Mark Hoover 330's page

You play a lot of spellcasters; I'm a fan of Arcane spellcasters with Familiars. A decently built Familiar gives you more actions in and out of combat, especially if you really max out the right spells as well.

Vanish or Invisibility on a Tiny sized familiar that is intelligent, and especially when they can communicate with you, means that before combat ever starts you've got something with an insanely high Stealth that can get through most tight spaces and scout around.

There are many means by which Familiars can be adept with using Wands or other magic items. If you're busy supplying Haste and Mass Stoneskin to the party, having an owl on your shoulder shooting Scorching Rays is a handy way to stay in the mix.

Some Master-And-Familiar builds have functionality outside of combat though as well. Being a Cha based caster, putting ranks into Intimidation and then having a Mauler familiar change to a Medium sized, panther-like cat with it's own Intimidation skill is a nice +2 Aid Another bonus, plus it just looks cool in your mind! On the other hand a Raven Familiar with the Sage archetype could be an extra Diplomat or Monster Lore skill check.

You talk about worrying a lot, even when your fellow players tell you not to. To paraphrase Clarence Oddbody, AS2 from the movie It's A Wonderful Life, your single, Standard actions touch the lives of so many other people, friends and foes alike. You just don't see all that you've done. No PC is a failure that has friends.

Think about your Arcane Bond. REALLY think about it. I'm heavily biased towards Familiars, but a free bonus spell and potential cheap magic item is pretty cool too.

This attention to your Arcane Bond up front, before your 1st adventure will help inform your PC throughout your career. Being forewarned and forearmed is the key to playing Wizard PCs in this game.

IMO, Scrolls remain relevant even into 8-12 level. Yes, by then you have a ton of spells but having an emergency stash of cheap buff scrolls or niche spell scrolls like different types of Resist Energy or Tongues for the 1 time/campaign it comes up will always be relevant.

Build around Knowledge skills. The Wizard class is Int based and gets all the knowledge skills so these are obviously central to the PC. Have enough ranks scattered around the ones for identifying monsters: Arcana, Dungeoneering, Local, Nature, Planes, and Religion. If your PC is a prepared spellcaster who is caught unprepared by not knowing your enemy's defenses, victory in battle will be that much harder.

Last but not least: DOWNTIME! Vanilla Wizard gets Scribe Scroll as a bonus feat and other bonus feats as they level they can use for Item Crafting feats. Not every campaign is going to give PCs the opportunity for Downtime but if yours does, USE it well.

I'm not only talking about making magic items either, though that's a big part of it. No, the wizard is about being prepared, so prepare. Work with the other PCs on Gather Info checks, make Knowledge checks to research plot points, seek out casters willing to sell you arcane spells or scrolls, and so on. Knowing what foes you'll be facing, what terrain you'll be in and such before you meet those challenges will mean you've got the right spells and strategies to prevail.

I had another acct, similar name, but changed emails and subsequently forgot how to get into that old acct so I made this one in 2012. I wanna say I started lurking here in 2010 though.

I can't believe it's been more than a decade. Heck, I've been playing this game now... it'll be 15 years exactly at the end of August. How have I been playing that long, and I still mess up how Stealth, Cover and the monster ability Compression work? :)

I don't want to do this anymore.

I SHOULD want to, running this campaign I mean, and I will because I made a commitment, but I don't want to.

Last night we ended the totality of what I'd prepped, 5 years ago, as my APL 1-15 version of Lost City of Barakus. I have tried all this time to evoke some emotional response in my players to help them engage with the narrative, the setting and the pathos.

Regardless of what I'd wanted, what we got was a series of rolls for initiative, moving figs around a battle map, saving throws and so on. The BBEG and their personal bodyguards who'd been making the PCs' lives miserable since the start of the campaign, and it was apathy.

I'd planned a moral quandary for after the BBEG was defeated, a choice that, once made, would condemn the paladin's cohort to a dark fate. I'd fully intended for that, at least, to force the players to confront a puzzle they couldn't just brute mechanic their way through.

After over 3 hours of watching my players squirm, scouring every spell, magic item, skill, trait and obscure rule without actually organically engaging with the narrative and the villain's spirit (which was bonded to the NPC), I could see the only emotion I was evoking was frustration.

In the end, I relented, and 5 years of planning finished with a handful of skill checks, a tough Will save, and my players quietly cataloging whatever loot they could abscond with before the megadungeon collapsed.

Folks, after all this time playing with this group of players, I still don't know how to meet them halfway. I thought I did, thought I was getting through to them, but the bottom line is I don't want to play RPGs the way they do. Period.

It might as well be a board game for them, like the campaign version of Descent II: lay out the overland map with pre-drawn paths between encounter zones. Players can pick their path, resolve encounters, and obtain treasure and experience and advance their abilities.

I don't WORK like that, I just don't. I've tried to shoehorn in plot and pathos and despite literal years of foreshadowing and narrative, my players felt nothing and engaged with nothing in the end.

So anyway, like I said at the top I promised to keep the campaign going after this, at least to L20. I've already told my players once we hit L20 I'm taking a break. Going forward I'm planning a bunch of encounters, traps, puzzles and non-combat challenges with a vague "go here, defeat foe, recover maguffin" plot to tie it all together.

When this campaign finally ends in a few levels, I don't care what it takes I'm going back to being a player and finding a game I can play a ROLE in. I will be annoying, I will pick at every plot thread, question the character motivations of every villain, and ham up every "talking" scene I can get my hands on. If one of these players opts to run things for a while, I'm not holding any of this back for their sake.

In the AP we're playing almost all the combat takes place in ruins/dungeons, I don't think any rooms have been larger than 30 squares/150 ft to a side, so the point about distance is somewhat moot without redrawing all the dungeons. A PC with haste can charge 120 ft per round, and the PC wizard can dimension door himself and both martial PCs on top of enemy casters.

Then I would strongly encourage the GM to use Cover, Improved Cover or Total Cover for the enemy spellcasters. 10th level NPC spellcaster that can be seen by the PCs? in encounter areas that small they're dead in 2 rounds.

Now imagine the golem, prior to the PCs' arrival, piled a bunch of rubble up with a hollow space inside, around the enemy spellcaster. They are essentially looking through "arrow slits;" tiny openings in the stone, but otherwise have Improved Cover. Enemy spellcaster keeps a Dimension Door on hand just in case they need to make a hasty retreat and then just hangs out using a Rod of Maximize to max the damage on whatever 3rd level spells they're casting or whatever.

The game can play in 3 dimensions; use height to the villain's advantage if you can. Putting that rubble pile hideout 40' up with no easy way to reach it will certainly slow down the PCs' tactics. Make the PC spellcasters burn their spells to solve problems, so they have less resources to actually fight with.

Your PCs are 10th level; either combats are a slog or they last 1 round. On the point of enemy wizards though:

1. Check your spell ranges: Fireball is a Long Range spell; 400' + 40'/level. Take advantage of your spell ranges! If all your encounter zones are 40' to 80' from one end to another, enemy wizards WILL get owned.

2. Prepare: An enemy wizard casting their 1st spell on round 1? That's weak sauce; if their primary brawler minion isn't starting with Stoneskin, Bull's Str and other buffs, if that wizard can have those spells... consider other villains regardless of the AP. This is why I said above that GM's should actually pay attention to Perception checks and when the villains would actually hear the party coming.

3. Cover: I can't say it enough - some spells require only line of sight. To achieve this, the enemy wizard need only have a keyhole to peer through. My point is, if there's a way for an enemy wizard to have Cover or better yet Improved Cover from the PCs, put them there.

4. Mirror Image: such a simple, low level spell and it doesn't work against EVERY attack, but if the PCs are trying to target you with arrows and grapple checks, and they gotta find you in between 6 figment copies of yourself, you've got a round, maybe two to play with.

At the end of the day, veteran players know the system really well and APL10 or higher PCs have a LOT of resources and combat styles to use. The game is designed for the PCs to win most fights. As GMs we have to be willing, once in a while, to make a combat tougher.

I'm curious to know: where are most of your encounters taking place? I don't know the AP. What are the sizes of the encounter areas, what kind of architecture or furnishings are we talking? What kind of magic gear do the villains typically carry?

In 1e and 2e, movement and timing of attacks were nebulous. I hated the systems/rules, but tried to use them the best I could. Since a lot of combat rules were optional though, my game was different from every other one of my friends' games. More than that, you'd get things like my buddy having a fight w/me at school and suddenly every enemy just HAPPENED to go faster than all my spells.

