Millenniamaster's page

It's the year I stopped putting ranks in knowledge skills, even on knowledge-heavy classes. The game goes by so much quicker and smoother when you can file the first 33-50% of the game session off and get to the good stuff. It's like skipping the warmup comedian, and getting to the headliner. It's like eliminating wild card playoff games, and only letting those teams that WIN their division play. It's like PFS without commercials. It's like a family picnic without relatives or ants. It's been cathartic. I recommend it - if only for the look on everyones face when your wizard doesnt even roll a die when the knowledge planes check comes up.

I'm 3-for-3 at this strategy not affecting outcomes even one little iota this season. Im loving season nine now that i have adapted my character build style. Its glorious!

Reminds me of when I had played Birthright Betrayed with a wizard specializing in Magic Missile (it was either that or a BSF). My wizard had the big 5 knowledges tailored for monsters, not for figuring out "whodunit" or "whydunit". Now imagine how I felt when I was told at one point, "You can make a Knowledge (Geography), (History), (Local), or (Nobility) check.", FOUR out of five knowledges I didn't have. I would've been banging my head on the table if it didn't disrupt the session. That was pretty much how I felt throughout 3/4 of that night, and I've been dreading season 9 scenarios (or any skill/dialogue marathon scenario) ever since.

What bothers me the most about it is that Pathfinder is a high fantasy setting; with magic, mythical creatures, and a world where the sky's the limit on what writers can create within it, not entirely restricted by real life conventions as a direct result. But nope! We gotta go around the city to figure what this random, obviously evil dude did in Dicey Museum #627 in a setting that might as well be in a realistic fiction game for all it accomplishes.

I don't mind some skills or dialogue in a scenario, but not if it comes at the cost of watching one skill monkey at my table stealing the show and turning it into "Let's listen to him and the GM talk back and forth for 3 1/2 hours straight!". Now I'm half-tempted to make a joke character investigator to push myself through these kinds of ordeals.

Three more examples.

• As per the aging rules, people see and hear better the older they are.
  
• You can reload a ballista with zero issues even if you have 1 or 2 strength. Thus, unseen servants make perfect reload slaves.
  
• Going by Shinigami02's logic, a toothpick has a 5% chance of piercing +5 adamantine full plate, and a Stephen Hawking wizard has a 5% chance of succeeding on a combat maneuver against a herculean martial character.
  

So, over a few recent game sessions, someone in our group brought to light how silly the physics in this game are beyond magic, obviously. At first, he pointed out that earth elementals can swim just fine going by typical swim rules (y’know, despite being a bunch of rocks), and that a colossal creature smashing a diminutive/fine swarm does no damage whatsoever. Then I realized going by the logic of that first part, lead golems don't have any issues swimming either (they have +8 to swim from STR).

I decided to post this online partially for a quick laugh, and partially to see what other examples of “Pathfinder Physics” anyone else can come up with.