A quick look-through of AoN shows that the wording people are hung up over (“any common spell from this book [Core]”) is only present in the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid Spellcasting class features, all other spellcasting classes have different wording (more specifically “You choose these from the common spells from the [tradition] list”). Granted, I don’t own a PDF of the Core itself, so I can’t corroborate that AoN’s wording is also true for how it’s written in the Core itself.
I have my PDF handy, so...
Bard wrote:
You choose these from the common spells from the occult list (page 311) or from other occult spells to which you have access.
Cleric wrote:
At 1st level, you can prepare two 1st-level spells and five cantrips each morning from the common spells on the divine spell list in this book (page 309) or from other divine spells to which you gain access.
Druid wrote:
At 1st level, you can prepare two 1st-level spells and five cantrips each morning from the common spells on the primal spell list in this book (page 314), or from other primal spells to which you gain access.
Sorcerer wrote:
You choose these from the common spells from the tradition corresponding to your bloodline, or from other spells from that tradition to which you have access.
Wizard wrote:
You choose these from the common spells on the arcane spell list from this book (page 307) or from other arcane spells you gain access to.
Sorcerer and Bard kind of read to me like they were supposed to be the same as the others but were missed in editing.
At a quick glance, none of the classes say anything about the CRB specifically when talking about the spells gained at later levels.
I use a lot of randomization in setting up my characters, because I've noticed that I tend to gravitate toward samey characters if I don't. For PFS2 I wrote a program that picks a random ancestry, heritage, background, and class specialization, and applies semi-random boosts (making sure boosts get allocated to get the key stat up to at least 16). This is how I've wound up with an elven wizard who spends a lot of time in melee and a warpriest of Desna.
For my third PFS2 character, it was a mixture of mechanics and randomization. I knew I wanted to try out the witch class, and use the Hao Jin Tapestry Refugee background, and either use a versatile heritage or one of the boon ancestries. I now have a musetouched aasimar goblin.
Making the button disappear was a deliberate design decision intended to nudge people toward using whatever they roll the first time, because I am That Kind of humorless old-school gamer.
The uniform discarded nearby seems to be the only item of interest. It is still warm, as if from recent use. Most of it is unremarkable, but it does include a pair of unusual armbands.
Discarded with the uniform is a piece of paper with a list of names:
Sergeant Brandur Clovesh
Oathbreaker Istivil Bosk
Ramyla
Timinic
Pemak
Gint (and anyone else who wants to examine the body), please give me a Heal check.
Fiddling with the safe, Amerel finds it surprisingly easy to open. Inside are personnel files. The contents reveal that Brandur Clovesh brought the imperiled Pathfinder Timinic to a safe house on the city’s border, though it does not specify where. Timinic’s file also notes that while in hiding, Timinic will recognize those who call themselves “Guardians of the Open Roads” as fellow Pathfinders. Another earmarked dossier tracks the movements of a wanted killer named Cladara, and notes that Cladara’s murders have prompted city-wide investigations, an unusual response to deaths caused by any Assassin’s Guild member in good standing. A third file suggests an apothecary named Pemak may have connections to the Daggermark Poisoner’s Guild.
In addition to the files, the safe contains a bird feather token and a scroll of share language.
Most of the papers on Bosk's desk concern Timinic’s exploration of the Daggermark sewer complexes. It appears that most of the Pathfinder’s excursions began at the Dripping Wall Distillery. Timinic’s field notes also mention several encounters with suspicious folk lurking in the sewers near the distillery, and include requests to provide extra security for the distillery’s proprietor, Ramyla.
Tucked away in a hard-to-spot drawer, Nuethro finds a potion of delay poison.
Gint is able to confirm that Bosk died of poison, though it seems to be an especially complex and unfamiliar variety.
* Overview of character creation (but also mention pregens)
* Overview of the setting
* Overview of the chronicle sheet process from a player's perspective
* Pointers to places to find games! Warhorn, pfschat.com, Flaxseed Lodge, etc. This would have been a huge help to me as a new player. Not everyone has an easily accessible PFS branch nearby, or one that's good at passing along institutional knowledge like this...
Should not include:
* Details of GM reward programs
* Details of the reporting process
* Much detail about fame and PP
* Basically, anything not relevant to someone who just wants to get to a table and play for the first time
Apparently this isn't a very long scenario. Maybe not a fair question to ask if you're new to this, but do you have an estimate on how much time it'll take? My preferred pick is due for a Retrocon game, which begins 1/14.
I know it's been a quick game for some people, but when I played it, it lasted a normal session length. With that plus allowing for newbie GMing, I would recommend not using a character that you want to have available for Retrocon.
Who'd like to liven up their holiday season by breaking in a newbie GM? This will be my first time running both PFS and PbP (though not my first time GMing ever).
If this sounds like your kind of adventure, throw your hat in the ring for #9-18 Scourge of the Farheavens right here.
Aside from a couple people who have dibs on a spot if they want it, players will be selected randomly by the following method:
1. Signups as of 17:00 PST on 12/17 will be put in random order with the help of Random.Org's sequence generator.
2. Players will be selected from the top of the randomized list until the party is filled.
3. APL and tier will be calculated.
4. Anyone who is out-of-tier and doesn't want to play OOT will be removed.
5. Steps 2-4 will be repeated until either the party is full or the entire list has been gone through.
There's a thing that bothers me about the general approach, too. It's assumed that a character was a good fit for their previous career, leaving out all the misfits and malcontents that you'd expect adventuring to attract.
