Moonclanger's page

jscott991 wrote:

captain yesterday wrote:

If you crease the binding along the spine yourself that will increase the lifespan of the AP books considerably.

Can you explain a little more what you mean?

Absolutely!

Along the spine of the front and back covers you'll notice a line where it's supposed to crease, if you hold a ruler or a heavier book along that line of both the front and back covers and fold the cover along the crease they'll last longer.

Works for campaign setting books too!

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a go the next time I run an adventure path. In the past I haven't been able to get through one without at least one volume shedding pages.

I agree with Syries. Sound out your player ahead of time. You may even want to introduce the drawbacks of the curse before the character takes his first oracle level.

Curses like blind, deaf and lame could manifest as injuries that don't heal properly. Wasting could manifest gradually like any other disease.

In a setting with magical healing wounds that won't heal and diseases that can't be cured should alarm the characters and generate plenty of drama on their own. Especially if you and the player don't let the rest of the group in on what's really happening.

Then shortly after the character takes his first oracle level have him manifest his new powers in a suitably dramatic manner.

As a Brit I am indeed fortunate never to have met gamers like these. People might mistake my fuming for stink lines!

When I played Kingmaker the party paladin's backstory involved a mysterious fey mother known only as the Bright Lady. The player wrote this without knowing anything more about the campaign than what is written in the Kingmaker Player's Guide. So the GM made the obvious choice and made you-know-who his mother (and in due course my character's mother-in-law).

However the best plot twist I've ever played (in a homebrew campaign) revealed that the party NPC was in fact the BBEG. When the campaign began there were only three players and we all assumed that the NPC party member was just there to make up the numbers. But he was using us to complete a task he couldn't manage alone. It wasn't until after he'd left the group that we found out we'd been duped. We were outraged.

Alternatively the Sohei archetype offers a range of options for a ranged monk (including the javelin).

I see that the Come And Get Me combo has been mentioned. An effective combo for the Unchained Barbarian is Unexpected Strike and Shield Slam. For those who aren't familiar with it here's the Unchained Unexpected Strike:

"Unexpected Strike (Ex): The barbarian can make an attack of opportunity against a foe that moves into any square threatened by the barbarian, regardless of whether that movement would normally provoke an attack of opportunity. The barbarian can use this ability only when there are no other foes in a square threatened by the barbarian. A barbarian must be at least 8th level to select this rage power."

So you use Shield Slam to keep your threatened squares clear between turns, which with Combat Reflexes (or Quick Reflexes) allows for multiple uses of Unexpected Strike in one round. (The CRB version can only be used once per rage.)

That said I personally prefer to use a two-handed weapon and Pushing Assault with this tactic.

Stone Dog wrote:

I've always gone by the idea that killing is never Good. Well, aside from evil outsiders and most undead (and only most because sometimes you want to make sure the soul isn't destroyed too). The capital G Good thing to do would be find a way around killing. However, that isn't always an option.

Most of the time it is Neutral: honorable combat, self defense, defense of others, preventing certain evils, and most adventuring fights. It is regrettable, but sometimes the only tool available.

Sometimes it is flat out evil. Most of those times the person resorting to murder will use one of the above reasons as justification for their crimes. They might even be true reasons! The difference is that the Neutral killer might mean it when he says "I had to kill, it was self defense," but the Evil murderer says the same thing and yet really means, "I GOT to kill. Oh, and it was self defense."

Good is not inherently nice! Paladin armies are infamous for razing Orcish camps in order to protect the innocent. Risking one’s own life to kill evil creatures to protect the innocent is a good act. There is more to Good than mercy. While some Good may strive to minimize deaths of even the enemy, not all Good have this restriction. Note that very few Good outsiders have merciful weapons or have try to fight nonleathal listed in their tactics. Sarenrea and a few other Good gods have mercy as a core part of their being. (Even Ragatheil can forgive if genuinely asked.) However, it’s notable that Torag sees this mercy as a weakness.

