Nosreme's page

Why only 4 of 6? With the last 2 missing, it's almost worthless unless you want do a lost of converting.

Wish items like this had some previews so you know what you're buying.

PaizoCon Online is this week, and you can still sign up for games for another eight hours, I believe.

Thank you so much. I was looking for something long term though.

There's a forum on this site where people recruit for new players

Online Campaigns Recruitment

Thank you for that. I checked there first but sadly most of the recruitments are for PF1 and many are play by (E)mail, not live games.

Hey all! I’m loving PF2 but can’t find any players in my area. Anyone know of a game over zoom/discord or etc that needs another player?

I couldn't disagree with this post more. So many things you posted are simply inaccurate on so many levels. Too many to really reply to, but magic got nerfed was one that stood out. That's just flat out wrong. If anything, magic received a welcome buff. Goblins being a core race. At first this seemed odd until you realize that like 200 years has passed since PF1, so cultures and people change. Less variety in classes? Nope, far more variety. Too much to list, but I disagree with almost every point you made. It seems you really didn't have full knowledge of the game and just posted an initial feeling, which is fine, but you should really just say that instead of posting this as though it was fact, which most of your points are not.

Huh. That should probably be spell level or half of item level since that way it would scale the same for spells and items. Still they got rid of it in 1.6 so it doesn't matter much.

Anyways Burn It is a conditional bonus whereas Empowered Bombs multiplies the base damage so Pumpkinhead is right. Empowered Bombs then Burn It.

Thank you both. I downloaded the book a couple of times, thinking it was continually updated, not realizing I needed the updates separately. Drrr! Thanks!

So I made an alchemist and leveled him to level 3. At that level, the class gains the "Empowered Bombs" ability which means you can double the damage of a bomb. But I had a question about the damage.

My character also has the Burn It! goblin feat which does +1 damage and +1 persistent fire damage.

This brought up a question of when to double stuff. So combining these two, would the Alchemist Fire do 2d8+1 or 2d8+2 and would the persistent damage be +3 or +4?

To the OP, personally I like to RP a strong character and he is only strong if he is strong in relationship to the setting. The only way to get that is to have high numbers. If my numbers are higher than 95% of the game world than his personality is appropriate. If not, he's a joke.

As far as the town goes, I like to RP the adventure and the characters. I prefer the GM to take an interest in world building, but as long as the adventure is good and the RP with the NPCs and PCs is good, I don't mind using my own imagination to picture where the character hangs his hat.

A good GM will set the adventure obstacles to your strength. If you are playing a group of 12 year olds, then the obstacles will be something 12 year olds can overcome. If you are playing the Avengers, those obstacles should not be the same. But that is not what I have a problem with. It's the lack of role-players out there versus the overwhelming number of tactal board gamers. Regardless of whether your Strength score is 20 or 2.

Just to riff on the crippled veteran fighter for a moment:

One of the things I like about more point based systems and dislike about level based games like D&D is that you can make concepts like the old, injured, but highly skilled veteran work on the same power level as the brash untrained kid running on raw talent.

The new kid can have high stats and low skills/powers (including combat skills) while the veteran can have lower stats, but better skills and a disadvantage or two and they can still be balanced.

Since D&D's level system directly links experience to power and assumes stats will be balanced separately this doesn't work well.

Sure you can make your one-armed fighter and you can call him a veteran, but you don't get anything to compensate and the mechanics don't reflect him being more experienced.

Yes, but D&D characters are far more balanced than point based systems like Gurps, which is a power-gamer's wet dream. You and I can each make a jedi with the same points and VASTLY different power levels. At least the range of variance is less in D&D.

Nos, I would love to have you as a GM and a player. It sounds like our styles are cut from the same cloth, on both how we run a game and how we play one.

Ha would love to! :-)

So you want to RP somebody who is handicapped (missing arms, lame, ...) and then complain that

- he is not as fit for survival as the others
- the others don't rp because they don't play handicapped characters
umm...?

Yes. They thing you are not really addressing here Kyoni is that we are supposed to be the HEROES of the story. Destined for greatness and all that. So yes, I want my clumsy old wizard to have much better odds of survival as the town guard because he's NOT the hero of the story, play and simple. John McClain is no better than an average cop for the most part. But being the hero of the story means he gets to survive gunshots, exploding planes, and a harrier jet simply because if he dies, so does the story. There is nothing more dramatic in high fantasy as the hero beating all odds.

I played chess when I was 5. It's a tactical war game. Does that make it the bane of roleplayers too?