You can still fudge die rolls or as GM just INVENT a +2 on a roll if you need to, but for the most part rules are rules, at every table, for both GMs and the players. Make a Dex based PC with Improved Initiative and the Reactionary Trait, you're likely going 1st a lot; now you can comfortably plan out your attack strategies.

Skills, outside of Thieving Skills, weren't really a thing in 1e and 2e. There was a lot of "can I do THIS" questions being asked at our tables. You might think that's super creative, but it led to MORE favoritism by DMs, and it slowed things down while the DM pontificated, you made your case as the player, they thought some more and the resident "rules lawyer" weighed in.

In PF1 you know what your skills are, how your spells work and don't work, and so on. You aren't guessing IF your Grease spell is flammable; it isn't and that's it. Wanna invent one that IS though? There's rules for that too.

Yeah, higher level combat moves slower than 1e/2e games, I'll give you that, but I LIKE having clearly defined action types, consequences, combat rules and so on.

You mention the backline a lot in your OP. Some thoughts:

1. Dimension Door delivery service: a 7th level wizard NPC is a CR6 addition to the fight; not much of a genuine threat to an APL 10 party. However that's 1 NPC that can bring 2 Medium creatures from somewhere ahead of the fight to the backline in a heartbeat. The wizard NPC enemy has no more actions this round, but if the 2 Medium sized foes were specialized for grappling and instantly began engaging the wizard and cleric, there goes a lot of spell support

2. Stealth: a Small sized foe with Stealth as a Class skill at around CR8 could potentially have a Stealth +20. Say for the sake of argument this foe had a 10 on their Stealth check to hide and wait for all but the backline of the party to move into the combat area; there's a good chance some or none of the PCs detect them.

3. Long Range spells: the humble Magic Missile travels 100' +10'/level. A CR8 NPC Skeletal Champion caster would be L8 in their casting class. That means from 180' away they're dropping 5d4+5 on the Sorcerer, Bard or Cleric. Use a readied action so that the damage disrupts spellcasting for extra oomph.

4. Reinforcements: I run a ton of dungeons in my homebrew campaigns and my players routinely sweep and clear them like a SEAL team, but occasionally they're either fighting outdoors or miss a room full of guards. In those cases, hearing the sound of battle is a DC 0 modified by distance and obstacles. If the big boss Rathos is being attacked and a handful of his CR7 Elf Skeletal Champion Fighter (Archer)6 guards are nearby, it could be super easy for their Hawkeye Perception checks to hear the scuffle and come running, targeting the Sorcerer with 4 arrows.

I get that you don't want to overtune the fight and TPK the party or invalidate their builds. The challenge though is finding the fine line between that and handing them a cake walk, and from APL 10 on that line gets finer and finer.

Adding more numbers to the fight just makes it longer, and potentially more deadly - interesting once in a while, but not super memorable. If you want your party to REMEMBER the fight, give them reasons to:

1. Taunt your players in real time: What does Rathos know about the plot that the party doesn't? What do they know about the PCs? Pick on them, taunt them with hints or clues, try to make the players feel that, even if their PCs win this battle there are still mysteries their foe will keep from them, reminding them how far behind the 8 ball they are.

2. Play tactically: how much time does Rathos have before the PCs get to them? What resources do they have, how can they use that time? Could Rathos bar a door, scatter caltrops or hoist a log trap in place? Do they or their minions have access to longer term spells like Cursed Terrain or Symbol of Death to ward the approach with? Does Rathos have an escape route planned in case the PCs prove too much for them?

I don't know the AP, so IDK who or what Rathos is, but I gotta assume Undead all over the place.

1. Braziers in the room/encounter area: currently they're sputtering out smoke from smoldering Smokesticks. The coals are also doused with any kind of powdered Inhaled Poison you want; burnt othur fumes, night's eye dust, whatever. pretend an expert NPC alchemist made it and up the DC if you need to.

2. Minions with spells who don't attack the PCs: take a kobold; give it 10 levels of Adept. This is a CR7 foe. If you want, give it Skeletal Champion too and push it to a CR8. Whatever the case, you've got a minion that can turn itself invisible and remain invisible while casting Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, Protection from Good or Obscuring Mist. If Rathos can benefit from +4 Str or both a +2 Deflection and Resistance bonus against the PCs, he's got that kobold 5' from him, remaining invisible.

3. Animal Companions: if you're willing to build minions with class levels, take it to the next level and give them Animal Companions. Its a lot to manage but the AC gives the minion extra actions they can take every round.

4. Maneuvers: Dirty Trick/Blinded or Trip are great for groups. If a Large creature with a Reach weapon can pull off a +22 Trip maneuver against the paladin from 15', said paladin might be able to be surrounded by 4 minions all itching to deliver AoOs to the PC as he stands up.

5. Target the PCs weaknesses: I don't just mean their lowest save either. Someone's got a slow speed? make the party travel uphill or over difficult terrain. Do the PCs need to breathe but they're fighting undead? Flood the area, fill it with choking smoke or strangle them. If the PCs need to see hit them with every kind of Blindness-inducing attack you can.

6. Prep ahead of time, and use ALL of the villains' props: did you put a wand of Scorching Ray in the treasure of the room? Give it to a minion. Remember that a tanky paladin likely has a penalty to their Stealth from armor and detecting the sound of a creature walking is DC 10. If the villains know the PCs are coming 1 or two rounds ahead of time, make sure they've got any defensive buffs on, caltrops on the floor, etc.

7. Swarms and Trample: a Beheaded Cackling Skull Swarm is one way to go but just taking a simple Scarab Swarm and slapping a couple templates on it to make it CR6 can be a sure way to auto damage the PCs. Likewise, undead Large sized animals with a Trample attack should be big enough to grind down the PCs' HP without having to roll attack rolls.

8. Cover and tactics: a minion firing an arrow at a PC might have a +12 to hit and deal 1d8+2 damage; a minion standing behind a chunk of masonry is doing the same thing, but with a +4 to their AC. Resist the temptation to move the villains into the open, force the PCs to advance through their crossfire or AoO's. Last but not least, attack the party in waves if you can, covered by foes at a distance.

Remember that every minion you add to the fight will likely only last for a round, maybe 2; they need to be able to do something significantly threatening with a single combat round.

Don't be afraid to really gear up your enemies. Have them use treasure items if they can, or add extra potential treasure in the form of scrolls, potions and wands the villains have on them. Give the animal companions cheap, +1 armor or masterwork tuskblades or whatever.

All good points that I mostly agree with, but is this why you prefer running 3.x or why you prefer playing it? It sounds like the latter.

I think my question was a little more specific than a lot of the responses are realizing.

I prefer to RUN PF1 the same reason I prefer to PLAY PF1: easy customization.

Set up a fight in AD&D or 2e, it's super easy to miscalculate and put too much in front of the PCs. I haven't run 5e but from playing it a bunch, at low levels with an inexperienced DM we were nearly tpk'd often.

PF1 and 3x make monsters easy to add classes to. More than that, PF1 has a vast array of well balanced templates to snap on as well. While I do things manually, I understand there are a couple different apps you can use to speed through those changes.

Downside, most skills outside combat-applicable ones become pretty much fluff by 5th level IMO. Climb or Swim have niche uses but are generally replaced by magic, so running any kind of skill-based encounter requires a bit more work but combat encounters are easy to build, customizable, and can remain tense through double digit levels.

We are into the home stretch, for better or worse. Basis for my campaign has been the Lost City of Barakus from FGG, updated for levels 1-15 instead of of 1-5.

The PCs are APL 15, have the weapon to destroy the BBEG, and have entered the final area of the megadungeon. This past Saturday, they had their 1st couple of encounters in the BBEG's "prison" level.

In the original module, PCs would be APL 5 and there were some set encounters, then the BBEG. My update took one of these and warped it into a farcical hyperbole while keeping the main intent.

Barakus was ruled by wizards long ago and portions of the city fell into ruin after their fall, hence the megadungeon. In my version, PCs enter the "prison" level and are greeted by a great hall containing the wizards' last ruling council.

They are real; no illusions detected, but there's something off about them. As they interact w/the PCs, a portion of the wall opens revealing the BBEG taunting the heroes. The ruling council tells the heroes to use their weapon, defeat the evil then assembles on the far side of the hall to watch like an audience, complete with popcorn.