Paladins killing orcs isn't incompatible with Stone Dog's views. He said killing is not good. That's not the same as saying it's evil.

And the good hero does not risk his life to kill evil creatures. He risks his life to stop them. Killing is the means to the end. Not the end itself.

There are degrees of good, just as there are degrees of evil, law and chaos. Individuals, even paladins and outsiders, differ in how good they are. To my mind your example of the Glorious Revolution (in response to Angel Hunter D's comment) illustrates this nicely.

Of course it all depends on what you mean by "GMPC".

Outside of this forum I've only heard the term once, and then it was used to describe a recurring enemy in a homebrew AD&D campaign I ran in the 1980s, who in effect became my character. Not through any inclination of mine, but because the players became obsessed with her and pursued her to the ends of the earth because they couldn't abide the fact she'd escaped their first encounter.

Consequently the focus of the campaign became a chase. The players would spend their money on divinations to learn Delena's whereabouts and then set off after her. In the course of their travels they became involved in all sorts of adventures.

The players seemed to think I wasn't being fair because for a long time they failed to catch her and they started referring to her as my DMPC. However when they finally caught up with her and killed her the most obsessive member of the group embezzled party funds to pay for her resurrection because he'd been knocked unconscious in an earlier fight and missed the big showdown!

Later on when another member of the group was GMing a few adventures in my campaign I played her as a party member, adventuring with the other players in disguise. My cover was blown in the middle of the dungeon resulting in an exciting chase sequence.

So despite accusations of favouritism it was a lot of fun for all concerned.

Other than Delena I've had one other character I've thought of as a GMPC. This was in a Call of Cthulhu campaign. One of the PCs started dating an NPC who'd previously hired them to investigate her father's murder. The PC was an archaeologist and since his new girlfriend had a background in paleontology he invited her to come on a dig with the rest of the group and so she became a full time party member. In due course she and the PC were married.

Elaine stayed with the group for quite some time and I became quite attached to her. I wrote up a nice neat character sheet for her, complete with portrait. And the somewhat random nature of Cthulhu advancement and my lucky dice rolls meant that in due course she acquired more skills than many of the player characters.

Although none of the players ever expressed dissatisfaction the situation made me feel uncomfortable. Even though Elaine was fairly quiet in group discussions when skill checks were required she was starting to outshine some of the PCs. Therefore when her husband died I was quick to write her out. After his funeral she discovered that she was pregnant and decided to retire from adventuring.

So to me the term GMPC doesn't so much imply an NPC party member as a character that the GM is attached to and treats as though she were his own PC. And GMPCs aren't good for the game because they call into question whether the GM is treating the players fairly.

Of course an NPC party member runs the risk of becoming a GMPC more so than any other NPC because she features in every session.

So if your group is small and you feel they need an extra member to fill a skill gap in the party, then by all means introduce an NPC. But don't allow yourself to become attached to the character or allow her to outshine the player characters. Other posters on this thread have provided plenty of advice on how to avoid this so I won't repeat them. I've already written War and Peace!

I've seen it work well once but it was done with a twist.

There were only three players available when the campaign began so we all assumed that the NPC party member was just there to make up the numbers. In fact he was the BBEG using us to help him complete a task that he couldn't manage alone. Once he'd got what he wanted from us we went our separate ways.

In due course we found out we'd been hoodwinked and we were outraged. It was one of the greatest coups I've ever seen a GM pull off. The campaign then entered a new phase as we set about tracking him down.

My method of dealing with mass combat is hero combat. Basicly have a small fight between the party and some amount of enemies. That decides the entire war.

Rather than one fight decides the entire war, I would suggest a series of encounters which affects the outcome of the battle. Each encounter (between player characters and notable enemies) earns the players victory points and the total number of points accumulated determines the outcome of the battle. Encounters would have set objectives like hold the bridge, capture the gatehouse etc. Meanwhile the larger battle rages in the background and you just describe what happens. Then repeat for each battle.

