Professor X's page

Analysis of the Boon Frequency Problem

I think the average GM should earn about 1 (race) boon per year of GMing. The rest of this post will be based on that principle.

We would not have a shortage of GMs if every player GMed 1 game out of every 5. In fact, we would have a surplus.

Given that there are 52 weeks per year, and most game locations play weekly but take the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas off, we can safely assume about 50 game days in a location per year.

By a deep theorem of arithmetic, I propose that 1 boon per 10 GM sessions seems about right.

I'll just leave this here.
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Alignment Summary (N = 616)
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
LG 14.6%
LN 16.6%
NG 18.3%
NN 16.1%
CG 18.3%
CN 16.1%

According to my polling results, here is an approximation for the racial demographics in Pathfinder Society.
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31% Human
10% Tiefling
09% Aasimar
08% Half-Orc
07% Other
07% Half-Elf
07% Elf
05% Dwarf
05% Halfling
03% Gnome
03% Kitsune
03% Tengu
01% Wayang
01% Nagaji

We see that humans outnumber all native outsiders combined.

More than 50 new responses today!

Would you like Core Campaign characters included in this or do you plan on a separate poll for them?

Sure! There's no reason that Core characters can't be included.

Is there a way to view our previous responses? I'd like to add some new characters but I'm not sure which characters I've already entered.

There isn't really. The poll did not save any metadata from respondents. That was intentional.

You could look at the Form Responses tab on the Results spreadsheet and take a guess as to which response was yours, but that's about all I can suggest.

This was my first poll using Google. If I ever do another one, I will probably allow participants to revisit their responses.

I miss having humans in the party. A running gag among the locals for a while has been counting up the fractions of human(racial halves, human heritages, etc) in the party to see if they have enough for a "full" human.

Interesting.

I put up a poll a while back and found that almost 1/3 of the characters in PFS are human.

I, myself, have 4 human characters out of 11 active characters. (I have 6 human characters out of 17 characters if I count characters I no longer play and characters I have yet to play.)

Cheapy convinced me.

But Cheapy do you need to do a DC 11 jump to clear a 10ft gap or a DC 10?

10+ε, for some arbitrarily small positive number ε.

I'd like to nominate Tiger Lily as adjunct forum historian and archivist.

Oh, and in "things I would like to see"

How about a line graph with Faction by Level. That might give a very rough idea of how faction popularity has changed over time.

Done.

I'm not sure if meaningful trends can be gleaned from this chart, but it is there.

Over 400 responses so far, but I'd like to see a few more. If you haven't taken this poll, please do so.

Are there any results you find particularly interesting?

I'd be interested in seeing "Role" by "Gender".

Done.

It would be uninteresting to simply have graphs of the total number of each gender for each role; male characters are so dominant that they will be the largest gender in each role. So that doesn't tell us anything. So instead the graphs that I put up show the likelihood that a character of a given gender will choose that role. That is a much more interesting question, I think.

I have added graphs breaking down alignment by race now. No real surprises. Racial stereotypes seem to be reinforced (Aasimar are lawful and good, half-orcs are chaotic, tieflings are non-good, dwarves are lawful and good, halflings are mostly good and non-lawful.)

It's interesting to see how, as of right now, characters of an asexual nature (14.1%) are more prevalent than characters of a homosexual nature (5.6%).

Yeah, I'm not sure why that is. There might be a few, like LazarX and DesolateHarmony who chose "asexual" because they didn't want sexuality in their game. (I would have hoped for them to choose "I don't care" instead, but I guess that was poor instructions on my part.)

But I also know that there probably are a fair number of asexual characters. A few of mine are asexual, one of which by design from the start.

It's also interesting to see that female characters are, as of right now, less likely to be heterosexual (35.0%) than male characters (50.9%), and significantly more likely to be bisexual (27.2% v 10.2%).

Yep. It is also a bit uncomfortable. The actual numbers were higher than I expected, but the ratios are pretty much exactly where I thought they would be.

I'm intrigued by the alignment distribution for Scarab Sages. The majority is CN, LN or NG.

The alignment distributions for all of the factions are pretty fascinating. Even the fact that the Grand Lodge is so similar to the alignment distribution of the Society as a whole is very interesting.

Rei wrote:

I'm most surprised by the very large percentage of asexual characters.

Who or what my character is going to bop, is generally far down the list in priority for my character concepts.

That is totally fine, of course. The poll shows that a lot of people feel the same way. It is why I included the "I don't care" option.

But the poll also shows that it is something that people do think about.

Frankly, I consider my own sexual orientation to be a large part of my personal identity. When I create characters it is also something that I think about.

For some of my characters, I know what their sexual orientation is right out the gate. Others, like my 10th-level paladin, I don't discover until later in their career—which is why "I don't know" is also an option. And some I'm sure I will never know.