At this my players cast a couple spells to buff up. The BBEG moved closer and began casting a modified Scorching Ray spell, but the PCs beat the BBEG's initiative and hit him once in melee. In spectacular fashion the BBEG's body collapsed into dust, fanfare played and the ruling council clapped, lauding the heroes and bidding them take their reward.

A side panel opens revealing heaps of treasure, gold, magic items etc. At this point the players are thoroughly confused and frustrated. They begin to argue w/the council so the entire place goes black, the council figures dissolve into puddles of water and the BBEG's telepathic transmission begins.

The players get a choice, just as 6 past iterations of such "heroes" have gotten in the past: take the treasure, leave the BBEG alone, and leave Barakus; in return there will be 100 years where the magic of Barakus is "turned off" so evil won't be attracted to the region. Or, if the PCs remain to attempt to fight the BBEG and win, not only will their treasure be lost but slaying the BBEG will reveal and even greater evil that's been waiting all this time for the BBEG's soul and, once obtained, said greater evil will be unstoppable.

Oh yeah, and the last catch: if the heroes take the deal they'll have all the treasure, they'll get 100 years of relative peace and stability, but all of their heroics, their deeds, the knowledge of Barakus and so on will be lost. Once they emerge from the "prison" level of Barakus they will be unknown and their works will be undone in the land, so while they may yet live and prosper as heroes elsewhere, in this region it will be as if they never were and the cycle will reset again.

So of course the players and their PCs have decided to press on, slay the BBEG, and take their chances against the greater evil to come. The players didn't perfectly solve a riddle getting into the "prison" level so they're essentially trapped down here and if they use any "treasure" laying around this might translate into them taking the BBEG's deal so they are stuck with limited, dwindling resources.

I would suspect that our next game session will be the last of this current story. The players have asked me to keep going, up to 20th level with these PCs so there'll be an epilogue of sorts after this BBEG is defeated, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

From '80-'85 I played AD&D, Runequest, Rolemaster, I think Car Wars was in there somewhere, but by '85 me and my brother were playing Marvel Super Heroes. Yeah, we liked comics, but that wasn't the reason we played.

In Marvel and the Advanced version as well, you could make your own hero. dependent on random rolls you could make nearly anything, from a robot that turned into animals to a mutant with a sentient weapon. I know there was also Villains and Vigilantes or the DC Heroes one and whatever, but our game was Marvel.

The point was: you could customize your PC to be anything, do anything. There weren't classes and set advancements and specific spells/magic items that the GM handed out to you; as a player you had TOTAL control to make your hero whatever.

As far as D&D clones over the years, unless I was willing to play GURPS (I wasn't) you didn't really get this much control until PF1. Arguably you could customize a lot in 3x/3.5, but PF1 you could customize feats, skills, favored class bonuses, swap old spells for new on spontaneous casters, pick archetypes, take traits and so on. You could really cobble together whatever you could think of.

I agree with all the stuff TXSamila has in their 10 points above, but I'll add this as my #11 - PF1 is a game that gives players the ability to make what they WANT to make instead of trying to shoehorn their concept of their character into a generic class.

On a side note, that's why of all the full BAB martial classes in PF1 I still favor Fighter over everything else. No 1 set gimmick; tons of archetypes; loads of class ability subs to really flesh out who YOUR fighter is versus every other one. Dip a couple levels into this class or that and suddenly you've got a truly unique martial PC with plenty of character baked right into their personality AND mechanics.

The Ravager is a 3PP on the PFSRD site from Frog God Games. It has a built in "ticking clock" to motivate PCs to destroy it; every week it survives, the creature gains 1HD and thus, over time advances in power and therefore in other physical attributes including size. You'd have to make it CN instead of N but otherwise it might fit the bill.

How many barghests are there to encounter in the AP? How common is graffiti depicting the monster, or scenes of folks sitting around in taverns swapping stories about them?

I haven't played the AP but reading entries about Sandpoint it seems fairly common knowledge that there's a couple goblin tribes living near the town. In turn, Goblins seem a pretty safe bet for a common monster to make a knowledge check for.

You COULD then make the argument that Barghests, often associated with being leaders of goblin groups, are talked about often by those who make it their profession to deal with goblins: adventurers, military folk, religious or arcane leaders, and so on. A town library, if well curated, might contain material on such creatures if goblins are frequently encountered in the hinterlands and so on.

My point is, there's an argument that can certainly be made, around Sandpoint, that "barghest" could be a Knowledge check with a DC = 10+ CR. Knowing this particular barghest is named Bob and has ingested specific sacrifices that make it even more developed than the 2 stages the creature normally has might not be in scope for that roll however.

Tables will vary. As this is the rules forum, I don't know that there's a specific RAW that will support either interpretation. I'm just saying the argument to make a Barghest common exists in RotRL.

Dex does everything else, why do we need it to do damage too? Like, I know others have mentioned this but Dex is your defense, your attack bonus with ranged attacks, your ref saves, 7 skills I think and with 1 feat it's your attack bonus for low to mid damage melee weapons. I want it to be niche to use it for damage too or else everyone planning to use a melee weapon is going to front load Dex.

The ONLY thing I'm upset that Dex doesn't do is: you can never use Dex as your attack stat when wielding the melee portion of a slingstaff. Seriously folks, you took the 1 core race that is Dex heavy, Str light and made their racial weapon impossible to finesse.

Isn't melee DPR for Dex builds based more around # of attacks/round and add-ons like Sneak Attack though? Like, a barbarian 10 has ridiculously high Str damage, Power attack, and then 3 attacks while hasted. A chained rogue has what, potentially 5 melee attacks while hasted and, depending on the circumstances might be adding SA 1 or more times?

Like, I figured the classic trade-off for going Dex based in melee, offensively anyway, was more attacks doing less damage individually while Str based was less attacks but bigger damage per hit. And to reiterate what others have said, every class can benefit defensively from putting points into Dex, but not every class benefits from Str offensively.

This is a fantasy game filled with magic. One of the Core classes has an at-will ability to detect evil as the spell. My point is that if a player lost their PC and wants to keep playing in the form of a new character, let them.

There are a million ways to write them into the existing story. If the immersion and storytelling is 2-dimensional, like a check-your-head-at-the-door kind of hack-n-slash game, the new PC just appears by magic. If the story is more of a factor:

they're a fan of the PCs and were secretly stalking them

they are a divine/profane servant to aid the PCs

the NPC is afflicted by a Geass or Quest spell and must help the PCs

a former minion of the BBEG that sees the party as a common enemy

local celebrity seeking fame, fortune and glory

I'm sure there could be more, but hopefully you see my point. If a PC is like, DEAD dead in one of my games, I have a 1-on-1 with my player. I ask would they rather stop playing the rest of the campaign, bring back this current PC or bring in someone new?

Depending on their answer I'll contrive some way to make it happen as a GM.

PCs are 13th level in the megadungeon now. They know their final boss is hiding somewhere in the dungeon they haven't gotten to yet and also know they have to collect 3 maguffins, empower a weapon to be able to damage said final boss, and have 2 of the items for the rite.

Currently they're exploring the deepest section of the place they've found so far. Following old, charred footprints on the floor the PCs entered a series of rooms with magma bubbling up (Fort saves to avoid Fatigue every minute) and a cadre of burning skeleton/skeletal champions made from the remains of fire giants with fighter levels guarding the skeletal remains of their king and a bunch of treasure.

Combat ensued, undead destroyed, treasure acquired.

After that, PCs note a hallway behind a secret door and hear a whispered voice from down that hallway. Moving to investigate the party's movement is detected and whoever is speaking casts a spell while still out of sight and flees; loud booming footsteps far away are also heard and a door slamming.

PCs continue forward and the tunnels and chambers ahead begin filling with fog. PC wizard recognizes Guards and Wards, dispels it, and the party continues. Without the fog, PC rogue easily detects and removes an Acid Pit trap, then the PCs make it past a lone Gravesludge and up a short flight of steps to a door.

Here they encounter Festus the Mad, a paranoid wizard convinced that the feminine shaped Iron Golem he commands is actually his wife. Knock spell, door opens, PCs engage, and after taking some damage and a cohort needing a Breath of Life spell, Festus is nearly dead and the IG is slightly damaged.

The villain teleports away, managing to remove the gold wedding band from the construct's finger before disappearing. The PC wizard however just happens to have Control Construct for the day so he casts that, marches "Jocasta" the IG to one of the magma pools and lets her melt into oblivion.