As an alternative to victory points the outcome of each encounter might determine what happens next. You could put together a flowchart of events and potential outcomes. E.g. Encounter #1: capture the gatehouse; if the players succeed go to encounter #2; if they fail go to encounter #3. The players follow the flowchart until they come out of an exit point, having lost or won. If you want to give the players more choice create a flowchart with multiple entry points.

In short you run each battle like a dungeon. It's what the game's designed for! Of course this approach requires work from the GM and a few such battles is likely to put the players a level ahead, so you might then have to beef up the rest of the adventure path.

EDIT: I've just noticed that Wheldrake has already said essentially the same thing. I should have read the whole thread.

If you can just come back like nothing happened, then all characters should just go all out all the time, why play safe or tactically, where is the benefit (other then to level).

As other posters have said, players often put their heart and soul into their characters. The last thing they want to do is die. My players are often so cautious that you'd think they'd never seen an action movie in their lives!

Yours seem to be cut from a different cloth so if you think they need some extra incentive to stay alive you could try introducing new characters as one level lower than existing ones, but it can create game balance problems, resulting in more work for the GM down the line.

But you know what I was wrong , there's one class that never ruins things - the bard . Bards are always cool with whatever . They can't do much but they're always happy to help with what little they have to contribute . And they can use whips , because why not .

So that settles it , bard is the best class . The end .

Not in my neck of the woods. We've never forgiven the bard for abandoning his 1st edition druidic roots!

Back then he had principles, he believed in something! Now he's just a thief who uses magic.

So they're all rotten - every single class in the game!

The end.

Poison Dusk wrote:

Seems like carry capacity rules are largely unknown/misunderstood.

Oh, I think they are known, just mostly ignored :)

That would explain why so many people on the forums seem to dump STR.

In 3rd ed I played a sorcerer. I was generally regarded as the most powerful member of the group. At 15th level I drew the Talons card from a Deck of Many Things and lost all my magic items.

So I just grabbed a spare saving throw booster and CHA booster from party treasure and carried on regardless. Maybe I needed to cast a few more defensive spells than usual but I was still the most effective member of the group.

Omnius wrote:

I'm just confused about what sort of terrible metagaming even can happen if you say, "Make a save versus poison."

What if it was "Make a save versus illusions?"

If the GM is properly prepared he'll know the illusion's coming, in which case he can review character sheets and check out the PCs' relevant bonuses and immunities before the session.

In our group the GM retains the character sheets between sessions. This gives him the opportunity to familiarize himself with the characters' abilities and of course ensures that all character sheets are present at a session even if players are absent.

I love Lannisters btw!

Anyway thanks guys since this is exactly what i was looking for!
Now i've a question regard the "lawful" part of the alignment: when you say you follow the laws those are intended to be laws of where you belong or laws of every city you come across? For sample, lets say you come from Cheliax, where slavery is pretty legal, as bribe is. And then you go in a city with the party where those are not allowed. Which law do you follow exactly?

Well, a lawful character doesn't have to follow the law - if they did LE criminals wouldn't exist.

If you're going to join the Order of the Ennead Star then you have to obey the law. And if you spend the whole campaign in a city whose laws promote good then you run the the risk of coming across as LN or even LG!

Whereas if you join the Order of the Asp or the Cockatrice you're more concerned with personal prestige (don't get caught!) and maybe self-respect (don't do anything that demeans you).

@Moonclanger got it, understood finally :D!

Lets consider my PC is a Lawful Evil Cavalier, with his own code.
What should i put in?

Well, I'd start by choosing an appropriate order, such as one of the three Obscure Citations mentions.

Ennead Star is obviously very lawful and probably needs nothing added to it - if that is you want to play an LE policeman.

If you don't then pick Asp or Cockatrice, which are more concerned with personal prestige so are more evil (self-centered) than lawful. If you select one of these two you might want to add a few of your own rules to make sure the character comes across as LE rather than NE or CE.

