RizzotheRat's page

I’ve been playing 3/3.5/Pathfinder since the 3rd Edition came out. I started with 1st Ed aged 6. I guess this makes me old! Played my first Playtest chapter today. Initial impressions -

I liked:

* the three action economy. No more swift/move/standard is a huge improvement

* New skills list. More than enough.

* AOO isn’t automatic. This frees up the “board” a lot.

* AC increases as level increases. Your BAB does, why shouldn’t your ability not to get hit?

Things to work out:

* the transition from exploratory to encounter mode is not clear. Not surprise round!

* Resonance wasn’t well understood when I was playing

* spell points seems like the wrong name for this counter

Overall, really enjoyed it and it still felt like Pathfinder to me.

If you want to pursue that idea you could steal from Monte Cook's Dead Gods. Rather than the player's characters go back in time he had the players roll up different characters and play them in that time zone. He then had the original characters find a magic item that had recorded the different characters' experiences. It was a great way to giving the players valuable plot information and history. To make it a great 'reveal' I had the players run those different characters in a break between chapters well before the magic item could be discovered. To give it a completely different, I had a good friend of mine, who plays with a different group, GM them with the mission the TPK at the end. When they finally found the magic item, many real time months later, is was a great "oooohhh" moment.

The 'profession' part of WoW is the most boring and frustrating part of the game. Grind, grind, grind for what? So you can flog a bunch of half useful stuff at the Auctioneer? I don't think I've ever used anything I've made. The economy gets so out of whack because the players are OCD about levelling that the materials are far more expensive than the finished product. And we want bring elements of this to Pathfinder?

Crafting is meant to be done in the background, during downtime between adventuring (great call on the montage). Players that want to craft should play something like Kingmaker where there is ample time for this to happen. There's nothing more frustrating to a GM than a player who wants to bang out a bunch of horse shoes in the middle a super suspenseful plot thread.

It is all too much like real work. Don't you have enough drudgery in your real life?

Can anyone explain to me how this would be less relevant than comparing "Role playing" to optimization?

I take the point a few posters have made that some players design their character and play the game to 'win', player V GM style, let's break your game, my characters awesome and I don't care if anyone else gets a chance to shine, rather than be a team player that helps everyone have fun. These type of players are generally also optimisers. However, not all optimisers are like that.

I get annoyed with players who don't have a strong character concept and don't inject any personality into their play. Worst still are players who write pages and pages of character background yet don't reveal anything about their character over many sessions of play. However, my real pet gripe, at least in 3rd Ed, were players who went off and chased multiple prestige classes in order to build "interesting characters" which rarely made sense from a background or game experience level, and as a consequence didn't hold down their end when it came to their role. There is nothing worse than a dysfunctional adventuring party with a Rogue who has no chance of finding the traps, a Cleric who can heal enough HP, a fighter who doesn't hit hard or frequently enough, or a Wizard who doesn't have access to those high levels spells required in game because the Mod assumes a certain level of proficiency.

Sub-optimised characters can be just as game breaking as cardboard cut out dungeon slayers.

I"m currently half way through RRR and have taken some foreshadowing here on board. Thanks guys.

ALL SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU REALLY SHOULD NOT BE READING THIS THREAD IF YOU ARE A PLAYER ANYWAY!

I'm not running with Doom Crow's monster kingdom, the uniting of disparite monster races under the one banner didn't sit well with me and the PCs have been very diplomatic in all their encounters, but have adopted a lot of ideas from that thread (thanks to you guys too). I agreed that the human element in the enraging of the Owlbear seemed out of place so have gone with direct action by the Trolls and their halfling slaves (some of which ended up on the Troll's dinner plate when they had outlived their usefulness). I've had the Trolls intimidating and standing over the other monster NPCs that are allied to the new Kingdom. The PCs were pretty freaked out by the Unicorn is are on the look out for what may have done this. The Trolls will be the first direct strike by Nyrissa's minions (the Stag didn't appear to have any connection to her by the PCs).

I've been playing up the fey connection to the Stolen Lands. Old Beldame got the party tripping balls on Black Cap mushroom tea and incited the Carroll's Jabberwocky to them. The next morning they asked about the Jabberwocky, the Tane and learnt that the border between the First World and the Stolen Lands was particularly thin.

My other plot driving tool becomes from one of my players's characters, the summoner. He had a twin who was still born at birth. His parents where distraught and tried on bring his brother back to life by burying him in a Fey mound and reciting a ritual given to them by the local herbalist and midwife (a hag in disguise). The ritual didn't work but the surviving son always thought there was something missing, a presence just out of reach. He researched and trained for many years before he was finally able to manifest his long lost brother in physical form (a biped eidolon). His brother grew up in a wild, wicked and terrifying land were he is routined hunted and often captured and tortured to death, only to reform and rise again the next day to suffer the same fate. He is grateful to his brother for giving him some relief but is resentful when he has to return to "the other place". Since forming the kingdom the persecution and torment has gone up a notch and one particularly gruesome death (which supported one of the eidolon's evolutions but that's another story) came with a warning that if his brother really loved him, he would stop playing Kings in a land where he didn't belong and pack up and go home. The PCs are now freaking out.

The other place is the First World, I may even make it ThousandBreaths. I was also thinking of have the brother's soul trapped in a soul jar (similar to Vordakai's) sitting as a trophy in the House at the Edge of Time. How I resolve this when it is discovered I'm not sure....

I think I'll also knock off the bottle idea by making one of the yet unexplored Hexes in the south unusually barren with a pervading background aura of Transmutation magic. I might put the bottle in Irovetti's castle.