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I second Albion's advice. Pick a module, not an AP. Very few APs get finished even with very experienced GMs because it realistically will take around 10 years to do so. As an example, I'm GMing a Reign of Winter game that is about half book 2 and we are already playing for 3 years. It is a big commitment. A good idea, if you have access to them, are PFS scenarios, since they are very short and self contained and you can easily plug and play them for as long as you want.
About the player count, one important thing to keep in mind is that most, if not all, PF adventures are designed for 4 players, so with more than that you'll need to alter all the encounters. In theory, 4 players is the "ideal", but in PBP, if a single player withdraws or vanishes, the game halts until you find a replacement. Because of this, many games run with 5. I personally think 5 is the sweet spot, since you won't need many adjustments. With 6+, it becomes harder to adjust, because the action economy becomes a monster. Single bosses are already difficult to run for 4 players, but for 6 it becomes almost impossible as it becomes a rocket tag (i.e. either the players jump it and kills it fast, or it will kill the whole party, winning who acts faster). About it becoming slower, it doesn't really matter as long as you have very clear procedures about how to move things. Like, 24 max for each round or the player gets botted (with this, doesn't matter how many players). Another very important thing is to use the "rule of two" for taking decisions, which means when a course of action is required from the players, as soon as one player proposes an idea and a single other player agrees, the GM goes with that course of action if the other players are silent or are taking too long to decide. Personally, I really dislike more than 6 players. It becomes hard for me to interact with everyone. I've seen more than once with large parties for players to congregate into smaller sub parties and interact mostly with these small groups.
I'm GMing in Discord and it is really good. I can give you some pointers and help you set it up. Here are the main advantages and disadvantages of Discord: 1) NPCs: You can easily create multiple aliases with personalized images. While you can somewhat do it on Paizo, you are limited to the available names and images and you'll end up with a lot of permanent aliases. 2) No previewing rolls: helps everyone be more honest. I've seen countless times people manipulating their rolls here in many different ways, some of which are very difficult to catch. 3) Private Scenes: By creating separate/private channels/threads, you can make parallel scenes that are then very easy to follow and then check later. Organization is the key here. 4) Tagging/Notifications: You get to know there is a new post without needing to refresh campaign tabs. Allows it to move slightly faster. 5) Censorship: This is minor, but you can say f!#& without some childish censorship. Some people care more about this than others. 6) Multiple places: There is the downside of having to check your game in two different places. This might be a non issue if you are constantly on Discord.
At this point, I'd like to officially bow out. I completely understand difficulties in real life keeping us from posting as that has happened to me multiple times. However, momentum is the bread and butter of PbP and after a month with no further action while we are still in the first scene tells me that this game has small chances of taking off. Good game for all of you and I hope we find each other again in the future!
Hi Itzi! I believe I've played with you in one of these attempts, run by Shadow Lord! I was Olaf. So I'm considering to play an old character... And I've noticed the Childhood Crush trait excluded Koya. Would you be against me picking it up with her? Old people need love as well! I'm in a phase of simple characters, so I'll be submitting a fighter. No stats higher than 15 to pass the idea of an actual old warrior that has lost most of his strength and agility. Single one handed sword, no shield, light armor (too heavy and my knees are killing me), so when before he used to solve his problems with violence, now he must use his mind.
Sent you some options via PM.
I actually finished my conscript/inquisitor. Made a test run of a combat round... And found out I'd probably need 1+ hours everytime it would be my turn because of so many triggers and maneuvers and what not. It would never work in PBP, sadly, because I'd need to keep checking with the GM if this or that ability hit, unless the GM would share all the stats of the monsters lol. So back to the drawing board. Looking for something much simpler now.
My current iteration is an elf conscript/inquisitor of Calistria. Roles would be (aside from big damage) big crowd control, debuffs and anti-spellcaster tactics, with a lot of emphasis on combat maneuvers with a whip, something incredibly difficult to do with vanilla rules because nothing has enough feats to do it. Thinking about trickster as mythic path and Oath against Mercy to represent the vengeance aspect of Calistria. With conscript, going for cavalier training and Order of Vengeance as well. She'll be pretty mean in combat I think and offer good social skills as well, even if MAD in terms of stats. Doing a lot of choices based on flavor.
