I apologize if this has been brought up before, but consider adding the Aura ability to the warpriest. Additionally, it might be helpful if warpriest levels counted as fighter (or fighter -3) for the purposes of Greater Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization.
We are clearly the weirdest gaming group ever. Or awesomest. You decide.
Lormyr, thank you for your even-handed comment about the passions of everyone here. I completely agree, and that's why we are on here in this community :-) I did want to add that while your comment that we receive PDFs for free is completely valid, many (if not the vast majority) of us continue to purchase physical books, minis, maps, and all number of Paizo goodies. Additionally, I would guess that most of us spend more net money as Venture-Officers in hotel rooms, travel, con planning, resources, etc after we became VO's, in order to ensure a vibrant PFS community around us. In no way do I intend to say that there are not other people (who do not have a title) who spend every bit as much of time and energy and money. We all have different amounts of resources that we are willing to put into the game. And that's okay. The lovely nature of PFS is that anything beyond core is optional. But at the end of the day, we are giving Paizo (or Hero Lab) money to pay for the amazing genius and hard work that they do. And if we give them that money, they can do more with it, and use it to fuel even better and brighter things for the future.
I finally have a chance to post now that I am back in Georgia. I met a ton of awesome people, as always. However, what was yet more valuable was getting to know some folks better and find out what absolutely amazing people they are. It's impossible to name everyone, but I think everyone that I got to play with, GM for, or had great conversations. Painlord is an exemplary human being and probably one of the most wonderful conversationalists that I have met in a long time. Eric, thank you for running the fantastic and psychotic game! Playing under Eric could not have been a better experience. He managed to not only challenge us in combat but also bring personality and roleplay customized to our characters. I hope we see you at Dragon*con! P.s. Lady Ophelia...how is it possible that we missed each other? Or did we meet and I was thwarted by real life names?
I am super excited about the Black Butterfly. After drifting between Desna and Calistria, my chaotic good shadowdancer finally has a patron that is perfect :-)
There are a lot of things that have an impact on difficulty...it's way more than just builds and gold. It's impossible to account for them all, but I'll give it a vague stab: The Scenario
Basically...there's an infinite amount of permutations. Some of them the campaign has control over. Most of them, they don't. You say that playing up is too easy. If you're talking about seasons 0-3, then are you suggesting that the campaign go back and rewrite all of them? If you're talking about season 4, then I suggest that it's a plethora of other factors that is giving you that experience, as many others do not share that opinion.
Crouton, I totally get what you're saying. Sure, lore on Golarion is everywhere, but it can be kind of hard to figure out the "Pathfinder Society Storyline". Each season (well, okay, mostly starting with season 2) has a story arc, and many of the scenarios tie into it. The problem with publishing some sort of "The Story So Far" for PFS is that it kind of spoils big points in the scenarios. And if you're a really avid PFS story fan, you would much rather play scenarios and get the story that way. If you're interested, you can ask on these board for people to pick out the scenario highlights of the storyline, specifically on seasons 3 and 4. Then you can attempt to play those (Like The Disappeared and Fortress of the Nail). However, the #1 way to get storyline for the season is to GM. There's all this lovely background information that is in the scenarios. Try as we might, sometimes it's just really hard to get it out during a game session. But GMing will give you a much better understanding of the plot. Barring that...find an active GM and pick their brain. :-)
Well, Andy, first of all, remember that a diplomacy check can only move someone 2 degrees more friendly towards you. So it would never be as extreme as you describe :-) Graypark, these are the factors I would personally consider: 1) Is the NPC of a type/subtype that would reasonably find the PC attractive? If the PC is a human, I would say it's unlikely that a goblin would find him/her attractive. Usually if it's a standard PC-race, then I would say yes. Note: just because a dwarf does not want a human to be their marriage partner, does not mean they couldn't find them attractive, and respond well to their diplomacy. See Lord of the Rings. 2) Would the NPC culturally be inclined to see the PC as sexually attractive? In general, if the NPC lives in a city and have reasonable exposure to other races, then probably yes. But if the NPC lives in some sort of culture of extreme xenophobia, it might exclude it. But as the previous example, I could see a situation in which the highly insular dwarf, having a culturally conditioned standard of sexual attraction, would NOT find the human PC to be attractive. 3) Does the NPC have some sort of lifestyle choice that would prevent them from finding the PC attractive? As mentioned above, do they have some sort of vow of celibacy? 4) Lastly, sexual orientation. I would actually categorize this into more of a "table reading" deal. What orientation does the PC making the diplomacy check seem to be? How well would your current players respond to this? I had actually not head of the "all npc's are bisexual" comment before, but I can certainly see Paizo saying as such. To be quite honest, that's not how I play my NPCs. They are mostly heterosexual, but not always, as the situation and table requires. In the end, the vast majority of the time it comes down to what the first reply said. Is it an NPC of the opposite gender...or the gender that the PC seems to be attracted to?
