TechieMoe's page

Note that you would get the AO for the creature leaving a threatened square afterwards, not for the attack itself.

Right - I wasn't clear in my original post, but that was the question I asked the GM, as soon as the harpy moved away.

This isn't a PFS specific question, so it should be asked in the Rules form.

My mistake. Perhaps a mod can reassign it. It involved a dispute with the GM during PFS play, so I assumed it would go here.

To answer your question, however, just compare the wording of the two feats:

Flyby Attack wrote:

Benefit: When flying, the creature can take a move action and another standard action at any point during the move. The creature cannot take a second move action during a round when it makes a flyby attack.

Normal: Without this feat, the creature takes a standard action either before or after its move.

Ride-by Attack wrote:

Benefit: When you are mounted and use the charge action, you may move and attack as if with a standard charge and then move again (continuing the straight line of the charge). Your total movement for the round can't exceed double your mounted speed. You and your mount do not provoke an attack of opportunity from the opponent that you attack.

The bolded part is the important bit that Flyby Attack lacks.

Thank you. That's precisely what I was looking for.

This weekend my group went through a scenario where we were attacked by a group of four harpies (what's the word for that anyway? A murder? A quartet?) As the first harpy used its flyby attack on me I asked the GM if I got an attack of opportunity.

...This caused quite a spirited debate, mostly about whether flyby attacks are treated the same as ride-by attacks, and everything stopped for a few minutes. Books were consulted, grognards tapped on the shoulder, and no one really had a clear yes or no. The GM eventually decided by fiat that the attack didn't provoke and moved on.

It's absolutely within the GM's purview to make this call, but I believe the ruling was incorrect. I don't care about the adventure itself - we all made it out okay - but for future reference should *I* run a scenario with harpies I want to make sure I'm not making the game unnecessarily difficult on my PCs because of a misunderstanding of the rules.

I'd like someone with more knowledge than I to definitively answer this, and give page numbers and book names to back it up so if it ever comes up again I can say, "It's this way because XXX rule on page YYY says so."

TechieMoe wrote:

We didn't choose to play high tier - PFS rules dictated it.

Again, if the 8th level player had played a 7th or lower, you could have played low.

I did not blame you for not enjoying the scenario. I blamed the party composition for making you play an inappropriate subtler.

I had the same problem happen when I ran The Disappeared for a bunch of 2nd-3rd level characters at 4-5. It was a horrible time, but every time I have run it afterwards has been with appropriate level parties and been a blast to play.

Fair enough. It was definitely an inappropriate challenge level for where our characters were. It's a shame too - the haunts and creatures themselves were actually pretty cool, but I couldn't enjoy it because I was too busy trying not to die or rage quit the table. :/

I like it more when is brutal hard. Bring it on. i ll ask my GM to schedule it now.

If you play high, you won't be disappointed.

Well, you'll miss out on some of the best stories in PFS due to going into a scenario with an out of tier party, but that is your call.

I feel you would have had a better time with the 8th level character swapping for a 7th or lower and playing the low tier.

We didn't choose to play high tier - PFS rules dictated it. At least that's what our GM told us. If he was mistaken, then we all had a horrible time because of him, and not the scenario. I haven't looked at the low tier to see if it would have been less brutal.

I find it tacky to blame me for not enjoying a scenario in which I was hammered and then killed.

I just played through this scenario at a convention, and I will not play anything by this author again. We had a fairly diverse party (Levels 5, 6, 6, 7, and 8 respectively) and played the high tier.

Needless to say, we did not enjoy this scenario. The opening curse crippled our group severely and left us exhausted for the rest of the encounter. Several times throughout we had players who were one-shotted to negative HP, and my character was killed (actually dead, past my CON and had to be resurrected) by what should have been a relatively weak enemy - with a single attack. One of my party was hit with a spell that causes instant death (but thankfully got his save roll).

There's a difference between difficult and just malicious. The number of high-level, high-difficulty enemies and haunts seemed wildly disproportionate and just plain unfair. It felt to me as though the author was actively trying to kill the party by pitting them against caster levels much higher than them.

Long story short - I felt this scenario was wildly unbalanced in favor of the GM, our group did not enjoy it at all, and I will never play nor GM another PFS by this author.

Thank you for the insight, everyone. I think I understand the "why" now. Society is just too restricted for my home group, so we'll be following the Core Rulebook instead. As John Compton pointed out, PFS is more of a social event, and although I'd love to expand my group life doesn't always accommodate. The best I'm usually able to get is two other friends, so that makes us unable to do any sanctioned games.

