The obvious lesson for combat, or for magic, for the cleric, at least, is to have the party go through two fights. The fights should be identical, except that in one of them, the party is buffed, and in the other, the party is not buffed.
Now the vagaries of the dice may overwhelm the buffs, but it gives that feel of the impact of his buffs. Granted, he may be wishing he was contributing directly, rather than indirectly, to combat. Realizing the value of his buffs won't address that, if he wants to be up there smashing the enemy himself.
The gunslinger clearly needs to learn what targets to shoot at, and about not picking fights. The former is a good combat lesson, the latter would fit into lore. Demonstrate this with a mix of:
- The guy the gunslinger picks a fight with easily knocks him down
- The person he picks a fight with has lots of support; say the local guards
- After returning from a situation where he picked a fight, he gets chewed out for having given the society a bad name
I like this idea. Perhaps the Cleric can be taught this during the Magic courses, while I can mix the Gunslinger's lesson into the Combat course (showing that strait-up combat isn't always the answer).
Thanks. Anybody have any more ideas? Maybe general skills, like the Lore classes being focused on problem solving?
My players are different than your players. Why don't you tell us what kind of players and characters you have? If lessons aren't obvious, what issues are they having besides working together?
You're right. I just didn't want to clog up my intro post. Here are my players:
Players:
Cleric with Luck and Trickery Domain -he says that he feels that he's not contributing to combat, even though his buffs often help a lot.
Druid -tends to play through his animal companion and tries to go into melee often, where he typically gets beaten down.
Gunslinger -barely does damage because he's always shooting into melee or through cover without proper feats, but hardly ever gets hit. Turns nearly every NPC interaction into combat.
Ranger -thinks he's a barbarian and gets away with it because of awesome rolls.
I think one lesson I want to instill is that they should try to interact with the world. Perhaps I can frame it using Lore.
Don't get me wrong, they're good players and we have a lot of fun. I'm not trying to fix "problems" or anything. Just trying to figure out ways to enrich the "boot camp" experience with lessons that the Society would want Pathfinders to know.
So I, as a GM, have a unique opportunity to teach my players some lessons, in game. Let me explain:
My players, completely of their own accord, decided to join the Pathfinders! So I'm going to run them through the Pathfinder Society's "boot camp." To make it a bit more interesting than some skill checks and a few combat encounters, I wanted to use the opportunity to teach my players (who are somewhat new to Tabletop games) some valuable lessons.
Since the Society has 3 teachers (Combat, Magic, and Lore), I figured I could get away with 3 lessons. For the Combat, I'm going to teach them about teamwork using training courses that they can only overcome by working together.
The problem I'm running into is coming up with lessons for the Magic and Lore teachers. So I ask the boards:
What lessons would you want to teach your players?
I didn't know whether to put this in General Discussion or Advice, since it is a little bit of both. The question is:
How much are you, as a GM, willing to change the campaign world (either homebrew or pre-gen) to accommodate character concepts that don't fit into the world?
Is it the GM's responsibility to adapt the world to the player's wants, or is it the player's responsibility to create characters that fit into the world?
I ask because I'm making a homebrew campaign world and I have a player who a) keeps changing character ideas and won't settle on one, and b) keeps coming up with concepts that don't fit into the world.
deeper explanation:
First he wanted to be a bare-knuckle boxer, so we looked at monk archetypes and I made a Victorian-like country since the world was still in early development.
Then he changed his mind and decided he wanted to play a necromancer cleric. Since I don't allow evil characters, I included Wee Jas as a god since she's a neutral goddess who allows undead. Then he says that he has no intent of following her guidelines to which I reply that clerics who spite their gods may lose their powers.
So then he wants to play a Russian Spy. Problem is, my world is finished (maps and all) and I have no Russian-like country to accommodate him. But he still wants me to make him one.
Then he wants to play an ice sorcerer but doesn't like the water elemental bloodline or the boreal bloodline and thus wants me to houserule him another ice-themed bloodline.
I've played with him for years and he's never done this before. I'm just worried about the effect this will have on the campaign.
I plan on talking to him about this, but I'm looking to the board for help. Should I keep changing my world to suit him, or tell him to accept what I've made and work with it?
I would say yes, yes, and yes. Being higher level than the PCs makes your BBEG powerful enough (and hopefully gives him/her enough HP) to stand toe-to-toe with the PCs for a few rounds. The BBEG should also have escape plans ready.
Also keep in mind that the Pathfinder universe has resurrection magic, so even if your PCs simply slaughter your bad guy, he/she can always be brought back to life. Liches and grave knights even have this kind of feature built right in.
Perhaps you could go bard? It has all of the skills you're looking for, and though it does have spellcasting, it isn't any more than the Inquisitor you were thinking of playing.
The Detective bard gives you a bonus to some of the skills you're focusing on and would fit in with the investigating angle you mentioned.
If you don't like the musical angle, you could go Archaeologist to get rid of Bardic Performance, or just put your skill points into Perform (Oratory) and give speeches about how great the mafia is so you can spread its influence and inspire people.
I'm running a homebrew campaign and the four, 8th level PCs are working with four 8th level evil NPCs to work though a dragon's lair in order to get an artifact that both parties want.
The two groups recently split because, (a) they were getting on each other's nerves and (b) combat was taking way too long to run. As soon as the two parties went their own ways (still with the same goals) the PCs started talking about killing the other party after they'd taken out the dragon. Not unexpected. Here comes the problem.
Since that time, the PCs have run across a couple of encounters and thus spent resources such as HP, spells, wand charges, etc. My question is, how many resources should I take from the evil party (who have also hit a few encounters), knowing that they will fight the PCs? I want this to be a somewhat even fight.
I start with a personality trait. For example, it wanted to play a character who thought of everything as a game. Or one who was scared of his own shadow.
Then I move on to class and race combo. For the first example, I came to a dwarf barbarian, while for the second I made a human wizard.
From there, I like to try to tweak the flavor of the character by adding some kind of neat fluff. My dwarf barbarian was powered by a demon bound in his body. No change in the rules, just a happy-go-lucky dwarf who got glowing eyes when he raged. Or a wizard who turned invisible at the drop of a hat and hid behind his summons.
You said you wanted to limit healing. Were you planning on limiting or getting rid of the channel energy ability for clerics if you include them? What about the cure spells?
I wanted to avoid the druid shape changing ability, is there a archetype that forsakes this ability for something else?
The APG various druid builds limit the wild shape (level -2). But I don't know of anything that outright bans it. Sorry.
Maybe you could allow any Druid PCs to have 1 (or 2) domains and their animal companion instead of wild shape. UM has some pretty neat domains for Druids.