For example: I always keep my word. I always pay my debts (i.e. return favours and avenge slights).

The point of rules like these is that you want to be able to respect yourself and have others respect you. That's really all you need. Anything more is counter-productive - remember, you are evil.

I'm just confused about what sort of terrible metagaming even can happen if you say, "Make a save versus poison."

I think the concern is that if the save is failed the players will then know how to get rid of the effect.

That said I'm personally in the tell-the-player-what-type-of-effect-he's-saving-against camp. Too many times I've seen a GM fail to give the player enough information with the result that the player ends up failing a save he should have made or, worse, being affected by an effect he's immune to.

If the GM is going to withhold info for fear of metagaming consequences he needs to know the PCs well enough to apply any additional modifiers himself.

Perhaps the mirror has telepathic control over its duplicates, enabling it to direct their actions so that duplicates can work as teams, rather than each duplicate simply attacking its original.

Under the mirror's control duplicates might even forego killing their originals, imprisoning them instead (perhaps inside the mirror), so that they can continue to exist in the real world, providing the mirror with guards and other minions.

Perhaps upon releasing the prisoners the players find someone they know or someone important among them - who knows what their evil duplicate has been up to while the original was imprisoned?

You could do that. It is a rather long list. But what I meant was that you should work out what the code is trying to achieve. There has to be a point to it.

If it's just an arbitrary list of do's and don't's then it may prove a real headache to play, or your character may come across as something of a jerk. It's a mistake often made by players who don't understand the paladin.

To expand on my earlier comments:

Perhaps your character is a member of a criminal organisation with a code of conduct intended to protect it from the law and to keep lower-ranking members in line - like the mafia in the Godfather.

Or perhaps you have a personal code intended to keep you sane in a world gone mad - lines that you will not cross, rules that make you better than the CE barbarian. Examples of such lines in your list are #1, #5, #6 and #7, with anything else being fair game.

Other examples include the mercenary's code common in fiction, which basically states, Do the job and get paid what it's worth. And the Lannisters' motto - "A Lannister always pays his debts."

The code needs to have a purpose, otherwise what's the point?

Moonclanger wrote:

I don't think that's a good example because the Fellowship is soon sundered . . . In an RPG each player might have a character in each party (a high-powered character and a low-powered one). That's how it's been done in the games I've played that have attempted to emulate the scope of LOTR.
On the other hand, the CR of the hobbits' encounters aren't lowered just because the hobbits are a lower-powered group on their own. The must still get to Mordor, by-pass the Black Gate, face Shelob, infiltrate Mt. Doom, and destroy a major artifact. All while traveling with a centuries old being that has been infected and possessed by that artifact.

On the other hand, the CR of the hobbits' encounters aren't lowered just because the hobbits are a lower-powered group on their own. The must still get to Mordor, by-pass the Black Gate, face Shelob, infiltrate Mt. Doom, and destroy a major artifact. All while traveling with a centuries old being that has been infected and possessed by that artifact.

The whole point that was being made was that low-powered characters can't hack it when there are high-powered people about. The hobbits are an example that contradicts that.

But the high-powered people aren't about when Sam and Frodo enter Mordor, which is my point. So I still don't consider it a good example.

Isn't the discussion about player equality, i.e. parity with each other, not the opposition?

That said I do appreciate the points you're making - as I appreciate the points Gray Warden is making (albeit less eloquently).

I'm all for player equality because I think it facilitates fun (so I know where GW is coming from), but, like you, I know that you can have fun without it.

A GM has many jobs to do, and different GMs have different styles and different strengths and weaknesses. However as long as everyone's having fun the GM is doing a good job.

Sam Gamgee is the hero of LotR and he isn't a superior race, hobbits are inferior to maiar, elves and dwarves and yet Sam saves the world. Not because his stats were better, or even perfectly equal to everyone else's and not because his starting CR was equal to everyone else's racial choice, but because of the choice he made. And that's what makes rpg's fun for me, the shared story we're all telling. And I don't need all of the characters at the table to be exactly level with each other in order to tell a good story.

