Quaseymoto's page

Interesting follow up question. Let's say you have a summoned creature that would have problems breaking the targets DR.
Does "to the best of its ability" mean in the most effective manor possible? or full or most damaging attack every round possible?

I havent read the retraining rules but if you can retrain your summoner to use a new archetype, take evolutionist from ultimate magic... at level 8 they can change an eidolons base form each time he levels...

Vincent, you can actually retrain to take a new Base form under Ultimate Campaign. The question would then be does taking a base form mean you can retrain the skills and feats?

It's not specified that it's a NEW eidolon, unlike say a Familiar or Animal Companion.

I'd assume yes but since this was a PFS question (thanks for moving it [/sarcasm]) I was hoping for support.

Thanks for the input though.

In short, I made a stupid choice for my Eidolon's first two feats. Every session I'm regretting it more and more.

Assuming I have Ultimate Campaign, the Prestige, and the money, are either of the below options legal?

1) Retrain my Eidolon's base form. I know this is allowed but do I also get to buy new feats (and skills) when this occurs?

2) Retrain one of my Eidolon's feats just as I would my own?

The first option is preferred as it would obviously allow me re-train both feats (and some skills if I needed) for the same price (5 days).

Thanks in advance and I apologize if this has been answered 100 times already. All my searching of the forums, Additional Resources, and books could not reveal an answer.

Best of luck!

I opened this expecting a rant about why someone was leaving PFS and was just misusing "Au Revoir". What a pleasant surprise!

Not at all what the conversation is about, but if I were building the magic item RAI I would give it a -10 to an opponents Sense Motive instead of a bonus to your bluff.

Where is this going? 4th Edition.

I think 4th ed was a case where they put balance as the #1 priority, or certainly one of the top few.

This is a dis-analogy because objects have mass as an intrinsic property.

Good point, conceded.

In many cases, the cost of something is not correlated to any intrinsic value. The cost of apples today is not the same as it was in the past or in the future.

My point from earlier. By creating a new unit ($) we have a fluctuating measurement that relates two items. Yes, their intrinsic properties are not equal, but we value them as the same. Let's say you could get an instant snapshot of all characters in PFS. If you found that 80% of fighters took the same feat tree, or there were 2x as many clerics as oracles, you could assign a statistical relevance to these numbers. Now combine this information with the number of positive and negative comments on the boards regarding an alternative fighter feat tree.

By interpreting this information a developer can make a Qualitative determination and make adjustments. Maybe release a new feat in a new book that helps another feat tree. Or in extreme cases just ban something.

As it is a non-intrinsic property, six months from now they may find it's no longer relevant and have to adjust back the other way.

It is one of the biggest perpetuated fallacies of modern RPG game developers that things can be balanced. In order for things to be "equal" we have to have some metric to compare them. For objects we use mass. For business ventures, we can use return on investment or cash flow.

The game cannot be balanced.

We may disagree on this one. We don't know the metric to measure in game balance, but that doesn't mean one does not exist. Before mass was discovered, man still used levers and scales. A person was still described as rich when they did not make quarterly reports.

For another analogy, we cannot say that 2 apples are the same as 3 oranges, but we can say that 2 apples have the same cost as 3 oranges.

Also worth noting is the difference between static and dynamic equilibrium. Two things can be constantly equal or there can be a constant flux between them that forces them towards equality, such as osmosis. Without going into chemistry lessons I'll leave it there but I think that 'game balance' fits much better in the latter example.

Similarly, it is difficult to say that a healer, who does little damage, and a huge hitting caster or fighter are balanced based on numbers, but rubrics do exist to compare them. Especially with social media you can start by gauging public response, or tracking number of class a vs. class b, or party make-ups in TPKs. There's no set formula but you can still make qualitative decisions.

In old school D&D, hardly anyone cared about balance. What mattered was purpose. Did the class or spell or ability serve some non-trivial...

If it came out that I preferred WOTC's attempt to balance to the Pathfinder system, I apologize. To put that into perspective I played AD&D 2nd ed up until last year, when I switched to Pathfinder. I personally don't place balance at a high priority, and I can proudly say I played a 2nd ed Bard.

Quote:

My only comment regarding those who wish to only optimize and not RP at all is that I feel there are much better systems to do that, many of which I love playing (miniature games, many board games, etc.)

But that is irrelevant to the individual. What matters is they want to play PFS and their play-sytle is 100% legal. You can't punish people for following the rules. You can't punish people for not subscribing to your values i.e. making the design choices you make. If a particular build violates the spirit of the rules or negatively impacts the game, change the rules. Don't try to impose values on people.

Was just passing that as a joke, guess I missed.

As long as this reply is, I promise I get to the thread subject by the end, it just takes a while.