Looks like I'll have two sets of characters - one for myself for when I'm able to attend others' PFS groups and one for my home group (who love RPGs, but dislike PFS due to the many restrictions). It's an imperfect solution, but it looks like the only one for my situation.

I'll leave on the point that resonated most from me when I read the Core Rulebook:

The Most Important Rule
The rules presented are here to help you breath life into your characters and the world they explore. While they are designed to make your game easy and exciting, you might find that some of them do not suit the style of play that your gaming group enjoys. Remember that these rules are yours. You can change them to fit your needs.

Thanks again, everyone. I hope to enjoy much Pathfinder in the future (with or without the Society's blessing.) ;)

Another solution to look into is to play a Sanctioned Adventure Path or Modules in "campaign mode." There are many Sanctioned Adventure Paths out right now, and also the Module "Dragon's Demand" can be played in this mode.

You would then be able to play the adventure path however you like (using even house rules, less people, etc.) with whatever rules you like (you can make the character creation "like" PFS if you really wanted to...my home group for Shattered Star did!) and be able to apply it to PFS characters (only one per person, regardless of how many characters you played it with individually). While it's not a perfect solution and would limit you to adventure paths for credit when playing with less than 4 people total at the table, it is an option that will give each person involved PFS credit.

That's an excellent idea, and a helpful answer. Thank you.

My personal opinion is that the rule is in place because running multiple characters at a table could give that person an edge over others that will also play that scenario. Since PFS is a world wide organized community, the rules are in place to make sure the playing field stays as level as possible. Allowing people to play two or more characters simply doesnt do that.

Even if everyone at your table is running two, everyone world wide isn't going to be.

That makes sense. I guess to level the playing field they had to limit a lot of the freedoms players might have otherwise had. Bad news is my home games won't be sanctioned. Good news is we'll have fun playing with the expanded Core rule set instead. I've been wanting to roll a Necromancer. :)

The rules say:

• only one PC at a time
  
• only 1 chronicle sheet per scenario
  
• you may not replay for credit
  

If you do not follow the rules on purpose. You are cheating.

I'm quite clear on the rules, thanks. What I asked was why the rules were decided as such. I'm beginning to get the impression that organized play isn't for me.

Techie, it is considered cheating as you are a) playing two characters at once, which is a no-no (especially because many people can't concentrate enough to play ONE character well at a table, let alone two), and b) you can only have one chronicle sheet per scenario per PLAYER. So you are playing and replaying at the same time.

Now I have somewhere around 14 different characters. That's fine. However I can only ever play one to any given table. That's the way it should be, I think.

I respectfully disagree with your opinion on that. Juggling multiple players can be difficult (especially if you're a role player who likes to play in-character) but calling it cheating is just silly, IMO. I'd be entertained at a table with two different PCs and someone who could play both. Isn't the point of a game to have fun?

Additionally, it would open the door wide open for people to create two characters that are basically twins to cover eachother's backs, creating a dynamic duo or supercheese. (Players already do this where they have one and the friend has another. Gets annoying when they insist on playing together even if there's not enough room for two more at a table. But I digress).

Again our opinions differ. Unless you're the kind of GM who feels it's his duty to defeat the players at all costs, why would two players working together (even if they were run by the same person) be a bad thing? Surely adventurers work together all the time in a real-world scenario.

Another question - why is multiple players per PC considered "cheating"? Not trying to start a fire - I'm genuinely curious what the logic was behind that decision. I don't understand.

There's nothing stopping you from playing the scenarios, you just couldn't then take those same PCs to other Society games (like at a convention or something) and play them there. You can totally still just grab a couple friends and play a game using a PFS scenario as the adventure.

That's what we'll have to do, it seems. Shame we can't get official credit for them. I like a lot of the PFS scenarios from an adventure standpoint, but some of the Society rules for reporting/running games seem designed to make the game less fun. Or at least less accessible. I hate having to maintain two versions of a character for Society and non-Society play.

But I digress. Question answered, although I'm bummed by it.

You need 3 actual players playing and a GM to be a legal table. In this instance, you fill in the 4th spot with a pregen. This is the only instance you fill in an "extra seat". The GM is supposed to run this pregen, but often times, it defaults to control by one of the players at the table.