I don't think that's a good example because the Fellowship is soon sundered. Sam spends most of the story in the company of other hobbits - characters whose abilities are similar to his own. In effect a low-powered party (the hobbits) briefly teams up with a high-powered party (the others) and is then split up into two low-powered parties (the hobbits) and a high-powered party (the others). So when Sam saves the world the high-powered characters are elsewhere.

In an RPG each player might have a character in each party (a high-powered character and a low-powered one). That's how it's been done in the games I've played that have attempted to emulate the scope of LOTR.

Interesting! I had not considered things like rolling for ability scores and HP affecting balance, but they can have a substantial affect.

I also had not given much thought to party size. I will have to think about that awhile.

Thanks for the responses, and please keep them coming!

My group is quite large (six players) and the typical party includes four martials and two casters. I think it's one of the reasons why we don't experience caster/martial disparity.

Because there are six of us our APL is average level plus one. This means that characters are less powerful relative to the opposition than they would be in a four-man party, i.e. we're a level lower.

A larger group means more characters in need of buffing, protection, healing and travel spells etc.

Tactics like "scry and fry" become less viable because it requires a higher level caster (15th) to teleport the whole party (compared to 9th for a four-man group).

I've roleplayed a few trials in my time. What works really well, if you've got a friend who's not a member of the group but is available to guest-star for a session, is to have someone else play the prosecution. The players represent themselves and you play the judge and jury.

I voted for the cleric.

These are my reasons:

1. At first level you choose a deity, domains and whether to channel positive or negative energy. Apart from skills (only 2/level) and feats (the basic number) you get no other opportunities to customize your character. If it wasn't for the splat books it would be very difficult to build a cleric who stands out from other clerics.

2. The domains aren't equal. Some are far more powerful than others. For example, Luck is very powerful. The Bit of Luck power is useful at all levels of play. In fact it probably gets better at high levels when you can apply it to a martial character who may get half a dozen attacks a round. And since it's a spell-like ability you can take the Quicken Spell-Like Ability at 10th level to make it even more useful. Whereas, say, the Water domain's Icicle ability is pretty much useless after about 5th level.

3. The cleric has no capstone ability so there's no incentive to advance all the way to 20th level.

It may be an uncommon opinion....but I don't see anything that needs to be fixed.

A high level caster is supposed to be more powerful than a melee character. It's a fundamental part of a fantasy setting.

I agree.

To my mind comparing casters and fighters is like comparing apples and oranges. I think it's more important to ensure that the various fighter classes are in balance with each other. And that the spellcasting classes are in balance with each other.

I for one wouldn't want to see the game re-balanced. That's what 4th ed D&D did. It made all classes basically the same. The only real difference between swords and spells were the special effects. My group played the one scenario and then I put the books away for good.

In an ideal world all classes would be of similar power at every level. But this isn't the case. Some classes get going much more quickly than others (they have a lower floor) and some have greater potential (they have higher ceilings). And the character-building decisions you make affect the height of both floor and ceiling.

Back in 1st ed AD&D the wizard was designed to have the highest floor and the highest ceiling. So it took quite a while to get going but if you did get to high level, boy were you powerful. Although the rules have changed somewhat since then it's still pretty much the case.

In my experience players don't mind a character becoming more powerful than his fellows at high levels if he was less powerful than them at low levels. Nor do they mind characters who peak early but fall behind at higher levels. It's characters who become more powerful than their fellows early in the game and then stay that way that are more likely to be considered too powerful.

However comparing one class to another is not straightforward. The game is designed to be played with a balanced party, in which each character fills his own niche. Consequently different classes are designed to fulfill different roles. Trying to compare classes designed to do different things can be fruitless.

Hi Moonclanger,

Moonclanger wrote:

I buy adventures because I don't (always) have time to write my own.

