RaistusObskura's page

Lincoln Hills wrote:

Well, uh... I don't want to give away even the slightest spoiler about the campaign, but I think a half-orc might give you the racial flavor you need (there are lots of neat background twists you can claim with a half-orc.)

Yeah i Have been tossing around a Gnome Fey Sorc...not huge fan of 1/2 orcs. I do not like the way they get stereotyped as dumb it makes them harder to play.

I'm opting for a half-orc alchemist in our Carion Crown Campaign, using the idea that they use their mutagen to harness their orc heritage when required, but allowing them to be smart the "rest" of the time.

RaistusObskura wrote:

I favour German as I speak it

[...]

"Durch den Macht der Farbe, rot, gelb und blau/Verwirrt und verdünnte meiner Feindkörperbau"* than, "I cast colour spray".

You're contradicting yourself there.

RaistusObskura wrote:

I'll admit I play fast and loose with the translations

You play fast and loose with everything.

RaistusObskura wrote:

*Through the power of the colours, red, yellow and blue/Confuse and weaken the bodies of my enemies.

More like "Through the power of the colour, red, yellow and blue/Confuses and diluted of my enemy build"

It's not speaking if you're just using some words thrown together at random :P

RaistusObskura wrote:

Finally for me it's much more fun to say, "Durch den Macht der Farbe, rot, gelb und blau/Verwirrt und verdünnte meiner Feindkörperbau"* than, "I cast colour spray".

Sorry but omg... that gramma is horrible :) (native german speaker^^)

Correct would be:
Durch die Macht der Farben, Rot, Gelb, Blau,
verwirrt und schwaecht meiner Feinde Koerperbau

(By the Power of the colours, Red, Yellow, Blue,
confuse and weaken the body build/physique of my enemies)

Even if this is still a little bit odd, it sound more "round" in german. :)

Ooops I see in my eagerness to post I should have paid more attention to my English and stated that I have German as a second language, rather than being a native speaker and so I apologise for my crimes against the German language.

Secondly, as to the more accurate translations, believe it or not I am aware of the errors I was making. I knew verdünnte was the wrong word but I was trying to come up with a synonym for schwächen I came across it and preferred the aliteration with verwirrt, just as I went for the rhyme of blau and bau despite knowing the German was awkward.

So the words weren't quite as randomly put together as they seem, I was merely making the most of a non-native speaker's vocabulary and a liberal dose of imagination - Besides my incantations work in game as my GM doesn't speak any German.

I just hope he doesn't read this, as I'll suddenly find my spells aren't working. :)

Like a few of the others here I use foreign languages. I favour German as I speak it and the rest of my group don't (except for the phrases for, "My flying saucer/bagpipes are broken".

It has the advantage of consistency as well and players can have a stab at what I am casting if they understand the odd word, as I always use an appropriate phrase and once coined I keep it. Along with describing the visuals of spells it's a nice way of personalising wizards as different languages means the same old spells get mixed up a little.

Finally for me it's much more fun to say, "Durch den Macht der Farbe, rot, gelb und blau/Verwirrt und verdünnte meiner Feindkörperbau"* than, "I cast colour spray".

I'll admit I play fast and loose with the translations as anyone who can read German will see above, but ultimately I am just using it for fun and to add a little extra colour to my character.

*Through the power of the colours, red, yellow and blue/Confuse and weaken the bodies of my enemies.

My group seems to be about 6-8 sessions a level and you level when the GM tells you. With our sessions that means about 30-40 hours at each level.

Moving from xp to GM fiat has improved our games as xp was rarely given out by the book anyway and now we actually spend a several months playing low level characters which I enjoy and suddenly getting access to a level 2 spell is much more rewarding.

Fair enough. I was comparing different categories. However, the draconic sorcerer does not do 1d4, he does 2d4, because he has two claws. I agree though that it is tougher to work with, because he has to be in melee, and is fighting the real AC, not the touch AC.

However, I don't see that the ability to change my fireball to be an iceball is anywhere near as useful as just adding +5 to its damage. There are very few things that take extra damage from cold -- I might meet two of them in a year. The +1/damage die affects against every single enemy the draconic sorcerer meets.

As an aside, is it appropriate to be adding the +1/damage die to burning hands, which is only a first level spell and only uses d4's not d6's?

But there are plenty of things you meet that might be resistant to fire...

Also with respect to the draconic bloodline you get two attacks (both harder to hit as you point out) but you're also easier to hit as they don't have to move to get you.