Undead, constructs, oozes, and vermin get it for free. Knight, I do not mean to be silly, but obviously they looked at it just now. They don't need to come in and say "this item is okay" in forum post for every item that someone has a complaint about. That's what additional resources and the FAQ do. Which is what they just did.
If a GM's fun relies solely on crushing players' hopes and dreams, then they are probably being a jerk.
There would be a 5-hour roleplaying section that would require players to have an elaborate Golarion based backstory that is both compelling and feasible (adopted by anything gives you an auto-fail), pronounce and spell their Faction correctly, solve a murder mystery, and answer a series of cunningly devised riddles. Then, there would be an incredible urban dungeon complex which starts with trap that disintegrates any character with more than 2 classes or that didn't participate in the roleplaying (no save). All of the enemies in the complex would be undead, aberrations, spell casters, or outsiders, with devilishly clever tactics and unfair advantages. The players would be required to display extraordinary teamwork, courage, and the ability to adapt under pressure. Then, finally, they would face the final boss, who has the epic sword and probably a fortune witch cackling from a mile away. Still want to play? :-P Spoiler: Oh wait, I just described Cult of the Ebon Destroyers but without the triple gold. Darn. I guess I'll have to come up with something else.
Just to throw something out there...a great deal of thought, discussion, and effort goes into the Additional Resources list. Think about it...every time a resource comes out, someone, or a bunch of someones, comb through the book to figure out what might be appropriate or not appropriate. Mike, Mark, John, and the various VO's are human. Mistakes get made. Things change. People disagree. We had synthesists, vivisectionists, and gravewalkers too. Things get banned for a variety of reasons. You might not agree with those reasons, or know them all. But the line must be drawn somewhere. Remember also that the lovely folks who write these books are NOT the ones who are in Pathfinder Society Campaign management. The rest of the books are written for anyone and everyone, for the wide world of people playing under some aspect of Pathfinder RPG or Golarion. It would be silly to ask them to restrict their books to PFSOP appropriate material, and it would be equally silly to ask PFSOP to accommodate everything published by Paizo. And really, is it so hard to access an online, bookmarkable, downloadable, printable, constantly updated list?
Hi Thea! *hugs* Hei Finlanderboy! It sounds like you had a bad gaming experience. I'm sorry that it happened. You might have had a terrible malicious GM who was out to get your character, whose entire reason for GMing a Pathfinder Society game was to sow misery upon your innocent character, just as you suggest. Or your could have had a GM who made a mistake. Or you could have had a GM who is inexperienced. Or you could have had a GM who had an unlucky roll of the dice. Or any of a myriad other things...but I don't know since I wasn't there. What I do know is that GMs cheat. Yup. You're right. All of us are dang dirty cheating liars. And, as Jiggy so kindly points out, all of us think that we're exceptions to the rule and we are the East Asian mushroom. As the many posts on this thread has shown, we cheat at all kinds of things. We cheat to save player lives. We cheat to teach tactics. We cheat so that newbies will come back. We cheat to give players a higher level of challenge, because 1 round combats just aren't any fun, especially when your party is full of cheese monkeys. We cheat to deceive players when NPCs have a secret, to keep up roleplaying when it has momentum and everyone at the table is engaged in the story. We cheat to keep the game moving in a 4 hours time slot when everyone is hungry and tired on the 3rd day of a Con, and there's a 10 hour drive back home ahead of us. And yes, sometimes we cheat, and it doesn't go well. And you know what, sometimes we cheat not in the players best interest, to punish a player because we're tired of being slumber hexed, eidolon pounced, crane winged, play play played, ruled lawyered, whined at, and flamed on the boards. So, now the secret is out. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Because if you condemn every single GM who has ever intentionally forgotten about a rule, used suboptimal tactics, fudged a dice roll or a modifier, ignored a scrap of difficult terrain, given kindly in-combat advice to a newbie, or targeted a player with out of game knowledge, then you might have a hard time playing a game. Ever. Your other choice is to just suffer under our maniacal rule, and play. Spoiler:
For the record, I am the East Asian Mushroom. EDIT: In retrospect, it's not as funny as I thought it was. I should have just said "poobah"