No. Because last time I checked, chess never claimed to be an RPG.

Mark, thank you, this is possibly the best post on this thread yet. You and I are a lot alike, and I will strive to take your advice to heart.

I also suspect some of the confusion is a matter of terminology. Roleplay vs optimization is poor usage. Roleplay isn't really done during character creation, so a...

Yeah the title is rather misleading, I apologize.

Nosreme wrote:

Dabbler, I am so frustrated that I have nearly given up DMing. The reason? I have spent countless hours on carefully planned stories only to have them ruined by gamers that either A)don't appreciate them B) don't role-play, and/or C) quit them before they get finished. Last year I was running a Pathfinder take on Ravenloft. Great story, plenty of action and role-playing, and overall a fun adventure. I described everything in detail, creating a spooky setting, and the players simply did not get it. They didn't heed any warnings, they didn't really want to talk to the townsfolk, every story lead they found was laid out in plain sight for them to find or they wouldn't find them on their own. It just gets old after a while.

Sounds like, as a DM, you have an issue with 'connecting' with your players. One of the primary jobs of a DM, just like a good manager, is to find what motivates a player and give them motivation to do the work you want them to do. Remember that Pathfinder/DnD/etc is a collaborative story ... not a DM story in which the players exist.

If you have certain players who care only about combat ... reward them with things that help in combat when they interact with townspeople. "It's dangerous to go alone, take this ... " (give healing potion)

If you have players who can't see a plot hook despite the big glowy shiny sign that says "plot hook here", start making the NPCs go to the characters. Usually, the players immediately start recognizing a certain NPC as a "quest giver" so they will then return and speak to them voluntarily.

You have to adjust to your players ... and in return encourage them to adjust to you. It works. I've been doing it for 20 years.

No you are absolutely right. I have been at it for longer than that. The problem is, the older I get, the less I want to "train" new groups of players constantly. Maybe I'm just getting lazy. :-)

I usually ask players what type of campaign they want - combat heavy, storylined, lots of role-playing, fully of moral dilemmas or puzzles, etc.

mem0ri wrote:

Backstories don't have to be novels in themselves ... they just have to establish where the person comes from, what their personality is like, and how they acquired the skills they acquired.

I'm so sorry that your DM doesn't also make you roll your diplomacy / intimidate / etc score when doing social engagements. I'm also very sorry that your DM doesn't allow creative role-play to enhance the combat experience. I think both of those failures are indications of a DM who doesn't quite know what they're doing yet. Everything should be done to enhance the immersion into the story, but die rolls should always be enforced ( with story based adjustments of course ) in order to keep the story "random" and exciting. In the cases where I am the DM in games, I regularly give on-the-fly adjustments to rolls of all kinds based on the role play during the event.

Ah well in that case I'd say that making a reasonable backstory is easier than making an optimized character which is why optimizing takes longer.

As for the diplomacy he allows rolls but if you completely fail to make a good speech you fail regardless of the roll and if you make a great speech then your DC is so low that the roll hardly matters as long as you have any points in the skill.

Besides I could hardly call it roleplay if your story amounts to

"A gang of desperate bandits comes out of the mountains ready to murder and plunder they see your horses and full belt pouches and begin forming up for battle"

"I want to convince them they don't want to attack us I roll 20+25 I get a 45 to diplomacy"

"You succeed the bandits ignore their desperation and wander back into the hills"

That certainly is role-playing, especially if you acted that scene out a bit. Did you talk to the bandits or did you just roll dice and they left? If the latter, then therein lies your problem, and welcome to my gaming world.

*Shrug* developing significant background is hard. After all the average human is a 15 year old who is mostly incompetent, somewhere along the lines of an apprentice or possibly a journeyman crafter who got tossed out on his arse.

Essentially IMO starting at level 1 ruins the development of huge backstory. Sure I could write out how he ate dinner consisting of gruel because he's poor and his master lashed him for failing to buy more toadstool on time but he can't have done anything epic because if he did why is he still so useless now?

Sorry, maybe I should have clarified that. I'm not suggesting you sit down and write a novel about your character (although if you read a few you may gather some great ideas). But rather, some sort of background information and a personality even just in your head would be a great start.