Also, sexual orientation is more than just "who my character is going to bop." There are social interactions in this game. Sexual orientation influences those interactions. (There are even spells and effects that behave differently based on one character's sexual attitude toward another character.)

I was pleasantly surprised to find that so many other players think about these things when crafting their characters. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see that the (in-game) Pathfinder Society is such an open, diverse, and inclusive organization.

Another interesting thing to add would be "What God does your favorite character follow, if any?"

Yeah, I wish I had thought of that when I built the poll. It would be a lot of work to add that after the fact. :/

Also, wow, only 2 other people besides me love their black blade? (or other intelligent item)

One of my characters is one of the other two. But his sword is not a black blade. It is misforged. ;)

Wondering if you'd be able to combine demographics like Alignment by faction?

Yep. Done! :)

My Shadowdancer's 'pet' is a summoned shadow. Maybe a choice for 'other' in the pet section would be appropriate.

Okay, I am convinced. I will add an "Other" section for the pets. If you look through the responses and find the response number for that character, I am happy to change it for you. Just PM me the response number and the change you want made.

I'll be the one to mention that the sexual orientation section needed an 'other' option. (I have a character who's trans am.) But it's a small thing.

Thanks for pointing that out. I had intended to include "Other" as an option but neglected to do so. If you have already submitted that character and want me to update it, look through the responses to try to find yours. PM me the response number and I will fix it. Thanks again! :)

Yeah, that was fast! Thank you.

A more thorough poll of your character's demographics is now up and running.

The Poll
The Results

Note: Feel free to take this survey for as many of your characters as you would like. It would be best to only include information for your "active" characters, but I will leave it up to you to decide what "active" means in this context.

Bad dog! You make somewhat obscure references to time travel but don't bother to mention the

Guide to Pathfinder Society Organized Play!

Dennis Baker wrote:

Russ Brown wrote:

DM Beckett wrote:

The thing about Kitsune is they just beg to be "unique little snowflake" characters. The kind thats all about RP (as long as its about them and how cool/special they are and the spotlights on them).

I don't know, I have played with at least 3 different Kitsune characters that never came out of their human form and revealed their true nature. I learned this either through high perception or just chatting with the player out of character. And thats just the ones I know about.

Isn't that kind of the kitsune racial thing? Makes a lot more sense being in human form when you are in the Inner Sea region than running around in fox-form where you'd be somewhat a freak.

Racist jerk. You're just jealous of my gorgeous coat. I don't go baldskin-form unless I have to.

Watch who you are calling "bald" you insensitive vulpine jerk! ;)

For a moment we will go with the assumption that you can use this ability during downtime (though, I'm fairly certain you cannot). Unless your static bonus were +1 higher, it would not be an auto-success when faced with DC 30. If you roll a 1 before you roll a 6 (which will happen 50% of the time), then you will have failed by 5 or more, invoking the rule that you quoted: you lose half of the raw materials and must start again. And if you continue to roll 1s before a 6, you continue to destroy half of the remaining raw materials each time. (First you lose 1/2, then 1/4, then 1/8, then 1/16, etc.)

Mathematically, the expected cost would be 4/9 the listed price of the item (44.44%). The least you would pay would be 1/3 the cost of the item (33.33%). The upper bound on how much you would pay if you are quite unlucky and roll 1s repeatedly without rolling a 6 is 2/3 the cost of the item (66.67%).

Isn't 1.3 = 2?

Finlanderboy wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

You fall off and land on the back of turtles holding up the world, duh.

What gender is the turle?

Boy girl boy girl boy girl boy girl

I first heard that parable when learning about the differential properties of y = exp(x).

But this really is y = exp(–x), isn't it?

@Professor X, I feel that everyone wants to have fun, and playing so strictly is completely the opposite. I don't see people coming to play PFS if you have someone demanding to audit characters just to make sure you have all the materials with you. Who ever is behaving like that I figure will be eventually exiled, or they're the person responsible for no one wanting to return to PFS.

Word!

Yeah, I know several of us here haven't purchased any of the rule books. Some don't even have a Core. Why would you when Paizo has made them all freely available?

I just started PFS, and I was very intimidated with the whole "make sure you bring every material being used with your character" and when I showed up to 2 different locals so far, the people are very relaxed about it, and pretty much if it's something really rare, then bring it along. I can't imagine having to lug around every book, or else have to negate it from my character, but it was explained to me that this is a thing for GMs that don't quite have the knowledge that the veteran GMs have.

Yeah, it is the same way here too. I'm pretty sure that I'm one of two people who has all the required resources for our characters, but I don't bother bringing all of them anymore. The other is our VL, and he is happy to lend out his books to anyone who needs them. Plus all the hardcovers are available in the PRD, so I just bring my tablet.