IMO, the absolute cornerstone of Organized Play is fairness. Without fairness in the rules, nothing else is possible. Fairness falls under the domain of PFS rules. PFS has to create an environment that is fair (not necessarily equal) to all players. Part of that fairness is makings sure the same rules are enforced everywhere.

Your wording here is very interesting. Specifically how you're weighing fairness vs. balance.

It is the responsibility of the GMs to maintain fairness, i.e. enforce the same rules in each situation.

However, I feel it is the domain of PFS rules to assist with balance, which we agree is not the same as fair. In all multiplayer RP games the designers have to take care that any path has equal opportunity to contribute within the boundaries of the rules. This ensures the largest number of players and thus the greatest profit. As they discover possible imbalances, they adjust.

The third member of the society, the players, are then given free reign in the restraints of fairness and balance to design a character.

Unlike many, I do not agree that optimizers are orthogonal to RP'ers. I think RP'ers have taken a holier-than-thou-attitude and insist on a divisive attitude towards people who don't share their values.

I think they are two separate axes (not weapons, x,y coordinates). For example, a person who is a heavy RP'er and heavy optimizer could easily create a character concept that wanted to optimize.

My gaming group (which I should point out Greasitty is the usual GM) covers almost all four corners of the RP vs. optimize plot. We still get together and all have fun almost every week. The 'juridical' rules don't say that all players must have the same amount of fun, but our 'ascetical' willingness to "share the spotlight" means that every player has a good time.

Huzzah more VA VL's

The problem is PF vs. PFS

In any fantasy system, Crowd Control is essential to survive over the course of characters life. Some adventures you're fighting dozens of enemies at a time and 1-2 front liners can not keep all those bad guys from reaching the 'squishies' with just AOO's.

Here's an example of something my home party had to deal with recently.
25 Hobgoblin Fighter 1,
4 Hobgoblin Thief 3,
2 Hobgoblin Cleric 4,
1 Hobgoblin Sorc 5,
1 Hobgoblin Fighter 7

PFS scenarios on the other hand have to work in a set time with any party. It's unreasonable to ask a GM to run a large encounter out of a scenario (at least the ones I've seen in my limited experience), so the major disadvantage to the SoS spells, limited HD/# of targets, is ignored because, as was pointed out earlier, it's usually only a few or single baddies at a time.

This thread has caused me to start researching Tablets and their prices. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

I agree that interesting names are fun and I tend towards that direction, but let me play Devil's Advocate for a minute.

Many sessions are done in public places with people you don't interact with weekly. So if I name my character a combination of syllables or anagram to sound cool, the DM and other players have to remember that name, or its pronunciation if they write it down. That extra step can prove frustrating, especially with multiple characters with this problem, until suddenly it becomes a world filled only with pronouns.

Now you've taken even more away from the table feeling then if you named yourself Jack or Jill.

Obviously there's a lot of middle ground between "Bob" and "Ixdrangtoperine", but it's not an entirely one sided argument.

Personally, I've been writing other character names down for almost a decade of RPing, thanks to some players who got over excited with naming conventions.

One piece of advice is that it is best for players to be able to see the initiative order. Tends to make them more ready for their turn. This is especially true at a con.

Great advice. In my home game I prefer to write the initiative on the battle map so anyone can see it as I lack a fancy pad. Since it's wet/dry erase it's easy as pie to adjust as readied and delays take affect.

One of my biggest headaches both as a player and a DM is keeping the party aware of the combat when it's not their turn to speed things along.

@Quaseymoto: Not sure if it got changed from the beta at PaizoCon, but that number the GM was holding up? It wasn't how much effect yoru group was having, but that your group had defeated an encounter in area X, where you were in area 1, and the other group was in area 5.

I don't remember exactly which quadrant referred to which quarter of the city, but 5 would have been the plain outside the city.

I was referring to the last act, when low tiers were manning the catapults. Each successful volley resulted in 1 point.

The special seemed well written and the communication was well done (go Volunteers for standing up so long!).

As hard as it must be to write into a system, the more interaction between tables the better. This is the major difference between the special and any other scenario.

Yes the combats and role-plays were interesting. I particularly liked protecting the ritual for a given time. But I'd gladly have given up one encounters worth of time to help a higher tier (I was 3-4) table directly. Once I understood what my DM holding up a 1 meant compared to the table next to us holding up a 5, I felt like I had a much smaller impact (which makes sense of course, as I'm a weaker character, but still makes me feel less heartened to fight 100%).

Someone mentioned earlier having individual tables of various tiers linked, which sounds really cool. Though probably less cool when you're linked to a higher tier table that gets TPK'd before the end. It's definitely a complex problem and I given the changes in just one year I'm excited to see what next year brings.