Ask the players what their characters would like as rewards - Titles, status, land could all be viable depending on character aims and work as handy plot hooks as with power comes responsibility.

Another option is tailored loot not what they need perhaps, but what they want. In a game I was part of a while back played for 3-4 months accounting for levels 1 and 2 - My character's goal was acquisition of power in the form of other Wizard's spellbooks. I wound up with a lot of options when it came to prepping spells, but could only still only cast a couple a day - Despite this Tian Gou was one happy wizard.

You roll enough dice and eventually you'll beat the the odds and given the amount of dice we all roll odds are we've all managed something a little special in character as a result. Here's my story. It may not be Pathfinder, but don't hold that against me...

As to the odds of the following story I make it odds of 1 in 16,000 multiplied by the odds of having this particular set of friends as party member :)

Because the odds are dry here's the long version.

In a galaxy far, far away and in a time far removed from our own is the Spear of Destiny with her crew of misfits trying to survive in a hostile galaxy after having managed to anger space pirates and alien creatures with gribbly mind control powers - A la Star Trek, the command crew are the heroes and abandon ship at every opportunity to go on adventures. At the moment thanks in part to a space battle going badly wrong (and the Captain thinking he knew how to fly and crashing the ship into the attacking vessel instead of giving it a broadside) the Spear is grounded and being repaired. The repairs are costly and so the party have undertaken some freelance work to help fund the repairs.

The party have been investigating what appeared to be a missing persons case. Through our investigations quickly led us to conclude it was a kidnapping and following leads we have uncovered a witness, who having overheard the kidnappers speaking allowed us to identify the kidnappers as space pirates.

As the missing person was the son of a starship repair company it wasn’t too hard to figure out a motive, take hostages and return them in exchange for parts for the ship – Going back to the company who had hired us, we presented them with an update on what we had found. They informed us that, “The case is closed. Oh, and by the way could you tell us who your witness is?”

Not being completely stupid, we decided not to hand over the details of our witness and instead set up a sting. The plan was simple, give them a false target and then tail them back to their source. The false target was to be one of our team, with the rest of us on hand in case it all went wrong and turned into a gunfight.

So we sat and waited and sure enough as evening came, so did a kidnapper. Sticking out like a proverbial sore thumb I saw the droid from where I was watching the front of the building and gave the alert. He then entered the building and went up the stairs. It was at this point I noticed something wrong with the scene, a sole droid had walked up to the building. This suggested to me that perhaps they weren’t going for a kidnapping and were just going to silence the witness, a not unplanned for circumstance as everyone had guns handy.

The droid being polite knocked on the door instead of just barging it in, at least until he figured he’d been rumbled. He tried saying he was police and that he was raising awareness of attacks in the area, so could he come in and advise her. When asked for ID, he decided a fist shoving the door aside was ID enough. Again this was not entirely unexpected.

What was unexpected was the response of the player acting as the bait – Instead of playing the helpless woman role as planned, or even grabbing her gun and initiating plan B – Susan decided to head out of the flat by the nearest exit. A first floor window, head first.

Figuring that the gig was up and it was time for a gunfight, as another player was still in the flat concealed in a cupboard, I ran into the building and started heading up the stairs. Olsen, instead of staying in the cupboard come out into the flat and engaged the hostile droid briefly in hand to hand (not that he choose to do that) and shortly after followed Susan out the window and to the ground. This happened just as I reached the door to the flat, with Susan having dusted herself off following a few seconds behind me.

I took a couple of shots at the back of the droid and did little more than get his attention, and then things started going badly for

As Olsen flew out of the window, Failes drew a bead and unleashed a couple of rapid lasblasts from his pistols into the turned back of the droid. More pissed off than damaged the droid turned around and ran through the corridor towards Failes and colliding with him and throwing Failes bodily though the window he had carelessly stood in front of. (Metagame – The droid bullrushed me and on out opposed strength checks I rolled a 1 and he rolled closer to 20 and had lots of bonuses as well).

Relatively undamaged, but severely unhappy about this Failes rolled over and raised his gun to shoot up at the droid. (Metagame – For my attack roll I rolled a natural 1, which usually means something like a weapon jam or something else that means you can do nothing else that turn whilst you sort it out). However his aim was thrown off wildly, as he noticed that a) he was lying in a road and b)that he was directly in front of an oncoming car and decided too late that getting out of the way of the car was more important than taking the shot. (Metagame – I was given a reflex save to notice the car and rolled the third 1).