Consider this for a rogue's background: He was born on a farm and expected to help out from an early age, but he was a total slacker and sometimes put even more energy into avoiding his chores than doing them. He ran off to the nearest city, but was unprepared to survive there and quickly found himself kidnapped to fill out the crew on a pirate ship. Even there, he put in the minimum amount of effort and was forever trying to find a way to sneak extra rations of rum. Eventually the pirates gave up and sold him off as a slave. Once he was no longer confined to a ship, it was easy to find an opportunity to escape, and he joined the Pathfinders in part to stay one step ahead of anyone trying to settle past grievances with him.
This story explains why a 1e character could start off being good at Bluff, Disable Device, and other traditional rogue things. But the only 2e background that matches on a story basis is farmhand, which I'm pretty sure will not be helping with any of those.
I know there are people who want their characters to have been awesome at everything they've ever done, and I'm not arguing that characters like that shouldn't exist. But it would be no fun if I had to play a character like that all the time too.
I've thought it over for a couple days, and... being trapped in a limited selection of hoary fantasy tropes is a dealbreaker for me. One of the fundamental things I love about RPGs is being able to get creative with my characters' backstories.
I recall something was said in a previous blog entry about having a random character creation option, so I'll hold out hope until the playtest release that that provides a way around the pre-defined backgrounds.
So all you're asking is "Please put Seelah in the front cover instead of Seoni"?
Well, if she isn't stuck in boobalicious armor, and if she gets to strike a pose which is consistent with a humanoid musculoskeletal system, and if she isn't subjected to a composition like the one at the start of Chapter 9 where her rump is emphasized more than her face, and if a million other ways of diminishing and objectivizing women don't happen, then sure, that's one option.
Quote:
I think that's a reasonable request, though I don't know if you phrased it in the best way
One learns after a while that no phrasing is ever considered truly acceptable when raising these issues, unless it involves total silence.
The female players in the circles i play in are ok with that. In fact they never give it a thought.
By definition, anyone playing Pathfinder is someone who's managed to get past the cover. What you can't count is the number of gaming-inclined women who look at that image and go, "....ehhhhh maybe this one isn't for me."
I'm not calling for a total ban on sexy sorceresses. I'll be happy if they could just not be the image that represents the entire game to the potential new player. It would be great if when I enthuse about Pathfinder to female gamers who haven't tried it, I didn't have to include "and BTW please disregard the cover."
You my friend, have a very low threshold for what constitutes as cheesecake, especially if you consider Seoni's pose on the OPF CRB to be an example of that.
It's not as bad as the 1e CRB cover, certainly. But the 1e CRB cover is what I'm asking to not have more of.
Quote:
And for equal opportunity, ladies get Raijin rocking the shirtless look
That is not equivalent to what's happening on the 1e CRB cover until he's being posed and highlighted in such a way that the viewer is being encouraged to stare at his groin.
Since everyone is posting what they most dearly want to see in 2e even if it is clearly impossible, here's something I'd love:
Could there not be so much artwork of the "fully clothed man in anatomically plausible pose, woman in skimpy outfit or weirdly shaped armor contorted into a position designed to show off her female attributes" type? Like maybe at least not have it right on the cover of the one rulebook everyone has to buy?
(I see the playtest cover art is already visible, so I accept that the battle for sensibly dressed women is lost until actual 2e.)
So I guess the real question would be this: Once they discover that a number of options in a previously published book are crappy, how do they dispose of them?
That's the point of having a year-long playtest, isn't it? Complete freedom to throw out anything that doesn't work as well as planned.
I also find it very strange that the character creation rules and faction information are off in appendices. ...
I'm pretty sure a newcomer is the only one who's going to try to read through the guide in order - now that I know more what I'm doing, I just pop in to whatever section I need to refer to.
Wouldn't the second half be faster to roll a d720 and consult this chart?
Cool, that didn't occur to me.
I have a JavaScript widget on this incomplete page of notes that'll run the algorithm in my initial post. It has the table at the top pasted in because it seemed like a wasted to recreate it over and over on every run. I originally generated the table programmatically, but I've misplaced the code; it was basically the same approach as J4RH34D's, though.
(BTW, has anyone else in this thread had their dice rerolled? The results in my post at the top seem to have changed overnight.)
I like to roll up random ability scores when I start a new character. For my first PFS one, I came up with a complicated approach involving picking the numbers one by one and recalculating the range of available ones after each step. Since then, and after looking around at other proposed methods, it's occurred to me that there's a much simpler way to go about it, which I intend to use for all my future characters.
1. Make a list of all possible legal combinations of scores.
3. Create a random permutation by selecting 1 of 6, 1 of the remaining 5, etc.
1d6 ⇒ 4
10, 10, 12, [13], 14, 16 => Strength 13
1d5 ⇒ 4
[10], 10, 12, 14, 16 => Dexterity 10
1d4 ⇒ 3
10, [12], 14, 16 => Constitution 12
1d3 ⇒ 3
10, [14], 16 => Intelligence 14
1d2 ⇒ 2
[10], 16 => Wisdom 10
Charisma 16
4. Stop and make a character, because if you give in to the urge to reroll, you might as well just decide without the dice.
So if I went with a nagaji, the strength boost might make one of the charisma-based fightery classes workable. A serpentine skald sounds interesting...
I still haven't seen a single post from a player bemoaning their difficulty finding a table to play at.
Hi. I'm a player having difficulty finding a table to play at. The only recruitments I've seen around my character's level seem to have filled up in minutes.
I'd love to try being part of the solution, but I ought to actually play a couple games in PBP before I try GMing, right?
I expect what most people do when they can't find a table to play at is to give up and wander off without announcing the fact.
What people have said above about not wanting to skip the beginning of a story... and because earning the high-level abilities and expensive items is so much sweeter than just having them handed to you on a new character sheet.