The Angry GM has a series on the basics of creating a campaign. The link is the intro to that series. There are also lots of other blogs or advice columns out there on creating and running your own homebrew campaign.

Your synopsis is just that: a synopsis. The characters start here, do this stuff in the middle, and end up here. You're not really missing anything but details, but again, this is a synopsis.

I'd say the only thing you've gotta decide, before you start a homebrewed campaign is: how linear do you want it to be? You've got the bare bones, know who your villains are going to be and you understand their motivations. Do you want the players stuck on a single track from the first adventure to the last, do you want the PCs to have free rein to go wherever they want, or do you want some hybrid where most PCs' decisions still lead back to the main plot in some way.

The 2 extremes are easy to map out. The hybrid is a bit more challenging and will depend on the attitudes and playstyle of the group. If the players are vets of RPGs and PF1 specifically, let them lead; if they're novices you'll need to prep NPCs, foreshadowing and clues you can plant that reconnect disparate plot lines to the main one.

Last but not least, running a long term campaign that isn't being run like an AP can be very reactionary for the GM. You might plan for an obvious clue to take the PCs from one settlement in trouble to the next, but the players might decide instead to go elsewhere, pursue a different villain or whatever. No matter how well you've outlined your game, now you as the GM have decisions to make in response to your players.

Morals in a game is a 2 way street.

Lawful good combines honor with compassion.

As I said, I tell my players if this is a "heroic" game and what that means for me as a GM in session 0. My expectation is that, after the game starts and the players are aware, they will actually form up some idea of the values and morals for their PCs, then stick to them unless a significant campaign event changes their outlook.

I'm not saying every LG PC has to play like a boy scout in my games, but every LG PC should have that core compassion and express it consistently. The players running those characters should be aware of this ahead of time and plan accordingly.

It is frustrating that like in Lilliyashania's assessment, players in my games only seem to consider the rights and autonomy of villains I as a GM have to put special care and attention into RPing. One guy joked that "if the GM gives an NPC a name, they're worth talking to." Like, if you're playing a good character in one of my games, it shouldn't take me tricking you into starting a dialogue with an NPC or villain.

Whatever; playstyles vary, I get that.

I don't know how anyone else runs their games so I don't know how morality plays into yours. Every game that I run, at session 0, I let my players know what I'm looking for narratively. I might tell the players anything goes, or this is an evil campaign, or you need to pick some kind of Good alignment and in this campaign you're trying to be heroes.

If I haven't set rules from the start or this is an evil campaign and a PC whacks an NPC because they look gross and act rude, I don't care. If however this is one of my "heroic" campaigns and the same thing happens there will be immediate and lasting consequences.

PF1 has its own pantheon based on the Golarion setting. Among those deities is Sarenrae, literally a goddess of redemption. Redemption is also a Domain and an Inquisition. If this path is so potent, so possible that it literally manifests as a source of power to clerics and inquisitors, then "heroes" should be aware of this power as a tool in their belts.

As for the consequences: arrest or sanctions by the local law, loss of reputation and respect by the populace at large, active enmity by local intelligent foes made aware of the PCs' actions, or active attempts to recruit the PCs into more evil. Sustained evil acts can lead to alignment changes which, in turn might affect some classes.

This one hurts a bit more. Pee Wee's Big Adventure was an extreme favorite that united my entire family as kids, in the face of childhood trauma. Rest in peace Paul Reubens.

General combat spalls, and we're specifically talking about Arcanist 1?

Acid Splash.

Seriously; the benchmarks for a CR 1 foe, barring Swarms or Resist/Immunity Acid are avg AC 12, less for Touch AC, and 15 HP. That means in a party of 4 PCs you owe 3.75 avg DPR. Acid Splash targets Touch and with an Acid Flask for 10 GP you're dropping 1d3+1 Acid damage per hit.

Everything else is optional. Mage Armor seems obvious, but then you might have Stone Shield: in case a foe ACTUALLY gets to you after hitting them with Acid Splash, you've got an Immediate action to give yourself Cover from their attack. You might also choose Windy Escape; another Immediate action in case your foe gets up to you, except this time you turn into a vapor for a couple seconds gaining DR 10/Magic and Immunity to Poison, Crits or Sneak Attack.

Like, being a Wizard or Arcanist isn't about having the right spell; it's about KNOWING the right spell, having it written down, preferably on a scroll, so you've got a TON of resources. My advice to most prepared spellcasters is as follows:

1. Take/Keep Scribe Scroll
2. Spend starting gold on extra L1 spells in your spellbook/familiar, and (GM willing) scrolls you've created at 1/2 cost

You never know when Expeditious Construction or Jump might come in handy for you or another PC in the party at low level, but when it's needed having it in your book/familiar and also on a cheap 12.5 GP scroll would be fantastic.

Tie in your minion with your shtick. That's great advice Tim Emrick. If you're, say, playing a Fire Elementalist Wizard, picking an Improved Familiar that has to do with fire is a safe bet.

Another key, IMO is to not think of these creatures as another set of numbers for actions in and out of combat. They're your friends, confidants, possibly more. They have a connection to your PC, perhaps a very real, mechanical connection like a cavalier's mount or a witch's familiar.

Tip for GMs: ENFORCE some of the soft skill areas of the Leadership feat. Does the PC have a good reputation? Well, if their cohort goes with them on adventures, what info is that Cohort bringing back with them? Does this PC maintain a level of integrity and honor even with foes, or do they systematically wipe out whole lairs of intelligent humanoids for no discernable reason other than looting the corpses with all the emotions of a siege engine?

When there are consequences to their PCs' actions, players will often remember that the combat spreadsheet they take with them on quests has a name, a personality, a home address and so on.

Last but not least... daydream. Take 5 to 10 minutes every once in a while, think about your character and their story. I'm not talking about feats they need to complete the build or what their DPR is, but answer questions like what do they wear, what does their signature weapon look like, what does their voice sound like when they're afraid and so on.

Taking some time every so often to actually consider who your character is can help you zero in on relationships this PC has with important NPCs in their life, such as these minion types.

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Melkiador wrote:

Enemies appropriate for a party of 9+ level characters should rarely have much issue with this spell.

Rarely? SR is the number one deterrent for this spell

Not really. Numbers is the number one deterrent for this spell. Especially, if those numbers are intelligent enough to just attack the ice and free their friend.

See above suggestions of foes having friends. I agree w/you on this point and I'll go one better: if we're talking about dealing damage to the ice as a solution, any group of foes containing a kobold adept 7 should be able to not have much issue with this spell.

Kobold Adept 7 is a CR4 foe, not much of a threat to APL9 but it has 2 L2 spell slots. If one of those slots is Scorching Ray and the kobold rolls avg damage per ray, this CR4 kobold has just delivered 28 Fire damage to a block of ice with 0 Hardness and 27 HP.

I have a player who has maxxed out the save DC for Icy Prison as high as she can get it. She spams it on every encounter. But. . . the save DC is so high that the target usually fails and the Strength DC to bust out is too high for most creatures. It effectively shuts down most fights within a few rounds. Other players feel it makes them irrelevant. Any suggestions on how to handle it?

I'm also a huge fan of "talk to the player first" as others have mentioned. These are hard conversations but necessary. If the player is willing to get on board and dial back their use of Icy Prison, problem solved. If not or they relapse and you want this player to continue in your campaign, some things to consider:

SR: as others have mentioned, the spell is subject to SR

The subject is Helpless but can breathe: the Helpless condition doesn't explicitly remove or restrict your opponent's actions, just simply says they are at their foes' mercy. Obviously the spell binds the victim in place but if said victim still has a Standard action and has abilities like Teleport at Will or Gaseous Form that they can use w/out needing V, S, or M components to use, they should be able to escape

Incorporeal creatures would be immune to this spell for obvious reasons. I understand the Str DC is difficult but that IS still an option as well. As other have said, anything dealing Fire damage might be able to melt out, but also Acid damage or even Electricity damage should have an effect if the creature doesn't have to move to use it (like an Aura or something).

I can't second it enough that CR 9 or bigger foes should have friends. A kobold Adept 10 is only a CR 7 foe. This creature could potentially have Invisibility pre-cast on itself and have a lesser rod of maximize on it for casting a Scorching Ray on the prison their leader gets stuck in.