For me the ideal adventure - the ultimate time-saver - is a full-length campaign that takes a party of novice-level characters right up to retirement level. So as the GM I don't have to worry about inserting the adventure into my campaign, because the adventure is a campaign unto itself. All I need to do is read it, ask my players to generate beginning-level characters, and run it.

Sounds like a Paizo Adventure Path, doesn't it? And the ready supply of Adventure Paths is what I like most about Pathfinder, because before Paizo came along such adventures weren't that common. Adventures tended to be stand-alone affairs or campaigns written for experienced characters.

Unfortunately I've yet to find a really great Adventure Path. Different writers means that quality varies from adventure to adventure (a typical AP might include one excellent adventure, two good ones, and three that need work). Nor am I fond of the physical product - they tend to fall apart, the maps are over-detailed and hard to read and you can't write on the glossy paper.

Inconsistent quality from one part of the AP to the next happens a lot, doesn't it? I've also noticed editorial and play-test issues. As in, the module had play testing by veteran players with experienced DM and not new players, or play tested by new players and not veterans. Sometimes in the same module. At least I think that is what was going on.

I am super interested in the physical products you are buying. Are they the softcover or hardcover versions?

Anthony, thanks for your interest. It's the softcover versions I'm referring to.

I buy adventures because I don't (always) have time to write my own.

For me the ideal adventure - the ultimate time-saver - is a full-length campaign that takes a party of novice-level characters right up to retirement level. So as the GM I don't have to worry about inserting the adventure into my campaign, because the adventure is a campaign unto itself. All I need to do is read it, ask my players to generate beginning-level characters, and run it.

Sounds like a Paizo Adventure Path, doesn't it? And the ready supply of Adventure Paths is what I like most about Pathfinder, because before Paizo came along such adventures weren't that common. Adventures tended to be stand-alone affairs or campaigns written for experienced characters.

Unfortunately I've yet to find a really great Adventure Path. Different writers means that quality varies from adventure to adventure (a typical AP might include one excellent adventure, two good ones, and three that need work). Nor am I fond of the physical product - they tend to fall apart, the maps are over-detailed and hard to read and you can't write on the glossy paper.

I find myself yearning for Gary Gygax's 1st ed AD&D adventures. They were well-written and logical. Since they usually took place in remote wilderness areas and were light on plot it was easy to insert them into an ongoing campaigns. And if you felt the need for a plot it was easy to add your own. The black and white maps were easy to read and the coarse paper was easy to write on. And I was young then and I still had all my teeth!

Interesting. It does say they have to both follow all of the other rules of charging though, including moving to the closest square they can attack from, which are different squares.

So as soon as the rider threatens with his lance he rolls to hit and the charge ends. The mount cannot progress to the square from which it would attack. This is quite legal.

If the rider has the Ride By Attack feat then the mount can keep charging after the rider's attack, either moving another 5' and making its own attack, thereby ending the charge, or foregoing an attack and continuing the straight line path of the charge past the target.

My understanding is that part of the reason the thread has gone on for as long as it has is that some people are arguing that because table variance exists, wizards are not overpowered in either theory or principle and that if you don't run the game in a specific way to hamstring Wizards, or in some cases casters in general, you're playing the game wrong.

You don't deal with wizards by hamstringing them. Doing so frustrates players and risks turning the game into a battle against the GM. It's better to design scenarios that require magical solutions. Don't stop the wizard from spellcasting; force him to cast spells.

So, for example, instead of thwarting teleportation with spells like Dimensional Lock, design a dungeon inhabited by fiends that has to be navigated by teleportation.

Or if you expect the wizard to divide two sets of enemies with a wall, design each set of enemies as a challenge in its own right. That way once the wall is up the party martials still have a fight on their hands.

Wizards change the way the game works at high levels. Don't fight it; roll with it.

KapaaIan wrote:

Perhaps it is time to boil this all down?

I recommend clicking on my name and taking a look at my profile open the spoiler for "The Caster - Martial Disparity" and give it a quick read.