I absolutely agree with this. There is an over-emphasis placed on building "optimized" characters, and many players seriously overestimate their effectiveness just because they can output big numbers. Clever tactics, creative problem-solving and teamwork are MUCH more important. Play smarter and better, not crunchier. I agree that there needs to be GM judgement on the issue, but I'm also a strong advocate of risk in PFS games. If players choose to play up, they get an increased reward because of an increased risk. That is something that they need to understand and learn, sometimes with hard lessons. Hopefully those lessons will also teach them to play smarter too. Knowing how to best teach that lesson is one of those truly aspirational GM skills. Again: "Adventuring is tough. Wear a cup." Kristie Schweyer, VC Florida* *And you know when two Lady VCs are saying it, it must be true *wink*
Hey Christopher, All of your questions come down to one question...what do you do about players who are not quite on the same page as you when it comes down to rules compliance? First of all, auditing characters is very time consuming, and I almost never do it at cons. For local play, quite frankly a lot of times these things are not a big deal if they are one-time occurrences. I've forgotten my chronicle sheets before to a game day after work. But it sounds like you perceive these to be chronic occurrences with a certain few players. It's a hard balance to strike, and you don't want to be perceived as a jerk or have all of your games sucked up by time-consuming audits. I would begin by telling your players, kindly, what the rules are, and how you expect them to be enforced. I wouldn't ban players or force them to use pregens, but remind them every time. Again. And again. Set up an expectation at your games. And use your fellow GMs (if you have them) to try and set up a consensus about rules. Hope that helps!
For the record, if you needed to be a Venture Officer and needed stars in order to start doing a game day...then how did they get started in the first place? LOL Basically all of the VOs started in this way...we saw a game we loved, wanted to perpetuate it, and just...started a game!
Think you're a hotshot PFS GM? Take Nani's Ultimate GM Test! Please reply with your own questions to this test. They can also include short answer format. 1. You are GMing a game and a player describes his character as wearing full plate painted white, complete with a face helm with breathing slots. He describes his favored weapon as a plasma blaster that makes pew pew noises (but it's actually just a composite longbow +1).
2. Your players run into a town market square and immediately decide to rough up all the little old ladies and hungry orphans.
3. A new player shows up at your table in a 7-11 scenario, as there wasn't room in any other game at the Con.
Origins: So, a 3-star GM volunteered for Dragon*Con, and asked if we would be willing to accept him. This is what I sent in reply.
The History of Tsar:
A century ago, the death of Aroden transformed the culture and politics of the Inner Sea nations. In the distant north in a land once known as Sarkoris, it changed the world itself, knocking Golarion out of metaphysical alignment in the direction of the Abyss, a nightmare realm in the Great Beyond, screaming with wicked souls and vicious demons. While many attribute the Worldwound to the machinations of Deskari, the Lord of the Locust Host, in truth another ancient demon lord was long established in Sarkoris. Tsar, the great temple-city to the Demon Prince of the Undead, stood for centuries as a bastion of evil and hate. Foul beings of all kinds flocked to its mighty walls and found succor and purpose within. At its heart stood the great Citadel of Orcus, the black heart of Orcus worship on Golarion. Countless evils were perpetuated in those corrupt precincts, and equally countless wicked plots were hatched and carried out therein. Far from the reaches of civilization, Tsar flourished unchecked like a great blight on the land. When the Worldwound erupted, Sarkoris was destroyed nearly overnight. As word of Sarkoris's swift and dramatic fall spread, the church of Iomedae was equally swift to react. Still reeling from the loss of their deity's patron, an obvious threat like a demonic incursion was precisely the thing that the Iomedaean faithful needed to stave off true despair—her champions and priests threw themselves into the crusade against the Worldwound with an almost reckless abandon, not only to blunt their own horror at Aroden's death, but also because they believed it was their responsibility to pacify Sarkoris and seal the Worldwound. To this end, the leaders of Iomedae's church and those of several other religions decreed the First Mendevian Crusade, as well as the three that followed. Zealous followers of the Inheritor from throughout Avistan still travel up the Sellen River to Mendev in an attempt to support the crusaders. The first efforts to pacify the Worldwound met with considerable success: the demonic hosts were driven back and the crusaders stood sentinel over the land. Then, the crusaders turned their attentions to the long-standing city of Tsar. This crusader army, raised from all nations and almost every non-evil faith marched for Tsar. In command of this army the church of Iomedae placed the archmage Zelkor. Supported by innumerable knight commanders, wizards, church patriarchs and scores of heroes of renown, Zelkor quickly advanced his army from its staging ground of Nerosyan, through Tsar's outermost defensive positions and into the great