Do your players specifically call out they're using a coup de grace on EVERY foe they down in combat? If not, maybe one stabilizes and lays on the dungeon floor long enough to heal back to 1 HP. Then they stagger off, surviving long enough to pass along what they know about the PC that casts Icy Prison.

Point is: the PC's reputation may begin to precede them. If this is the case and the PC has become famous/infamous for their one trick, a Knowledge: Local might inform enemies what to prep for if the PC comes calling. You can foreshadow this; in taverns tongues wag about the kobolds or giants or whoever that are hunting for "Captain Cold" or whatever.

Then, when your player comes across monsters that ALL have shirts or rings of immolation, have maximized Scorching Ray cued up or summon demons to 'port all around the battlefield, the player isn't crying foul. The monsters figured out who the PC was and prepped for them, just as a good band of adventurers might do when facing a dangerous mission.

What's the goal here, when the player crows about their PC being indestructible? If we're just trying to reinforce that the PC is "vincible," there's a TON of ways to go about it. I've got a U Rogue in my megadungeon campaign: while she's a switch hitter, the lion's share of her feats and GP have been spent on her rapier and she often throws her bow on the ground and moves into melee after the surprise round.

Disarm. Nothing fancy, just the Disarm maneuver. She's L11 so a monster with, say, 15 HD, 3/4 BAB and Reach along with some of it's feats repurposed around Improved and Greater Disarm should have a decent chance of beating her 26 CMD and if they do, she literally would have no weapons on her besides alchemical flasks.

Like, it won't be certain death for the rogue, but it'd be a reminder that her invincibility is contingent on items, not the character itself. APL 12 now in this party and they still don't have a way to see through fog or mist; a simple Obscuring Mist spell could potentially hold devastating consequences and they wouldn't know.

The point is: reminding players their characters are still mortal isn't really that hard. Thing is, if a player is WILLING to see their character that way, what's to stop them, once they lose their rapier in battle, to pout and claim the GM is SO unfair cuz they're just targeting THEIR character? In other words, if they're going to act like a child screaming "I'm the BEST!" how do you know that once you disprove their assessment they won't continue to act like a child?

I mean, that works okay for certain kinds of backstories, but what if you just want to play a character that doesn't really have any negative elements to their backstory and the character just decided that adventuring sounded cool and decided to do it.

Ok, in that case no mechanical changes but the external forces working on the PCs illustrate the drudgery of civilization while offering glimpses into wonder of the world beyond: PCs are pranked by a pseudodragon who says "I'm sorry" with a treasure map; the nobles the PCs encounter aren't necessarily disrespectful but require inane rituals of supplication from the PCs; their day jobs are boring to the point of nausea. Oh yeah, and I'd have some mercenaries do a musical number along the lines of Tomorrow from Annie about the joys of adventuring.

I'd go to the opposite extreme of some of the folks in this thread. Add a child level or an NPC level? Naw... delete your PC level.

Everyone starts at the table with the heroic NPC array: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. You can arrange them however you'd like. Everyone gets one level in an NPC class. Finally, you get a total of 75 GP to spend on any gear.

However.

All encounters you survive, be they social, combat, skill challenges such as traps or puzzles, etc, will all be CR1/4-CR1/2. you need 500 XP to obtain level 1 in a PC class. At that point you receive +4, +4, +2, +2, +0, and -2 to your stats in whatever way you'd like.

Along the way, as a GM, I'd make a point to abuse the PCs by whoever I want to be the first running villain of the game. Not abuse as in unaliving the PCs mind you, but bullying, harassment, robbery and so on. Oh and also, I'd really play up the drudgery of "civilized" life. The PCs would be suffering fines, taxes, tithes and levies; they'd be forced to work a day job; guards and officials would threaten them with extremely oppressive laws, and the nobility would absolutely look down on them.

The point would be to make the players absolutely hate living in towns or cities, hate being productive members of society. I'd also try to engender in the players a burning desire to get after whatever enemy has been bullying them.

This way, when they finally hit level 1 in their PC class the players are motivated to leave on adventures and seek revenge. Oh yeah, and they'd earn a pair of Traits during the NPC level too.

Case in point: last night I ran 3 PCs and an NPC, APL2, against a ghast. The setup was that the ghast was hiding behind the remains of an overturned cart laying in a sparsely wooded culvert off a main road. Nearby was the carcass of a draft animal the ghast was feeding on.

The ghast waited for the PCs to draw near, revealed itself to move to an area with Cover 10' from one PC, and remained in Cover for the rest of the combat. It used the downed cart and surrounding foliage to its best advantage, turning a 4-on-1 combat where CR was equal to APL into a fight which, after the fact the guy playing the druid genuinely thought his warcat AC was a goner.

Ghasts have an Int of 17; there's no reason it's going to be dumb enough to sprint out into the middle of the party and start hacking away. It baited the PCs to come closer, used it's environment, used its Climb and Acrobatics skills and so on. While the fighter made all his Fort saves, the warcat AC failed both against the Stench and the Paralysis, leaving it entirely vulnerable. The fight was finally ended b/c the wizard cast a Dancing Lights into the foliage and then followed that with a Magic Missile the next round.

If your monster has a Climb speed, especially if it also has Reach or a 1-handed ranged attack, why would it ever be on the ground, out in the open? If there's walls or trees or boulders around, use 'em. If your monster relies on multiattack or has iteratives with melee attacks, wait somewhere for the party to come to you.

Finally, and I can't say this enough, use the Skills of the monster. For example, did you know that Knowledge (Local) is a Class skill for the fey? I don't think you see it on a lot of their stat blocks, but if you're giving them class levels, maybe think about giving them ranks in the skill.

Knowledge (Local) can help ID humanoids, local inhabitants, customs and traditions, and notable personalities. PCs have a local reputation? The fey might ID them. Depending on their backstories, 1 or more of the PCs might've learned their adventuring skills from local mentors or organizations; maybe the fey knows one PC is a wizard of x or the barbarian comes from y tribe. Any of this could in turn give the fey an advantage, like guessing who's going to have a low Will save or if someone's combat may be more Dex based.

Skills like Climb or Swim can get your monsters into Cover or Concealment; Sleight of Hand from out of combat to remove a PC's favorite light object on the exterior of their person; Use Magic Device so monsters or NPCs can use a piece of their own treasure. Instead of giving your players challenging fights by just adding +4 to the CR, see if there are ways to really exploit everything a specific monster can do to ruin the party's day.

Ooh, here's another one that's kind of half-serious: permanent Weaponwand spells! Essentially certain guards, say, elite soldiers with levels in a class to cast the spells on a given wand, are assigned specific weapons with a wand infused in them.

For military or home defense purposes, probably a rack. However, here's some other suggestions, just cuz:

1. In a cup, like paint brushes
2. Hovering in the air, with permanent Silent Image spells showing a sign around them so guards can ID them
3. Held in the mouths of statuary; bonus points if the stonework is actually another defense such as gargoyles or golems
4. In a vending machine
5. Laying on a shelf, but said shelf is locked behind a gate; NPCs need to have requisition paperwork filled out and approved, go to the gate guard, hand off that paperwork, then also sign out the wands on a daily log which is reviewed by their Sergeant at Arms on a weekly basis
6. in flatboxes; change the gate room in 5 to a shop and name the gate guard Voliander; he's a weird old man that seems to know WAY more about the requisitioner than he has a right to
7. In a pool of water that appears to be on fire (Legend reference)
8. In a lockbox accessible by playing musical notes on a keyboard
9. On a bandolier
10. scattered among hundreds of fake wands, all much fancier than the actual wands, upon several stone shelves in a cave; a holy knight meant to guard over the wands tells the entrants to choose, but choose wisely for the wrong choice will bring death

I love L1 adventures. I love playing them, running them, designing them and so on. Literally anything is possible; no PC has an established "niche" yet, scores are so low that luck is just as important as skill, and threats are still threatening.

At Level 1 a familiar is JUST as squishy as it is, comparatively at L20; 1 good hit takes it out at either end. Despite that a Tiny sized flying familiar with the right Wisdom and Perception skill is just as valid a scout as other PCs, meaning that such a familiar doesn't just have to be a freaking talking paperweight that gives you a bonus to Initiative.

Burning Hands and Sleep can still be relevant. Let that sink in; these 2 spells that are so lame they are given to NPC classed Adepts can actually turn the tide of battle in a single casting. Such is the joy of L1.