Failing to get out of the way of the car in time, Failes was hit by the car and left stunned lying in the road by the force of the impact. (Metagame – The fourth, but not fatal 1 is rolled. Incidentally when the gamemaster rolled for how long I was stunned he managed to roll the maximum).

Seeing me thrown out of the window, Susan decides to run away again whereas Olsen getting back up to the window he had been thrown out of earlier opens fire on the droid scoring a telling hit. Figuring discretion is the better part of valour the droid jumps to the ground through the hole he had made using me and walks over to Failes’ prostrate body and raises a stompy metal foot.

As he does this Susan, the coward is just across the street trying to get into our getaway car in plain view of my body. Heroic Olsen on the other hand is in pursuit and gunning for the droid. The droid then tells Olsen, “Give me the girl, or your friend gets it.” Slightly less heroically Olsen points out Susan to the droid and then shoots the droid in the back as it turns to face Susan.

Susan however had earlier been wearing a wig when the droid saw her, a wig that she had removed after jumping out of the window and so the droid didn’t recognise her. At this point the boot came down and it was time for Failes Wildly; one of my favourite characters, to die.

The plus side for me though is that whilst things had gone badly for me, they continued to get worse for the rest of the party after this, with them almost dying, destroying a chunk of a spaceport and one of our spacecraft (one destroyed the other), having our mothership stolen and looted by pirates before being given the choice of joining a pirate crew or being ‘cut loose’.

tl;dr

Rolled 4 ones back to back. Got thrown out a window, hit by a car and stomped to death by a robot - And then it got bad for everyone else, a shuttle and a spaceport.

Some people like to crunch numbers. Some people like to roleplay a fun concept.

And as you mention a little later on some people like to do both.

In my group I am regarded as the rules lawyer/optimiser. In one sense my group see it as positive indeed they find it funny that when I query how a rule is being used that I show no regard whether it is in favour or against the party. So in a sense I show I am not being opportunistic about my application of the rules.

However what does frustrate me is that I am assumed to be trying to pull something off and optimising to the max. In our most recent campaign the GM even commented to the group, if it's in the APG you can have it, except you Raist, ask first. I've adopted a red shirt for my character already as I expect the DM might decide to gun for me a little harder as well (of course this leads to a cycle of escalation).

I'll admit I number crunch naturally and I like concept optimisation so I do toy with it and joke about what I could do with my characters, but the important thing is I don't do this* I don't gimp myself either.

I think the biggest problem as mention by others is the disparity of optimisation skill in a group, if one character is soaking up the screentime and doing it all it's no fun for everyone else sometimes players have to remember to step back and let other players have a go, even if they don't do it as quickly/efficiently/well as you might. You can always offer an assist when it's needed and you might well learn something as well.

Ultimately it's a team game and whilst there will be a captain and positionals in addition to linemen, but they are nothing without each other. The trick is to work out how you play together, if you are an optimiser in a group that aren't - Don't go on about it and don't show off every 5 minutes after all that's an optimal strategy in and of itself.

On the flip side if you're not an optiser and find yourself surrounded by them, maybe you should explain what you want your character to do and get some advice on how best to do it.

Ultimately it comes down to knowing what the group expectation is and working towards that goal with them. If the groups goals are too far removed from your own, well there are other groups if you look for them. It's a cooperative game and you need to find people you can play with and more importantly enjoy playing with and have them enjoy playing with you.

*Okay so I do try and make sure I have something up my sleeve to try and ensure personal and where possible party survival, but I've only pulled that off once and that was in a Lv 2 party where the party were saying a was a rubbish wizard because I couldn't cast fireball. Once I got a scroll of fireball I saved it for a special occasion - So I even had an in character reason for that trick.

To echo a couple of others if there is no risk there is no reward.

Also a good character death can be a glorious thing - I still recall the death of Failes Wildly a fighter pilot who lost a grapple with a robot got thrown out of a window and landed in the path of an oncoming car.

Stunned all I could do was watch as when the robot held his foot above my head and threatened the rest of the party telling them to give up the girl.

The party did a look behind you and shot at him - They didn't kill him, but he got me. Then getting into a car they avenged me by getting in the car and hitting ramming speed and due to not wearing seatbelt almost finished themselves off as well.

We nearly had a total party kill that time and we've had a few close shaves in the group, most recently a cleric being reduced to 0hp as he flew off on a griffon after seeing the rest of the party fall.

This doesn't happen every week, but sometimes like Failes Wildly you do roll a natural 1 4 times in a row.