For example, my last character was a bard that had been abused growing up, so he began to write stories to escape. Eventually running away from his drunken, angry father, he took to a life on the streets, where he learned some survival skills, and a musical instrument he stole. Eventually, as an adult, he was an outgoing charismatic leader, rebounding from the childhood trauma perhaps. As far as the game went, I constantly was writing notes on a pad of paper, and at certain breaks/intervals would read aloud events that had just transpired... often in amusing ways. Best of all, whatever the circumstance, my character was always the star of the scene, saving the baby from the orc mob (even if it was actually the brave fighter while I hid behind a hay cart), for example. Was he effective in combat? Not terribly. Was he a fun and memorable character to play? You bet! The party loved him. And how much time did I spent writing that background and concept? Not very much, truth be told. But more than anyone else at the table, I'll wager.

shadowmage75 wrote:

I think this is fallout from the MMO genre, wherein the storyline inevitably gets dumped by the side as a player spends hours repeating dungeons and quests to obtain loot or armor. They've kinda upped the stakes by adding achievements, but again, only important to completists, not very effective for a roleplaying factor.

Given that the "kick in the door style" of play was in the 3E DMG before WoW ever came about, methinks not. This game began as a tactical miniatures game. Blaming MMOs only shows ignorance and insults people who play MMOs (there are actually people who RP using MMOs).

I don't think it does Ashiel. Although this style of gaming came about with Basic D&D in the 70s, which I played (even before that!), MMOs simply carried the torch for any number of reasons. So for younger gamers, this could be the first example of role-playing they're getting. So I feel it's fair and valid to blame MMOs as well as D&D for this style of gaming. Neither have been good leaders in the role-playing department.

Kydeem, great summary of the possible groupings, but my experience has been that most folks fall into either B or C with very, very few in D.

I optimize when I can, but I won't optimize if it (the choice of feats/attributes/abilities/etc.) doesn't fit my initial character concept. I think a lot of people optimize first, then stick a facade of a character concept over the top of it.

This. Although BNW makes a good point, this is the error in his logic. It's not that the players are bad, it's just that D&D and PF do not encourage the player to make RP choices over combat optimization. In other words, when combat optimization clashes with my character concept, guess which one gets changed first. Not the optimization. There should be at least some encouragement to focus on the character, which I feel PF is missing.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

There is no vs.

There is no reason you cannot both minmax your character into a four armed dual greatsword wielding quizinart of death and destruction and make him a fully three dimensional character with heart, soul, and depth.

This is so very true.

I think, Nosreme, that you just found a group that suck at RP. That's OK, though - put on the DM's mantle and show them!

Dabbler, I am so frustrated that I have nearly given up DMing. The reason? I have spent countless hours on carefully planned stories only to have them ruined by gamers that either A)don't appreciate them B) don't role-play, and/or C) quit them before they get finished. Last year I was running a Pathfinder take on Ravenloft. Great story, plenty of action and role-playing, and overall a fun adventure. I described everything in detail, creating a spooky setting, and the players simply did not get it. They didn't heed any warnings, they didn't really want to talk to the townsfolk, every story lead they found was laid out in plain sight for them to find or they wouldn't find them on their own. It just gets old after a while.

There is no vs.

There is no reason you cannot both minmax your character into a four armed dual greatsword wielding quizinart of death and destruction and make him a fully three dimensional character with heart, soul, and depth.

Very true Norsewolf. Sadly, most people I have found have not mastered that yet. But in my post, I was referring to those that cannot do both. You can powergame your character as long as you can role-play him. But very often, making a role-play choice conflicts with a tactical decision, and then we see if the player is a good role-player or not.

Also, if a player spends more time tweaking his character to get a +1, or flipping through the rules to find loopholes or amazing combos than he does working on his character's background, then I'd say there's the problem. But how many players do you know that do not do that? Not many for me.

If I were to play D&D, I wouldn't expect to play Amber or Dogs in the Vineyard.

Very true, but neither am I. But some ROLE-PLAYING doesn't seem out of the question, does it? As is, most games seem closer to a game of Descent than role-playing.

Yes, I suppose I will simply have to interview the GM and/or party more thoroughly before I join, but sadly, as others have pointed out, good GMs (and players for that matter) are hard to find.

I guess my point is, there's already a perfectly good endpoint in the existing game...level 20.

There are people who think you NEED to have level 21+.
There are people who think you NEED to have level 37+.
There are people who think you NEED to have level 100+.

Why is 36 any more valid of an level cap than 20, or 2000 ?

It's not. In fact, most adventures can be told at level 20 or below. Allowing access to 20+ levels does not necessarily open the gates to some magical world of new adventures.