And don't get me started on martial types. L1 is both a time of dominance and utter fear for these PCs. Monsters from CR 1/4 - CR4 don't typically have teleportation and even Fly speeds can be uncommon, so in a fight where foes are on one side and PCs on the other it's super easy for a spellcaster to take cover, spam Acid Splash and call it a day.

Martial types? Every action they take needs to be a chess move. Your AC isn't ridonkulous yet so you've got to anticipate every AoO. If you're a ranged martial, so what? You've still only got 1, MAYBE 2 attacks if you're a human fighter. Every attack roll counts and there are no guarantees of success like there are when you are hitting on a 2 or better.

At L1, the game has stakes and accomplishments come from hot dice, good strategy, and the contributions of everyone in the party. And at last, when you get that first taste of treasure, consumable magic items, masterwork weapons and such, there is a genuine sense of improvement. Take pride in your L1 folks, you won't get that back again until the next campaign.

4 words: Dust of Broken Hearts. If Sorsha and Mad Martigan can make it work after the effects wore off, anyone can.

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

So... there's THAT strategy.

As inconvenient as it is as a GM, it is the fair way to play it. Especially if not all of them are armed or armored. It takes 5 minutes to don medium or heavy armors, so even if they are alerted, they might not arrive in a timely fashion anyway.

1. Perception: measuring distance generally from where the PCs first engage in combat, the sounds of battle requires a DC -10 Perception check. This is modified by +1 for every 10' of distance between the listener and the combat, closed doors, solid walls, or the favorability of conditions; are the listeners engaged in labor, leisure, sleeping or worship activities, are there other noises like rushing water or wind, are the listeners in their own combat at the time, etc.

2. Distance: a creature, dependent on weapons and armor in combat, can double move every 6 seconds. If they thought their comrades were in danger of being slain, they might even be motivated to move at full speed and ignore stealth, or even to move at a Run action. A creature moving at a Run in Light or Medium armor could move anywhere from 60' to 120', maybe more.

3. Timing: if a creature is dependent on weapons and armor in combat, it likely knows how long it takes to gear up. It may even have an understanding of how long a combat round is compared to a minute's time. In other words, the creature may be able to weigh the pros and cons of taking 1-5 minutes, or 10-50 combat rounds to get properly geared up, then leave the safety of wherever they've been allowed to don all of this gear in order to get to a battle site.

During this exorbitant amount of time, one of three outcomes has likely already taken place: the PCs easily trounced their initial foes and have good positioning to repel others coming to reinforce the area, the PCs defeated their initial foes and are weakened, but either left the area or are clever enough to use the environment to their advantage, or the PCs are slain and the reinforcements aren't needed.

My point is this: if creatures are dependent on weapons and armor in combat and AREN'T geared up, they likely aren't going to notice the sounds of battle b/c they're engaged in other activities or they will notice but likely wouldn't arrive in any meaningful time frame to reinforce the initial fight.

On the other hand foes prepared for combat, wearing the gear their stat block gives them, can move 60' to 120' in a single round if moving with great haste, or 15' to 30' per round if moving with extreme caution. I would say the overwhelming majority of scenarios in which reinforcements arrive in a PF1 fight scene are ones in which the PCs' foes are prepared for combat and close enough to hear and respond to the sounds of battle, getting them to the fight scene within 1-4 rounds.

So it ended up being fine I guess. I think I was intimidated by Mr Old Skool for a couple of reasons, both of them personal. He has views which tend to be a very far cry from the other gentleman playing in the game and 2, Mr Old Skool has a need to be right all the time. I think this somewhat controlling nature is why he's the perpetual DM with his other friends.

He was able to tone down his personality for Wed's game session which was nice. Still there was ONE weird thing: he's played PF1 before. Not only that, he claims he even tried running a couple sessions but didn't get into it b/c there were "too many rules to keep track of."

That's weird for a couple reasons. When I first started hanging out with this guy a few years ago he said he'd never played PF1. He even kind of bad mouthed the system as being too crunchy, which I always thought was funny b/c his default system is D&D 3.5.

Also, he insisted he was pretty familiar with the system but then played like a total noob. I mean, fine, I run on "easy mode" apparently so the rules he missed I just slowed down, explained things, let him re-choose his character's actions a couple of times, it was ok, but either he lied to me back in the day and had in fact played PF1 a long time ago, just forgot some stuff, or he lied on Wed and isn't super familiar w/the rules from having played around with the system and such.

Either way, I have the distinct impression Old Skool is misrepresenting himself. Again, I think this is weird. It's weird b/c he's told me, on a personal level he wants to be a friend. Like, outside the games. We've hung out, I've gotten to know him and I'm already friends with his wife so I feel like there's no real reason to be fake or misleading or something.

Anyway, the actual game play went fine. I was nervous right up until I pulled up the "boxed text" I'd given myself for the start to my homebrewed adventure. The mechanics were ok; a few missteps here and there as Mr Old Skool got into the swing of things but otherwise smooth sailing.

He's playing an oddly complex character for his first PF1 campaign in however long, or if ever. Its a Samsaran Wizard (Universalist)1 with an eye towards also picking up Cleric levels to go on into Mystic Theurge. I mean, fine, if you WANT to keep track of a bunch of spells and powers while you're ostensibly learning or re-learning how to play the system, that's fine, just figured playing a Martial PC would've been easier.

As of right now I am planning to make this into an ongoing campaign. We'll see how long it lasts. If anything else weird comes up I'll circle back.

This owl is smart enough to write it's own name, and this black cat can spit gobbets of fire... but for now, they live a life of solitude, left behind by those they were originally bound to. Hi, I'm Lady Sara of MacLaughlynn, and for just 1 SP a month, you can help these former Familiars find a home...

In the arms of the angels my friends, in the arms of the angels...

I recently asked someone to leave my games. They took it well in the moment. Since a few days after however, this person has messaged those of us remaining in the game so aggressively we blocked them. They still found ways to contact us around the blocks through social media.

We've been accused of "throwing the baby out with the bath water;" we have been called names; questions have been asked such as "are you happy now?" and "how could you act so normal when you were all actually getting ready to throw me out?" I could go on.

The most frustrating one however was in a list of grievances from this person that made its way to my email, the player asked "how was I given NO WARNING?" in just that way. No warning.

I was asked to join this group by a mutual of mine b/c this problem player was running their last campaign and doing it poorly. Weeks before I was asked in as GM, another player at the game, a person usually regarded as mild-mannered, threw a book on the floor and raged at the top of their lungs about the problem player's issues.

This problem player was told numerous times BEFORE I joined that they either cheat or randomly make up numbers on their dice rolls; they routinely ignore or pretend to not understand rules that would hinder or penalize their character/NPCs; they sleep or otherwise tune out during non-combat scenes; their behavior in-character is often socially awkward, explicit and off-putting, or otherwise makes players or NPCs in the game uncomfortable.

There were other things. That was all BEFORE I joined.

After I joined, I didn't feel it was appropriate to boot this person from my campaign since I joined THEM, but on 2 occasions I took this player aside and talked about their issues around cheating/incredibly poor math skills and ignorance of the rules. I get that PF1 is very crunchy and it can be hard to keep things straight but this player for example would have me explain the Grapple rules to them, then an hour later in a different fight they'd try to do something that wasn't rules-legal in a Grapple.

It was... hurtful, to say the least. This problem player blames me for their being ejected and more to the point claims in one post that I was one of the best GM's they've ever played with and then sends me an email suggesting I'm narcissistic and controlling.

IF you have been asked to leave a game and you are angry and need to vent I get that, believe me, but I would ask two things. First, direct that negativity at other things, healthy outlets, until you feel strongly you can control it without unloading on your former gaming group. Second, when you feel like you have that kind of control, don't immediately go and confront your former group but take that time of clear-headedness to actually LISTEN to their reasons for letting you go, try to understand why they took the actions they did and how everything got to that point.

We are all fallible. We all make mistakes. Sometimes we need to admit when WE'RE wrong instead of just blaming everyone else. Self-reflection is scary, and sometimes dangerous to our self-esteem, but it is necessary to grow and improve, not only as players and friends but as human beings.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

So like, are you looking for current sales numbers?

Advancement from L1 to L2 requires 3k XP for slow advancement, 2k for medium and 1300 for fast. Maybe your GM doesn't use XP so leveling is even quicker, but using these totals we set a baseline for how fast our PCs move up.