Fergie, I enjoyed the article. Caster-Martial Disparity isn't apparent in my PF group. Your comments helped me to understand why this is so.

For example, we're mostly interested in the role-playing side of things, we divide treasure equally based on its crafting value, and it's an unspoken agreement (because we've never discussed it but it always happens) that all PC casters will take at least one crafting feat and craft magic items for the whole group. Because we're team-players we consider spellcasting to be a group asset and don't begrudge our spellcasters their versatility.

As I mentioned in an earlier post the only disruptive PF character I've known was an archer who outclassed the other martials in the party. And much of the problem was because he wasn't a team-player (and has since left the group).

In my experience the game breaks down when players stop co-operating and start competing with each other. And that's when any disparity becomes most apparent.

You're right, the value of their gear is out of sync with the amount recommended in the rule books. If you're going to raise their levels to increase the CR, then you could give Vahnwynne and Jair extra treasure to bring them into line with the recommended amounts, but not the mazeflesh man since he already has more than the recommended amount.

Alternatively you could just leave the encounters as written. With an extra player the group will have an easy ride for a while, but with xp and treasure now being split six ways their effective party level will soon fall into sync with the AP's expectations. It'll certainly save you re-statting encounters for the rest of the AP.

Incidentally I ran Council of Thieves several years ago. Once I started scrutinizing the NPC stats I discovered that most of them are incorrect. And the errors aren't in their favour either. In the end I spent more time correcting their stats between sessions than we actually spent playing the game!

Well, there's this one from the CRB:

Defensive Combat Training (Combat)
You excel at defending yourself from all manner of combat maneuvers.

Benefit: You treat your total Hit Dice as your base attack bonus when calculating your Combat Maneuver Defense (see Combat).

The very first game I ever GM'd featured green slime. This was back in the day when skills like perception didn't exist in D&D. The one experienced player in the group was paranoid about green slime. The first thing he said whenever the group entered a room was, "I look at the ceiling." But, you've guessed it, he forgot to say it when the group entered the one room that had green slime on the ceiling.

One game I played in the NPC party member turned out to be the campaign's BBEG!

When the campaign started there were only three players so we assumed that the NPC was only there to make up the numbers. But he was using us to complete a task he couldn't manage alone. We only found out we'd been duped after he'd finished with us and left the group. Boy, were we mad! It was one of the greatest coups I've ever seen a GM pull off.

I assume that 50% of people make it to the next level. So 1/2 the population is 1st level, 1/4 is 2nd level, 1/8 is 3rd level etc. So if you're 7th level you're in the top 1% (1/128).

Atalius wrote:

Would love to make an unarmed striking character that has many attacks with a fighter/barbarian type of a to hit chance. Working out the numbers for an unchained monk his to hit is significantly lower then a fighter/barbarian/paladin when flurrying.

That wasn't my impression. I recall Unchained Monk to be a Full BAB character, and Flurry of Blows to be comparable with 2 Weapon Fighting.

The Unchained Monk is a full BAB character, but because he's multi-attribute dependent and doesn't have abilities like rage or weapon training, in practice his modified attack bonus is likely to be lower than a Barbarian's or Fighter's.

Although I haven't seen the Brawler in action I suggested it because as a hybrid of the Fighter and Monk classes the numbers should fall somewhere in between.

Don't forget the NPC Gallery in the Game Mastery Guide.

So my question is this....what can we, as a community, do to help police ourselves ?

I only started posting on Paizo's message boards a few weeks ago. Quickly learning from the mistakes of others I resolved to always try and be polite, especially when disagreeing with others, and to stay out of slanging matches.

That said, while there are some posters whom I would not reply to, I think most try to be friendly and helpful, and most of the heated arguments I've seen seem to spring from some sort of misunderstanding or folks taking offence when none was intended.

Well it IS with a warpriest in mind but a part of me worries that getting that fey foundling would be....cheap.

If you're concerned that Fey Foundling is "cheap" write it into your backstory.