Now guys, about this trend of what is allowed and what is not, the GM posted the initial rules and then another post with some changes. In theory, anything that wasn't changed is still allowed. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the GM has clearly stated that he is expecting us to keep it reasonable, close to those benchmarks. With that in mind, I believe trying to narrow down everything that should be allowed or not is a big wast of energy. It is a gestalt mythic game with 3pp. Even if we spend weeks narrowing stuff down, if someone wants to break it, they WILL. This is like herding cats. As an example, take Strength. Even without the mentioned capstone, legendary gifs, oaths, and so on, you can still break it easily. Legendary witch or alchemist could give a huge alchemical bonus to it, the orc bloodline from sorcerer also gives a huge bonus, then you still have size bonus, and so on. We need to exercise common sense. The capstone that gives +8 to ability scores is totally fine if you go +2 to four scores. I doubt the GM will be mad about it. On the other hand, using a single stat for everything, even within the rules, has been proven to be insane. Even if you follow all the "rules", if you still make an utterly broken char, the GM can simply not choose you. I really doubt you'll be able to corner the GM later and say, "oh, but you said it was ok" if your PC is breaking the game. So my advice is to build whatever you want, using everything in the two posts about the rules and do your best to create something interesting that isn't obviously broken.
Anyone know what ABP does for unarmed strike? As an alternate rule, ABP wasn't really thorough with its rules. While there is no FAQ about it, there are posts from the devs here on the boards stating you simply choose "unarmed strike" as your attuned weapon. Simply that. Even if you could say that you can use a flurry and thus make many attacks, you can also use an attuned monk weapon with it, so there is no difference IMHO. If you want special materials, you'll have to get an amulet of mighty fists, which conveniently don't even require enhancement bonus on it before adding special abilities. It works perfectly fine.
D20PFSRD has it, but the link is missing from the Legendary Witch page.
Still 1 feat per level. Traits you get one from each of Combat, Faith, Magic, and Social, plus one extra from whatever other category you want, without needing to meet any prerequisites.
Ability score increase was changed back to the standard of +1 per four levels.
Would you consider just banning the option to boost stats with inherit bonus? I believe the options to have a +6 to all physical stats as an example, or at least the bonus to armor/shield/weapon(s) are important and might leave us feeling under geared. --- Another suggestion perhaps would be to get rid of APB altogether. As it stands, martials don't like it because they are getting underleveled gear, while spellcasters don't care for gear, but still have them. No ABP also means less work to balance encounters as I believe the module doesn't use it.
@Giant Halfling: I'd like to politely ask for you to stop this. We are all adults here and this patronizing tone is not helpful or healthy. We are all just having a conversation and sharing opinions. Different players, different opinions, different expectations, different preferences. All valid, all welcomed. If you disagree with one point of view, it is totally fine, but please do not paint these opinions as inherently bad. The GM set the creation rules. Some on us have already spent hours building them and then we were informed that what we've created might be too much. This is fine. Then the GM himself mentions that he is considering changing the rules and some of us are trying to help. That is it. No one is forcing others to do anything, specially not forcing the GM into doing anything. If the GM decides to keep the current rules and enforce the benchmark, also ok.
But even if the characters are totally overpowered, I still think it would be fun to play through it without lessening the build parameters. The epic nature is what tempted me to participate, after all. And if it's a cakewalk, at least the combats will be shorter and the game is less likely to stall. ;) It is important to remember what is the GM's goal with the game. He must have fun as well and at least for me, playing monsters that have literally 0% chance of doing anything at all to the party is absurdly boring. If that is the case, there is no point in building the characters in the first place and the GM would approach each combat with "well, go ahead and narrate how you beat these monsters", because it would be effectively the same thing. I can't speak for anyone but myself, but with epic characters, while I do want my PC to succeed and be awesome, I also want a challenge.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to target those numbers, we just have to purposefully build well rounded characters instead of specialists. I agree with Panic here. For me, when I make an "epic character" for a game, I want to make it epic. The "problem" with the idea of we self-limiting ourselves is that the build rules are so generous that we'll hit those numbers without even trying and then we'll have to look for a huge number of options/feats/magic items that do crap just because we can't go higher. And this is incredibly boring to be honest. This is why I don't play 2e, because they have a bunch of options and 90% of them suck hard. I also have the opinion that specialist are much more fun to play than generalists. Again, with such generous building rules, by being "well-rounded" PCs, we'll still be very good at everything. If you pick two martials as your base class, you'll break the limit, so you'll need a spellcaster on one side. now everyone is a spellcaster. I personally do not find this really interesting.
I don't know, to reach those benchmark numbers, I believe you'll have to drop just about everything from your build rules. No gestalt, no 3pp classes, regular ability gain per level, lower point but and no 1 for 1, etc. The biggest offender IMO is the 3pp material. Definitely cool, but utterly busted, specially when combining multiple systems. Limit the options to paizo only and you'll see the numbers tank very hard. The problem with 3pp is that it not only lets you have your cake and eat it too, but then there 10 more cakes around lol. My suggestions: Gestalt: keep it
All class granted companions function as if they were both familiars and animal companions.I am a little unclear on this. I will have an animal companion. Is it also treated a as familiar with the various boosts to Int, natural armour etc? Natural armor probably does not stack I believe, otherwise it becomes insane.