A standard CR1 encounter hands out 100 XP to each PC in a 4-5 person party. Therefore it takes 13 CR1 encounters on Fast, 20 on Medium, and 30 on slow for PCs to get to L2. Based on the number of spell resources available though in any party containing a full caster where that caster relies on their spells almost exclusively, most parties can only survive, what... 4-6 encounters a day? Figure half of those the full caster is using Cantrips, Orisons, Class Abilities or a consumable, but they've got 2-3 L1 spells they can use in a day and then they're done.

So if an adventuring day is an average of 5 CR1 encounters, or 500 XP/day for the PCs, it's gonna take 3 days on fast, 4 days on medium and 6 days on slow. Granted I'm assuming a lot and only looking at CR1 encounters; these might vary a bit. Still, I'd say PCs will likely spend 2-8 in-game days at L1 if the campaign uses XP.

If a game was going to take months for my PC to go from L1 to L2, I'd ask to start at 3rd level. Again, if we were following the XP rules, even if we assume the GM is using the slow track, taking 30 in-game days to reach L2 would mean that my PC was only gaining 100 XP/day, or put another way, the PCs averaged a single CR1 encounter a day for 30 days.

Now, that might be explained as the party finishes a short dungeon, goes back to town, takes 1 week of Downtime, then gets out after their second quest and so on for a month, but like, that's a TON of Downtime and I'm a guy that enjoys PCs taking time to craft, scribe scrolls and so on.

What do the PCs do? Like, what's a day like for them in other people's games? L1 vanilla Human Fighter with Int 12, Craft (Weapons)+5; what does this PC do all day?

Every APL1/CR1 fight lasts, on average, 2-3 rounds. Based on healing resources from, say, a dedicated full caster but barring Channel Energy or consumables, this PC can potentially start the day at 12 HP and survive approximately 7.40 combats in the day before a PC with a Healer's Kit would have to resort to trying a DC 20 Heal check to keep this PC alive and in positive HP.

So, figure an adventuring day featuring somewhere between 3 greater than APL fights in a day to up to 10 lower than APL fights in a day. That's what THIS fighter could sustain with their party before the spells ran out for the day. That's what, between 72 to 150 seconds of their day spent in battle? 72 + 150 then divided by 2 is, say, an average of 111 seconds, or roughly 1.85 minutes.

So... say the PC spends 2 minutes in battle in a given day before these battles threaten to outright kill the PC. Figure another 58 minutes' worth of time spent searching around the site of each battle, scouring every inch of the scene for any potential clue, hidden treasure, NPC to save, etc. Generously, that's an hour out of this character's day spent "adventuring."

Even if this PC is spending this 1 hour of adventuring in the middle of a barren wasteland contained within a Tundra environment type, removing another 8 hours for sleep leaves this PC 15 hours unaccounted for in the day. What do they do with that time?

Traveling? Maybe they wax on with the other PCs about crafting techniques until he bores his compatriots to death. Eating lunch or resting between encounters? Could be eating w/1 hand, pouring over an old journal from his mentor on how to fold metal into runes BETWEEN layers of the blade without weakening the piece. Striking camp in the morning? Well, might only take about 15, 20 minutes, but the prepared casters need an hour; the extra time could be spent repairing nicks and scratches in your weapons, tapping a masterwork weapon to hear how it "sings" to gauge its suitability for enchantment (working towards later feats) and so on.

There are narrative ways to explain the PC growing into the feats. There are mechanical ways around the mechanical challenges of mundane and magic crafting.

GM: I'm going to make a game where you're all immortals. The game begins in the Scottish highlands, but we'll also flash forward to D20 Modern.

Player 1: I'm going to be a fighter... a highlander!
Player 2: I'll be his cousin, also a highlander!
Player 3: I'll be from Russia, a barbarian... and can I be evil?
Player 4: Ok, so I'm going to originally be from Spain, but I'll also have traveled to Egypt and Japan, where I married a princess and won an honor sword... a katana! But now I'm here with my Breadth of Experience feat to be a kind of mentor to player 1!
GM: No to player 4

And thus, the 80's classic Highlander and subsequent series never existed.

Maybe that's not the best example but there are ways to let a PC have a katana in a Viking game. Or you can say no. If the player is using a katana to game the system, they're a powergamer and they want to absolutely destroy the combat balance so they are never hit and deal all the damage while the rest of the party is secondary to that character... probably a good idea to say no.

If they're just trying to be the chief metallurgist to the king of Spain and wear a fancy hat though...

Do you wanna get Squirrel Girl? B/c this is how you get Squirrel Girl.

Also, I like to make plots around a big evil vs a big evil, w/the PCs in the middle being manipulated like pawns. I did it once using an Imp former familiar with class levels in Sorcerer (Infernal Bloodline) vs its former master, now a lich.

The Imp was charged with concluding the lich's contract and collecting its soul. Somehow though in the final days of his transformation, the lich had excluded the Imp from his mind and dismissed it as a familiar so while the Imp knew what the phylactery was, it had no idea where it was hidden.

For decades the Imp, in Raven form, would appear to adventurers using Diplomacy, Bluff, or straight up charming them to coerce these NPCs to try and find the phylactery. To protect himself the lich unleashed terrible evils upon the world. This arms race led to all sorts of half-truths, myths and rumors about the region and its dangers, attracting even more adventurers.

Unfortunately the campaign imploded at 3rd level but it was going to be the Imp as a Raven, guiding the PCs to the first few quests while learning about them and gaining their trust. After this, the imp would begin actively manipulating the party, directing them straight at the lich's minions. Meanwhile the imp, as a devil, would be negotiating contracts with former NPC minions to help them gain power and goading them to do terrible things, all so that the damned souls could be collected by the imp to pad it's prestige for when it finally returned to the greater devils it served.

Familiars are completely mundane creatures that become magically enhanced through a special magical bond with their master, granting them all the ability score bonuses and special abilities we've all come to know and love. So familiars are very much magically-enhanced creatures, and that magic never ends even if the master dies; for example, if a Wizard dies and the familiar survives, the familiar still retains all of its magically enhanced ability scores and languages known.

So, if you abandon a familiar for a new one, that familiar would retain all of its magical enhancements like increased Int, any known spoken languages or sign languages, HD, HP, Saves, Skills, Improved Evasion, Spell Resistance, but it would lose the ones that directly include/require the Master, such as Empathetic Link, Deliver Touch Spells, etc..

This is actually a really good idea for a story hook tbh... PC's meet an abandoned, distraught familiar and the ex-familiar wants.... vengeance? to re-unite? find a new master?

Most familiars, outside the Sage archetype, only ever achieve between a 6-15 Int. Many of the mundane, animal types however have decent Wis, say around a 13. Take a magical beast with JUST enough Int to be sentient but a decent Wis, make them upset, feel rejected... now add Evil Outsiders that might be able to give powers to their faithful, based around Wisdom as the primary casting stat.

I think it would be great, and tragic, and flavorful to have an embittered, evil cleric or shaman in the form of a Tiny sized animal like a raven. A shaman would be so delicious, so the former Familiar has it's own bonded servant. "This is my rat, Mrs Frisbee. SHE'LL never leave me... never abandon me for some sickly sweet Outsider just because it's got Fast Healing..."

Or you could go another route, still just as dark. The familiar takes levels in Druid, but as part of its exile from its master the creature was abandoned in a city, had to survive on garbage. Now as a Swarm Monger Druid the creature has bonded with a spirit of entropy and decay, looking to infect everything with rot. They have a vermin familiar, can speak to things like cockroaches and flies, and they will have their REVENGE!

DL, I apologize for the words I chose and the implications of selfishness. I can try to justify it or explain it away but I won't. I hurt your feelings, made you feel insulted and I apologize.

You can be... direct in your responses on these forums but I genuinely appreciate your input. I suppose I centered myself and my own anecdotal experience in this when I should've just been open to other styles and methods.

I've often joked in threads I don't want to be on your bad side. Now I know what it is and I hate it. I still hesitate every time I open PFSRD from a response you left me so believe me when I say I will remember this thread and try to be more tactful in my posts in the future.

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Here's what I'm getting: the only reason to ban/restrict crafting is to benefit the GM. Maybe it's a "playstyle" that the GM gets to decide whatever items the PCs are worthy of having; maybe they're trying to protect game balance or force PCs to accept McGuffin quests they have planned so that the plot stays on their track. Maybe the GM just doesn't enjoy Downtime scenes/scenarios or doesn't want to detour their plots for lengthy crafting times. Whatever the case, the only real reason to remove the crafting is b/c the GM doesn't like it.

