After trying out several Pathfinder modules, I started to become increasingly frustrated with the way the worked for a variety of reasons. 1. I seemed to be given way to much information then I actually needed.
Now I'm aware that I can add and subtract from Paizo campaigns as much as I see fit, but I always had this fear that some detail that I chose to omit would come up later in another book as a key plot point so I never did so. I am also aware that nothing was ever preventing me from buffing the monsters aside from laziness on my own part. But this isn't a thread to bash on Paizo campaigns as I realize how hard it would be to market campaigns to a wide variety of Pathfinder players. So I decided to try my hand at my custom campaign setting and set some goals for what I wanted in my campaign. 1. Reduce the use of magic in the world. I always thought that if magic was as prominent in the world of Golarion as it was, then the setting would look much different. While I could focus on changing the world to fit a high magic campaign setting, I find it easier to just make magic more rare or in my case, make it more dangerous. 2. Breathe life into the characters. I am a big Wheel of Time fan and one thing I felt like the Wheel of Time did well was make the world and characters come alive. I'm tired of PC's killing shopkeepers for loot or just being a bunch of sociopath's in general. If you kill a NPC, things are gonna happen, whether that NPC is a enemy or just the local merchant. One step I see to accomplishing this is by avoiding generic NPC's. 3. Breathe life into the world. I felt that Paizo might have done a good job of this with Golarion, but I am honestly not sure because I didn't want to read through all the lore for that stuff. Hell it's taken me 4 years to get a solid feel for the Pathfinder mechanics. In order to breathe life into a world, it means the world can't be in stasis. The world is very much a living thing that will react to it's surroundings. If players choose to ignore a dungeon or pass by a quest, stuff is gonna happen. I have already started planning a campaign around this and hope to post what I have come up with soon. I very much plan to stay active on this thread as I discover more and see what works and what doesn't. Please feel free to add to what I have as I am still trying to narrow down what will keep the players absolutely immersed and into the campaign.
I am currently in a campaign where the players are getting frustrated that their characters aren't doing as well as they want them to, yet they don't want to change the concept of their characters. Likewise, the DM has given me permission to help them modify their characters to be effective, but I cannot change their race or class. I have already helped the halfing rogue in our party, our human paladin has been doing great from the get go so we're all good there, the last two that need help are the human fighter who has all his feats focused on mounted combat (DM doesn't want me to modify him, so I can't help him right now), but the character I'm having the most problems with now is our gnome magus. I did some stat modification and made him into a dervish magus, but the problem is that he really likes his heavy crossbow and has a hard time getting into melee combat in the first place. Everyone in the campaign is currently level 3, so my hopes are that the magus will drastically improve at level 4 when it can start shocking grasp/spell recall for damage, but I'm still struggling with his love for his crossbow. Aside from getting him use to more melee combat, is there anything else I can do? Possibly change his feats around? Any build advice or special tactics would be appreciated!
I have a friend who came up to me the other day saying that he knew someone who was planning on making his first campaign module and requested that the two people playing it play as level 50 characters. Upon hearing this, I immediately gave my opinion about the matter while explaining that Pathfinder was not designed for level 50 characters. Though I started to wonder, if you were given the option to create a level 50 character (On the presumption that you can't go above level 20 for any one specific class so it would require you to at least take three classes) what kind of character build would you do?
I am playing a summoner in a campaign that will be starting soon. While I was inspecting the class, I started to wonder what summoning actually was. I know there is a sub-school of conjuration called calling, where you call a creature from another plane, but I have no idea what summoning is from a roleplaying perspective. Am I simply copying the creature and creating him on the spot as the creature never dies? Am I creating empty puppets or do my summons have lives and personalities of their own? Does anyone have any clue?
It seems I failed on my last post regarding this as I worded the thread wrong. I am currently in search of a personality, background story, motives, for a master summoner. His statblock will be down below and I have some good ideas of what I might want to do with him, but the more ideas the better. Yes I know this class can ruin games, which is why, though I may be optimizing it, I will not play it out to it's full potential, so if we can refrain from the "Master Summoner OP" conversations that would be great as I am aware of a good majority and agree with them, which is why I need a character that limits himself. IF anyone could completely flesh out what this character should be I would be grateful. This is for the Rise of the RuneLords campaign btw. Thank you all, have fun, and here ya go, Half-Elf Master Summoner
The eidolon otherwise functions as normal. This ability replaces the summoner's normal eidolon
Eidolon
I had a friend of mine invite me to be the third member in a Rise of the Runelords campaign. He had recently been playing 2nd addition and I had just convinced him to switch to Pathfinder. He's been hosting some games for some younger kids who have some experience in tabletop, but don't have the game mechanics down to a T, which is perfectly ok as long as you're having fun playing it. The other two players in the campaign are playing as a halfling alchemist and a gnome magus. I asked what I should play, to balance out the party and the DM asked me if I could try out a summoner. Now no one else in the campaign is near optimized, which is how I'm use to playing, and the other players are all over the board in what they are focusing in. I decided to be a Master Summoner, and simply play it my character in a casual fashion and be a backup say they end up in real trouble. I'm going to try to focus more on roleplaying this character and I'm having some issues with background story for the setting, character personality, ect. This is my statblock. Let me explain that everyone in the group has an extra upbringing feat. Any changes I should make? More importantly, can anyone help me fill out this character. Half-Elf Master Summoner
The eidolon otherwise functions as normal. This ability replaces the summoner's normal eidolon
Eidolon
I'm trying to come up with a system to encourage players to branch out and try out different classes as we have players who have been playing the same class the same way in five different campaigns. So I was thinking of giving the players an option of going random by rolling a d20 to determine there class (20 would be a re-roll). I figured I would give the players that choose randomly a perk that gets them out of there comfort zone. So I have been debating between either an extra cash bonus, a +2 to any one stat that they choose, or maybe 2 extra traits. I want to make it an tempting deal for players who like to stay in their comfort zone. The extra cash would probably be 100 gp extra. I was thinking about an extra feat, but then decided against it as I feel that gives random players too much of an advantage. Any idea what I should go with? Should I give them a combination of those options or do you have any better ideas for extra perks? Should I allow all three options and give the players the choice what to pick or should I set up a system to randomly roll for the benefit? What should I do?
My Dm overruled me using a master of many styles with the Crane Style feat tree. I now need to make a new class. Our current party is a bit wishy washy and we seem to always be missing our regulars. We have a paladin who is serving as our party face and going for TWF, a ranger who is going switch hitter, but mainly focusing on his bow, and an evil cleric who is going the undead lord archetype route. We have a fey sorcerer, but I'm not sure how much of a regular she is going to be. I was thinking a possibly magus hexcrafter, a witch, or maybe even a wizard that would go the arcane trickster route. Trying to find something that can be abused without having to rule lawyer. Any suggestions?
So my Dm invited me to a session he had started up. He told us to all make level 2 characters, so I figured I would give the Monk of Many Styles with the Crane Style feat tree a try. After a boxing match and an encounter with a Forest Drake, my Dm concluded that the Crane Style feat tree was overpowered and that I could only deflect and make an attack of opportunity after the deflection relating the the Crane Style feat tree direct proportion of my level (So currently twice a day). I disagreed with him, but not wanting to turn this into a big argument and annoy the other players I choose to comply with his decision the rest of the session. I've looked over some of the other threads in regards to Crane Style feat tree, but I wanted some feedback on this specific situation. Is the nerf fair and am I just overreacting because my build was shutdown? If not, how should I respond to my Dm in regards to this? |