The difference though is player death vs party death. Okay, so in a fantasy game player death is usualy temporary (unless you're a racist Elf who refuses to come back for fear of coming back as a human) but sometimes it's not an option. None of our games have ended as a result of player death and the 1 survivor option has led to some interesting storylines.

The worst game I've experienced was where the players had no fear of death due to the GM, no one cared about their characters the way they have in other games and it meant the game ultimately didn't last and that's a true TPK and it's not the type you laugh and joke about years later.

Ultimately the players are the heroes, but you need to make them feel heroic and this is where the last game I mentioned went wrong - Unlike the last game I took part in where my character declared he'd fight a Linnorm and "become a king or become an hero".

I was proud that the fight between a Wiz8/Monk2 and a CR14 Linnorm lasted 14 rounds - Okay so I didn't cause a point of damage and I played dead by plummeting from the sky and stopping my fall inches above the ground and led to party ridiculing me for my lack of commitment to my earlier claim of become a king or die trying rather than being impressed that I'd survived as long as I had, but my character (and I as the player) felt he'd achieved something.

OOC I entered that fight expecting to die, but I survived even if I did little else - Shame he died fighting the BBEG at the end of the story, but I had fun with the whole character arc and the best thing about his death was I get to try a new character concept. :)

As it wouldn't be 10 charges and a list of spells, I didn't think that craft staff would be appropriate - Although that could be something else for later I had thought about the staff developing as the character gains power :)

I'd forgotten about craft rod and that would be a possibility - Although I'm inclined to ask the DM if craft wonderous item would cover it as I am not thinking of going above cantrip and cosmetic level effects and craft rod would seem to suggest something a little better than a staff with a glowing knob on the end.

The reason I asked here, is so that I could refer my GM here for opinions if wanted them as he's not run a Pathfinder game before and traditionally one of the players rather than a GM in the group.

I imagine this is a simple question that I am over complicating, I have just started a campaign and I am planning on playing a crafter wizarid for the first time and was thinking that to be a proper wizard I need a proper staff.

I am not talking about turning it into a magic weapon, or a stave however - I was thinking of a just a few simple cantrip type effects - For example being able to cast light at will and be left standing upright without it falling over (although it could be knocked over easily).

Would like count as a wonderous item, or something else?

As has already pointed out terrain is the leveller here - Even on an open plain unless the monk is always running directly away the pursuer can take a tighter curve to help close the distance.

Also running around for three quarters of an hour with an angry owlbear after you - I can help but think that much noise might encourage other encounters to kick off and complicate matters - Maybe a druid who sees the monk baiting an animal, a ranger who believes in clean kills or more animals.

Finally, sometimes a fight isn't fair and it's only going to have one conclusion if you fight by the rules of the other person - You have to work out how to get them playing by your rules and whilst an animal might not be able to do that something with a touch more intelligence might.

Does it bug anyone else that you can cast CMW and roll all 1's and heal 5HP, but also cast CLW and roll max and cure 9HP (assuming same level). To me, as a player and GM, it is annoying to watch people poke each other with a cure-stick 50 times in a row because they keep rolling low. It is also frustrating as a player, while in a time of emergency, to cast that cure spell to avoid your ally's demise during battle, and roll 1's.

Sometimes I wish that the Cure spells were more reliable.

Do any of you have any house rules that address this situation?

What are your general thoughts on the matter?

Maybe the God(s) just aren't seeing fit to bestow their blessings on this occasion - Still thats the advantage of a pantheon, it's a worshipper's market.

More seriously. Houserule it, I like the randomness of healing as it means it's not a sure fix and you can just rely on it and your character should learn the first rule of defence - Be where the weapon is not!

Bah - you guys are wusses. Sometimes people have bad luck, it's part of the game.

I give my players the option of the average (alternating whether to round up or not), or a roll. It's their choice.

If you can't have fun because you rolled a one, that's a personal problem.

I know some people like to minimise randomness (including several players in my group), but I am not one of them - Like Leper above (although perhaps a little more diplomatically) I say roll with it and maybe reconsider how the character goes about his schtick rather than changing what he does wholesale.

My most memorable characters owe a lot to the dice, whether it be a low stat foisted upon me or below average hit dice - These things should manifest in character, much as a character should change based on ingame experiences.

After all if you roll nothing more than max hp, you wouldn't want the GM telling you need to reroll your stats, would you? At the moment I am playing a con 14 Wizard9/Monk2 who has yet to roll anything below a 5 when rolling for his wizardly HD. The result has been I have marginally more HP than the fighter and play a battle wizard who is usually at the forefront of any melee.