plain that surrounded the temple-city itself. Flush with their many quick victories, the First Crusade suddenly found arrayed against itself seemingly endless legions of every sort of vile warrior-race and fell outsider imaginable called up from all over the multiverse and lining the battlements and fields before their redoubt—one of the greatest fortresses and citadels ever erected in that time. The beginnings of doubt seeped into the ranks of the First Crusade. However, hope was not lost as the heavens opened up and flight upon flight of angels and celestial beings descended from on high to swell the ranks of the Crusade. With grim determination in both camps, battle was joined on the plain before the gates of Tsar. The war raged for over a year, the Crusade advancing to the very foot of the walls and then being pushed back by a new surge of demonic power. The disciples of Orcus led by the Grand Cornu, Orcus's single highest-ranking priest on Golarion, threw every vile attack they could at the Crusade in defense of their city. Rains of horrific fire and acid fell from the skies or belched from fissures in the ground, great constructs crushed their foes before them, terrible clouds of poisonous gas choked entire regiments, and heretofore unknown plagues swept through the troops causing thousands of horrible deaths among the Crusade. Nevertheless the forces of the crusade persevered and fought on. Finally, though the battle seemed no closer to victory, the fates seemed to smile on the Crusade. Unexpectedly the city fell. In a single night in 4638 AR the entire city virtually emptied of defenders as they all were magically transported to a point several miles outside the city's walls, complete with baggage train and mounts for many. The magical expenditure necessary to complete this miraculous maneuver cost the Grand Cornu his very life in sacrifice to Orcus, but the legions of the demon prince had broken free from the Army of Light's cordon. They immediately took flight before the stunned Mendevian Crusade, heading northeast towards the Worldwound. Zelkor and his fellow commanders were immediately suspicious of this sudden retreat but could not afford to allow the combined followers of Orcus concentrated in one place to escape and spread their insidious evil again. Then, still with a seed of doubt niggling in his mind, Zelkor ordered his army in pursuit of the fleeing legions. The armies reached northern crusader city of Drezen, which formerly stood within the borders of Mendev. The malign, almost sentient chaos of the Worldwound, however, was not content to stay within its carefully proscribed borders. In an opportunistic counterstroke, the demon-hordes within the Worldwound overwhelmed its guardians and protective enchantments, flowing forth like a black tide. The city of Drezen, caught between the forces of Orcus and the Worldwound, fell under the influence of the Abyss. The combined force turned back upon the armies of the First Crusade. Tens of thousands of pilgrims and warriors drowned in the demonic wave that followed, depleting the armies of Mendev and necessitating the Second Mendevian Crusade.
Venture-Captain Jarina al-Mullam closes the heavy tome with a sigh. The Keleshite woman looks around at all of you with her serene and insightful gaze. "Since that time, staunching the expansion of the Worldwound has been the focus of the crusades, now on its fourth iteration. Tsar was forgotten, and the land around it shunned and remembered only as the Desolation. It is with great gravity that we send you on this mission, Pathfinders. Exploring these ruins and recovering the unimagined artifacts within is of tantamount importance." "But if we were to send anyone into a situation as treacherous as this, I can think of no one else," interjects Venture-Captain Charlotte DesChamps, who peels herself from a shadowy corner of the room. She blinks a little, as if rousing herself from the long history lesson, "You have proven yourselves, ahem, in many ways during your long tenure in the Society. On numerous occasions you have proven capable, flexible, independent, and able to somehow always come back alive. And amazingly adept at getting out of some very strange situations." Behind the desk, Jarina mutters, "Interesting how those always seem to happen..." If she heard, Charlotte ignores the comment and drops a heavy satchel on Jarina's lush Qadiran carpet before sitting on the edge of the desk. Jarina barely conceals a look of pained consternation at Charlotte's impropriety. The younger Taldan woman continues, "Your first stop after Nerosyan is to the southern edge of the Desolation, a small settlement of cutthroats and the worst kind of profiteering entrepreneurs sprang up on the southern fringe of the Desolation. This hole-in-the-wall known simply as the Camp will serve as your staging ground. You'll love it!" Jarina stands and gently moves a chair next to her friend, cringing every time Charlotte's many buckles and weapons scrape the polished wood. "Ahem. Charlotte, we have been going on, but I don't actually think all of our agents have met. Please, introduce yourselves before my fellow Venture-Captain goes on a tangent about the joys of vagabond camps. Please."
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