Fine. This isn't MY cup of tea but at least most of respondents in this thread say that they tell their players these things up front. Chell's post in this thread however brings up the concern I have; when GM's run games based mostly on their own whims vs those of their players, there is the temptation to derail previously established crafting capabilities for the sake of the GM and nothing more.

That is... frustrating.

Tbh, I find the compulsion for a GM to ban crafting or certain items to take away from the PC's experience. There are some items that are absolute campaign wreckers though, so I understand why GM's would ban things like Deck of Many Things and other similar items. But if it's not a "campaign-wrecker", it should be available.

Here's my thing R to the K: unless my players are absolute total noobs, they likely know some items like the Deck of Many Things are campaign-wreckers. If they still want them... its' EVERYONE'S campaign to wreck, including theirs. If the players are nihilists or shenanigan-types that just want to see the campaign world burn, let 'em.

There is NO story I've ever written for any of my home games that is so sacred and sacrosanct that it should be considered completely immune from player devastation. Period. Now again, as HR upthread says, this type of playstyle isn't for everyone and I don't expect everyone to get on board with me. At the end of the day though, I run games so I can hang with folks I like and play PF1.

If I allow crafting, completely remove all my own safeguards and the PCs end up with gobs of items? Fine; I'll start scaling up foes, scaling back loot drops, and maybe throw in creatures with a super-high Sunder or Steal maneuver. If the players pull a Deck of Many Things and each grab 3 draws, so be it. Did they have fun?

I'm reminded of a Rifts game way back in my childhood. My brother gave our very weak, non-megadamage PCs an Abolisher: a giant mech robot vehicle that can blow holes in continents. We piloted it around, completed the mission my brother wanted us to have it for and along the way cheesed off MANY enemies.

Soon after completing our mission a "random" rift opened, portalling us into the middle of a giant desert. Upon surviving the Abolisher had suffered minor electrical damage, we could've reparied it... but we were sinking in the sand. We could stay and fix it, hoping we didn't suffocate in the process, or we could eject. When we all landed safely on the dunes and watched the last of the mech disappear under the sand, we just shrugged and kept going.

Here's what I'm getting: the only reason to ban/restrict crafting is to benefit the GM. Maybe it's a "playstyle" that the GM gets to decide whatever items the PCs are worthy of having; maybe they're trying to protect game balance or force PCs to accept McGuffin quests they have planned so that the plot stays on their track. Maybe the GM just doesn't enjoy Downtime scenes/scenarios or doesn't want to detour their plots for lengthy crafting times. Whatever the case, the only real reason to remove the crafting is b/c the GM doesn't like it.

Fine. This isn't MY cup of tea but at least most of respondents in this thread say that they tell their players these things up front. Chell's post in this thread however brings up the concern I have; when GM's run games based mostly on their own whims vs those of their players, there is the temptation to derail previously established crafting capabilities for the sake of the GM and nothing more.

That is... frustrating.

Is it to run away though? 4 PCs, they rolled their stats; one is a paladin 1 with a 20 Cha. This PC took a Trait for a +1 on Diplomacy checks. Rolling out the door at L1, this PC has a Diplomacy +10.

As the party is moving through Hills terrain, they realize that a hill giant has taken up residence right beside the road. This giant is out in the open, tending to a flock of "dire sheep." PCs can see a cairn, pile of stones marking a grave roughly the size of the male giant and said giant is observed to have been crying.

The area of the road w/in about a mile of the giant's steading is too open for the caravan the PCs are guarding to pass through undetected. The area is steep and rugged, but they COULD try to off-road it. That being said the merchant leader of the caravan is in a hurry and has promised the party extra pay if they get his wares to the city on time.

When I threw this encounter at my L1 players they looked at me like I grew a second head. Despite all being veteran TTRPG players, they figured they were either going to have to fight the giant and die or try and drive 2 teams of ponies hauling heavy loads SUPER fast through the area to avoid rock throwing. I said "maybe he just wants someone to talk to."

What followed was a painfully slow introduction to my play style for these players. The giant started at Unfriendly, not Hostile, and had just recently buried his wife due to a band of hobgoblins raiding his farm for sheep. The PCs had slain a couple hobgoblins earlier and I noted how starved they looked.

Eventually the players just... talked to the giant, or at least said how their characters would talk to the giant. He was gloomy, vengeful; he wanted to pay the hobgoblins back in kind. The party also learned that the main bulk of the humanoids were still ahead and that there were a lot of them.

The PCs took a few hours' detour out of their caravan travel, sought the hobgoblins, challenged for an honor duel, the paladin won (barely) and so the giant had his vengeance. The paladin however took it a step further, negotiated a truce between the giant and 'goblins saying that the warband would pay the giant for 1 of his sheep each year and find a way to otherwise survive while leaving the giant in peace. In return, the Hill Giant had to ignore the 'goblins crossing the hills near his steading in order to go hunting.

Finally in the end the giant gave them an NPC boon; the PCs gained a +4 on a Knowledge (Geography) to find a hidden way through the hills to make up the time they'd lost. They pulled it off, circumvented an area of the main pass and ended up actually ahead of schedule.

And don't forget, this is a team game: L1 martial types will likely be eating up most of the attacks, but then they also likely have an AC 15 or better so they can survive about 5-6 combat rounds before they're under 0 HP. Got a "healer/revitalizer" type? Have them prop up the martial type to extend the # of combat rounds. Ranged attackers or arcane spellcasters are likely more squishy but targeted less often by enemies.

Are the players noobs? Reduce the number of combat rounds they can go before a TPK. Veterans? Increase the combat rounds by half again. Loot drops are important, access to Downtime is critical, and the GM has to really focus on encounter balance and how many encounters to throw in on any given adventuring day.

Players: there are more options than attack or run. This is very important at L1. Scouting and pre-combat prep, even if all you're doing is casting Resistance x4, that's still a way to protect yourself. Meeting intelligent creatures you might be able to speak to, consider Diplomacy or Intimidate.

A CR1 encounter with 4 kobolds is 4 individual kobolds. Depending on their access to reinforcements, the build of their class levels or their narrative motivations, this band of kobolds may have no desire to actually fight the party. Perhaps they can be reasoned with, bargained with, or frightened into fleeing.

A Level 1 vanilla Wizard optimized for spellcasting has, say, an Int 18. This gives them 3 Cantrips and 2 L1 spells to cast per day. Depending on your school specialization you've got an ability there to exploit. If you don't dump stat your Str you might have a 55% chance to succeed in an Aid Another check if you're stuck in melee, but considering how many attack spells have a range component, it's likely that you've got at least a Dex 12 or better for ranged touch attacks.

Arcane bond is also a thing. Either you've got another spell to cast through an item or you've got a familiar for tons of non-combat or even combat functionality, depending on how you build. Finally, Wizards start with 2d6x10 GP by RAW (avg 70) unless your GM starts you differently. You automatically get clothes and a spellbook containing all Cantrips and 7 L1 spells.

Oh yeah... and Scribe Scroll is a bonus feat. I know this is controversial, but I houserule to allow PCs to use Craft or Profession skills along with Item Creation feats when spending their starting GP, representing pieces of gear the PC might've made themselves. Assuming most folks don't use that rule though, consider the following gear package:

common survival kit, dagger, x2 flasks: acid, 1 scroll: Mage Armor. Spend 10 GP on one extra L1 spell you've transcribed in your spellbook for a total of 8 L1 spells

Starting off this way, this PC has a 1d3+1 Acid ranged touch attack, x2 L1 spells/day but a decent variety from which to prepare, a potential Touch of Fatigue DC 14 (at least) if you want to put it on a Familiar and risk sending it into battle. You can either attempt Aid Another checks with the dagger or set up Flanks w/the weapon if you want to risk yourself in combat.

I'm guessing, top of my head, this PC could survive 3 rounds of CR1 melee combat. Barring that, at a range of 25' they've got unlimited Acid damage. Against swarms they throw the extra Acid Flask, keeping one for their Acid Splash spell. They can armor themselves to at least a 15 AC with a scroll, immediately increasing their # of melee round survival to 5.

Any time you've got GP, a Settlement or otherwise access to the resources and 2 hours to kill, this PC can spend 12.5 GP and scribe a scroll. Any day that ends w/you not having cast one of your L1 spells, take the time to scribe. If your GM won't let you, figure out why and take steps to mitigate that in the future. From L1-L3, scrolls are important.