One campaign I played in featured two players with Fey Foundling. One made no effort to explain why his character had the feat, and to me it definitely felt "cheap", but the other player wrote a detailed backstory to explain it, which by chance fit the adventure path so well that the GM decided that the character's mysterious mother was the campaign's BBEG - which added depth to the final phases of the game.

I think a lot of posters have lost sight of the question posed by the original poster. He didn't ask whether wizards are powerful, or whether they are the post powerful class but why they are considered overpowered. Which isn't the same thing.

For my money it's all down to playing styles. While different classes are more powerful at different levels, no class is overpowered if the group works together to create a game that everyone will enjoy.

When I GM'd Reign of Winter one of the group played an autistic fighter. His role-playing wasn't brilliant but we all took the character seriously and no one took offence.

His catch phrase "Boring Conversion", which he uttered whenever diplomacy started to break down and a fight became imminent, will be remembered for a long time.

I don't think there's any such thing as the most fun class. I'm often the guy who plays the class the group needs but no one else wants to play. And many of these characters have been among the most enjoyable I've played.

My all time favourite was a cleric - and mechanically I hate the cleric. The class offers so few options for customization. At first level you get to pick a deity, two domains and whether to channel positive or negative energy. Otherwise all you get is two skill points per level and the basic number of feats.

For me it's all about the roleplaying.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Deeper Darkness doesn't care about Darkvision. You'd need to either cast Daylight/Dispel Magic, or possess the See in Darkness Universal Monster Ability, or some other sort of senses, to counter it

Ohh didn't know that. How do I see when I cast deeper darkness then? Lol

Darksol isn't entirely correct. Deeper Darkness works like this:

"This spell functions as darkness, except that objects radiate darkness in a 60-foot radius and the light level is lowered by two steps. Bright light becomes dim light and normal light becomes darkness. Areas of dim light and darkness become supernaturally dark. This functions like darkness, but even creatures with darkvision cannot see within the spell's confines."

So Deeper Darkness only creates an area of supernatural darkness if the ambient light level is dim or darker. In which case you need something like True Seeing to see through it.

In the example I described in my first post we used Deeper Darkness outside in the day time, so the light level was only reduced to darkness, meaning darkvision could pierce it.

I'm of the opinion that the game becomes next to unplayable after about 8th level because of how open-ended and unrestricted magic is in D&D/PF.

I've never found that to be a problem with Paizo's adventure paths.

It's been about 25 years since I last experienced the caster-martial divide, and that was playing AD&D. I think 3rd ed and PF have done a lot to correct the imbalance.

And experienced GMs and adventure-writers know how to handle wizards. The last time my group tried scry and fry we teleported into a beautifully set trap that nearly killed us.

And of course, there was always original Traveler, where your character could die during character creation...

Those rules were so bad you often hoped you'd die, if the alternative was surviving with appalling stats.

Chuck Mount wrote:

Think of Dirty Harry. He was a jerk, but he worked to stop evil. In doing so, he did some questionable things. But, we view him as one of the good guys.

Do we? I've always thought of him as contributing to and reinforcing the cycle of violence that he was trying to stop. While he may have stopped specific criminals, he legitimized extra-legal violence as a solution to social problems.

I know I sound way too pompous here. It's early, and I haven't had enough coffee so that I can write more like a normal person and less like a wordy academic.

Dirty Harry often raises his head in alignment discussions.

You may be right about him contributing to and reinforcing the cycle of violence, but that's a little deep for most RPGs. He brought justice to criminals when the legal system failed to do so, and so is generally considered to be good aligned.

Whereas Judge Dredd was a parody of Dirty Harry. He championed the law, even when it was unjust. He is generally considered to be Lawful Neutral.

I'd quite like to see the rules changed to introduce stackable spellcasting for core and base classes, as per prestige classes. E.g. if clerics, inquisitors and paladins all used the same spell list their spellcasting levels could stack. It would also cut down on the number of spell lists.