Wow, that was embarrassing! Big apologies! For some reason I TOTALLY misread what you've meant about "I’ll close recruitment itself to new people". I re-read it and there is no way how to misunderstand it lol. I was probably more than half-asleep when I wrote the above. Sorry again! Now, a couple questions: Ability Scores: Are we still allowed to go negative to get a couple more points? Lets say to 8 and get +2 points as an example. Species: I take human-like races get +4 to any ability, but with the -2 from other races gone, they effectively get +4 and +2 to abilities, putting human-like races in a "disadvantage". Was that intended? I understand the rules are more than generous as they are, but to make things even, should not they get +4 to any ability and another +2 to another ability? Unrelated to the above, do Half-elves' multitalented racial trait allows them to get FCB from both of the gestalt halves? Classes: On the Interest Check thread you mentioned you'd be banning Leadership. Is this ban still in place? If it is, what about some pseudo-leadership abilities some classes gain (like there is a wizard archetype that gives you a cohort that is an apprentice and thus can only be a wizard as well). If these are allowed, are they also gestalt? Do they also get the ABP treatment? Traits: Are we allowed to pick Campaign traits from other Paizo APs? Since mythic is involved, if we pick WotR traits, do they get "boosted" for taking the appropriate Mythic Path? Starting Wealth: Are we allowed to pick "custom itens"? Talking about the more common situation of having two of the same slotted itens meshed together with the core rule of costing (1.5 the more expensive plus the others, etc). Companions: Familiars and Animal companions have some contradicting rules in terms of HD, BAB and Saves. Depending on how we want to use them, it might be more interesting to use one or the other. Considering this is kind-off "gestalt" for them, do we get to pick the bigger numbers? If our choice of classes would give us both a familiar and an animal companion, do we still get two critters using these rules? One being picked from each list of options? And what about this free archetype? If we have an AC we chose from the AC list and so on, or are we free to choose whatever?
Monkeygod, how do you feel about Automatic Bonus Progression? At 20, we’ll all be able to afford the standard suite of stat-boosting items, but just rolling that stuff in and letting us get fun and interesting cloaks/belts/headbands that do things besides +X to Y could be a fun alternative. ABP is pretty interesting, but the rules are silent about companions (animal companions, familiars, eidolons, etc). If we go for this, a ruling would be needed to address this.
1) I don't mind allowing 3pp, but I'd prefer to limit it to a single additional source, like Legendary Classes OR Spheres OR Path of War. Many of these systems interact with itself in interesting ways, but when you dilute the rules too much, many feel off imo. 2) I'm ok with Legendary Classes as long as you allow us to also use regular archetypes. As an example, the Legendary Fighter doesn't have the bravery class feature (I think it has determination instead), so technically this would rule out a big number of archetypes, giving us less options. 3) I'm not against a challenge, specially at epic levels, but I honestly believe lvl 20 gestalt+mythic characters will vary absurdly in terms of power depending on our builds. I advise you to keep to the initial build idea (lvl 20 gestalt + lvl1 mythic), then have a couple encounters to calibrate our power level and finally you decide if you want to make it more challenging and/or give us more stuff.
I'd be interested. In truth, I'd prefer fewer 3pp additions. I say this not because I don't trust them, since many 3pp material is great, but because it might make the game too absurdly complex. As an example, the legendary classes you've mentioned are pretty straightforward, but then you also have Spheres of Power/Might and Path of War which are also good, but combining all of them on top of gestalt and Mythic? Might be just too much.
*Unless I can convince you, oh wise, generous, magnanimous, merciful, and handsome GM, that since the Butchering Axe's description states that it is "A creation of the orc smiths of Belkzen", that a half-orc's Orcish Weapon Familiarity should allow me to treat it as a martial weapon, even though it doesn't have "orc" in the name. Pretty please? There are multiple instances where the dev responsible for the creation of the butchering axe (Isabelle Lee) saying it was purposefully written in a way not to qualify for Weapon Familiarity. Up to the GM, of course, to rule it one way or the other. Just wanted to provide context with the "official" ruling from Paizo.
In the end of the Elephant in the Room document, it gives an errata of the core and unchained classes. For the unchained rogue it gives you Deft Maneuvers instead of Weapon Finesse. For the sorcerer, however, if the bloodlines that had Weapon Finesse now have Agile Combatant. Extrapolating these changes a bit, I believe a Swashbuckler would also get Deft Maneuver. IMO, letting the player choose from any feat instead is too powerful.
You forgot to drop the lowest, friend. Your rolls actually are 11, 15, 15, 13, 7, 14.
Seems interesting, but it is focused on unarmed strikes. With the free druid archetype and the peculiarities of the taralu dwarves, I believe that would tip Ntuni into "special snowflake" territory. I prefer to keep her other aspects more clean and straightforward, thus more believable imo.
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