Obviously what HP generating system you use is up to you and for the record my group favours letting people reroll a 1, but if you get another too bad it's yours to keep.

Players having fun is the aim of the game (that and the GM having fun as well of course), but be careful of setting a precedent. After all what's to stop the person being unlucky in HP with the next character and wanting another set of rerolls? Personally I like the idea of a fighter who looks and thinks he is harder than he actually is and has a habit of biting off more than he can chew.

My RP group has everyone wanting to try being a GM at the moment, which is great for me and the other regular GM.

The best effect of the is as people know the GMs are inexperienced at running games, they let the GM dictate a little more and focus on responding to the situation and having fun rather than spotting what rule is being violated.

In response to the OP's question I feel it is slightly loaded, it's a sliding scale between forced and encouraged.

My first character was a rogue, because I was told that was what the party needed as they had encounted a specific problem that none of the existing party (lv 6-8 if I recall) could do - The GM had specifically noticed this weakness and decided to challenge the party using it.

So when I showed up at the session I was told we need a classic thieving rogue and I started at lv 1. I got the job done, although the GM did observe afterwards that I'd got lucky as if I'd failed in the lockpicking and trap disarming as the traps were inteded for the rest of the party I would have been the proverbial smoking boots - Given this OOC knowledge I developed my character into one who believed he was lucky and tried his luck regularly - Okay in fights until I levelled up a bit I had to play keep away, but it was a good intro to roleplaying.

I've also played clerics as that is what the group of needed at the time - I performed the healing duties, but did it on my own terms as a couple of other people indicated earlier in the thread.

That said my group is happy to have weaknesses in the party by leavign roles uncovered, after all a group of adventurers will play to their strengths while the enemy will try and play to their weaknesses and it makes for a wonderfully dynamic game - After all overcoming something the hard way can be pretty satisfying.

Dont ignore the fact that low level casters know that they are squishy and that they will take steps to cover thier buts. AKA... Fighting dirty.

The 2 to 3 war dogs he/she bought, fun with caltrops, grease(lighted tourch optional), thrown aneything (lamp oil, acid, vials of skunk spray, vials of quik lime, live poisonus aneything).

The point is most casters have a personal trick or strategy up their sleve to keep them alive and viable and give their enemys a nasty suprise.

Thies guys are smart and think outside the box.

Thanks for the ideas.

I am a player that has recently seen the light and turned to the path of arcane power.

In my group games almost always start at level 1 and end when appropriate (usually before levels reach double figures). In fact there has been a real effort to extend the time at level 1 - The last game saw us at spend 6-8 weeks at each level and when it ended we had just reached the heady heights of level 3.

I was a Wizard for all of this and it was great. I may have been smart, but I wasn't a wise old sage and instead was a curious Tengu who managed to accidentally sell the parties souls into bondage and by the game's resolution. I'd managed to give everyone else's soul but mine released although the party saw me as betraying them - So I started working on a plan to never die and avoid the issue altogether (sadly that part of the campaign never got played).

I recall the fun of pulling out scrolls above my level and risking the chance of a miscast and trying to make infernal deals without realising (initially at least) how important wording was.

Obviously a part of being a wizard is casting spells, but that's not all of it - It's like a couple of members of the party proclaiming I was a rubbish wizard just because I couldn't cast fireball - It was fun to see their faces when I pulled that scroll out in a pinch, even if it just led to them mistrusting my character more.

Maybe there are issues from an optimisation perspective, but I can't see them at low levels due to small modifiers to large random rolls (this is not the case at later levels). I don't optimise excessively although I do try and have a 'schtick'.

tl;dr I've played lots of characters at low levels and wizards are just as good or fun OVERALL as other classes.

My approach is similar to Nazard in that I try to roleplay it. Either with backstory when the intent is to multiclass early and take the one that would seem hardest to explain developing spontaneously (e.g. Wizard) first.

This did mean that on one occasion when I took Wizard second that I was without a bonded item for quite a while in addition to wearing some armour. Extremely non optimal perhaps, but great for roleplaying towards my ultimate aim of being a armourclad mage with a fondeness for still spell.

When I GM, it tends to get handwaved, although some of the players do make a similar effort to myself it doesn't tend to be the rule. One player in particular though has a habit of taking the classes according to the needs of the party, which has led to the odd interesting build and is an organic, if not quite roleplayed character development.