This is not intended to be a flamewar in any way, but it seems nearly every group I play PF with seems more interested in carefully adjusting their character to "min-max" and get the highest bonuses possible than why their character is in that locale at all, or where they came from. I routinely get told things such as "Hey if you drop your INT by 2 you can increase your HP with CON" or "This feat combination gives you the best attack bonus". I'm aware of all that, but I chose these attributes, skills, and feats because it fits my character. Not to get an additional +1 to my attack roll.

Secondly, the campaigns I'm in are mostly concerned with killing monsters repeatly for gold. I honestly don't know why we're in town or what the town even looks like because the GM didn't bother to describe it. Or the enemies we're fighting.

The thing is, none of that appears to be a rarity. Quite the contrary, it's very common from what I've experienced. Is anyone else having the same trouble of finding a group that matches their playstyle? What suggestions do you have to combat this? Unless I always run, which is tiring at times, this is what I encounter.

The Hero Lab product model bears zero resemblance to Army Builder. In addition, your assertions about Army Builder are wildly inaccurate, so I'm compelled to correct them below.

Good to hear. I'll make my own corrections to your statements as well.

For Hero Lab, Lone Wolf does ALL the updating of official data files, and it's done under a royalty-based license from the various publishers. For Army Builder, Games Workshop has asked us to not be involved, so we respect that request and the data files are left to fans for games like Warhammer. Even so, the data files are of good quality and generally updated about a month after new books are released.

It doesn't matter if your mom asked you not to work on the files or god did. The fact is, you do not do so. This is left up to the end users. This means that files are released for the product months after they are released in store. At one point, you released two armies at once, one over a month old, the other close to three. On average, it does not take 3 months, but it can. I use an older version of AB now, and I get the army files the day the book is released in stores.

For Hero Lab, it's a one-time purchase for the content, so there is no similarity with Army Builder. Furthermore, the cost of Army Builder license extensions is $12.50, which is about 30% of the cost of the product. Your assertion that the cost is the "full amount" is not even close to accurate, since the product sells for $40. If the renewal cost was the full price, then you'd have a strong argument here, but that's not the case. The model for Army Builder is that we keep updating the product every year (V3.3 goes to Beta in a few weeks) and...

That is good to hear that Herolab does not charge an annual renewal. I would be much more likely to purchase it in that case. You are correct, AB is only $40 (it's been a long time since I paid the fee). I apologize. However, I paid the full amount when I renewed. Maybe that was a glitch in the system, maybe you changed the way you operate, but I never paid $12.50, so now I feel more gypped than before! This was eventually what caused me to stop renewing, as I didn't see it was worth it. At $12.50, I still think it's overpriced for the fact you do not update the files, but it's certainly a lot better than $40.

I very glad to hear Herolab is not like AB. As I said, you make a great product with AB, so if you have the same quality with HL without the crazy product renewal and GW leasing rules, I'm sure it's a better product.

Anyway, this isn't about AB so let's move on.

Different licensing for Hero Lab. It is not a yearly renew, but a one time (per product) license.

-- david
Papa.DRB

Oh that's better then. Forgive my ignorance and ignore my post.

I can understand your concern about the software activation, as I've been burned by a few small operations myself. In our case, Lone Wolf Development has been in business for 16 years now, and has been publishing tools for gamers for more than 12 years. We still fully support the activation mechanism for old products that have been abandoned for a decade (e.g. Army Builder V1 and V2), as there are still a small number of people using those old products.

The problem with Lone Wolf products isn't really the DRM. They need to make money somehow, and without that, people would just give it away to all their friends. I don't have an issue with that.

MY problem with Lone Wolf is the way in which their DRM is implemented and maintained. I use their product for Warhammer lists, and let me tell you how they operate.

- They don't update the army lists at all. They have nothing to do with them. Users like me and you have to update them ourselves. It can be many months before a new list is made for an army.

- They renew the license based on when you originally registered, not when you renew. What does that mean? Well, let's say you originally bought their product in August. After a year, you let the registration slip. You don't renew again until the following May. If you renew then, you will get to use the product for 3 months, then need to register again. For the full amount. Cheesey? Definitely! The license should renew for a FULL year not 3 months.

So basically, I get to pay $60 a year for a product they don't even update, which is maintained by the users who bought the product, and if you don't renew on the same day you purchased the product, they still charge you the full $60. Sound fair to you?

I love the product, but have returned to using an older version simply because I hate the way they implement their license agreements. Granted, that is Warhammer, and this is Pathfinder, but if they manage their software the same way for each system they work with, and they probably do, then I want nothing to do with it. I would stay far away from this product unless you like getting reamed.