A player can only have one personal character playing at a table at a time.

EDIT:

The Guide pg. 20 wrote:

One Character at a Time

You may only play one character during a specific scenario
session. You may have more than one active character in
Pathfinder Society Organized Play, but playing more than
one during a specific session is considered cheating. GMs
are allowed to play one pregenerated character during a
session, but only to make a legal table.

Well that's a bummer. Looks like I won't be doing any Society games at my house any more. Thanks for the clarification.

Slap me with a herring if this is too basic of a question or it's been answered on some FAQ somewhere...when I GM a scenario, can the players play more than one character at a time? I don't see any hard and fast rules on the matter.

The reason this comes up is more often than not my personal group has issues getting a quorum - so I end up having to fill the extra seats with NPCs/pregens. It would be more fun for everyone involved if the players got to play with their own characters.

TechieMoe wrote:

The Morphling wrote:

Yes. My Paladin with the Fire Domain absolutely loves it. Nothing is quite like a Paladin stepping up and saying "Don't worry, I can handle the swarms." and letting loose with Burning Hands and Fireballs.

Does fire bolt work against swarms? I'll keep it if that's the case. Common annoyance with the groups I play - no one has anything to deal with swarms.

No, but almost all of your Fire Domain spells work on them (barring fire resistance or immunity).

Ah, good to know.

Yes. My Paladin with the Fire Domain absolutely loves it. Nothing is quite like a Paladin stepping up and saying "Don't worry, I can handle the swarms." and letting loose with Burning Hands and Fireballs.

Does fire bolt work against swarms? I'll keep it if that's the case. Common annoyance with the groups I play - no one has anything to deal with swarms.

Changing Domains is legal if you own Ultimate Campaign and follow the outlined retraining rules, paying the listed gold cost and an additional 1 prestige per day it would take.

Ah! I see the section on that. Thanks.

I have a third-level Cleric of Sarenrae with the Healing and Fire domains. Fire hasn't really proven all that useful to me, so I'd like to rework it to something else, maybe Glory.

I've seen threads on changing deities, but not on changing domains while keeping the same deity. Is it legal to change domains? Does it require GM approval or something like an atonement?

What type of comments does he make that are snide? Sorry if I seem a bit obtuse. I'm just trying to grasp your situation. Unfortunately I am not there so I don't know first hand.

I do find it somewhat amazing that he is able to brag about TPKs. The hardest GM in my area only has one or two TPK's out of over 150 games. Now bragging about player character deaths, that I can understand. Among GM's who like to play hard tables they sometimes view number of characters who have died as a benchmark to how difficultly they have run the scenario.

Out of curiosity, when he crits does he actually stand up and tell everyone to listen to him while he laughingly tells them all that he crit? Because if he is then I agree completely that he is acting like an Ogre.

I think his exact words at our last meet up were [edits mine], "BAM! That's a crit, b***h!"

When someone asked if they could do a knowledge check at one point during the game (and didn't specify what type of knowledge) rather than asking them the type he said, "No, we don't do knowledge something checks!"

You may not consider that snide, but I do.

As other people have said, if you aren't able to confront him about the things he is doing that you don't like then the next best thing is probably to just not play at his tables.

That seems to be the prevailing wisdom, which I already do. In the meantime I'm looking into doing more home games with my friends, and trying to get some of the folks I play with at the store to come. In my experience (for whatever reason) it's easier to get someone to come play at a store than at someone's house.

Does he intentionally change the rules of the engagement, add monsters /remove monsters, randomly adjust tactics, or otherwise change the scenario to kill players? There is one GM local to me who is known for running a hard table, but in my experience it is usually fair. Sometimes he misses something in a scenario, but I am fairly sure we have all done that. There was one session where I kept adding accidentally high tier monsters to the low tier (I noticed my mistake and removed them and the damage they had dealt from the game after a couple rounds).

If you really want to go to the venue just go. The person in question is only going to be able to be at one table. Who knows maybe if you spend some more time there you may learn to get along with this person too. There was a guy in college I couldn't stand until I learned that him sounding overconfident was just his way of presenting an argument and that he was expecting me to come up with a counter claim.

To the best of my knowledge he never intentionally breaks rules. It's more about his attitude toward the players in-game and people in general out of game. He just has an abrasive, rude personality. He brags about his number of TPKs and makes snide comments when players ask questions he thinks are silly.

To answer someone else's point - I understand that some GMs like to make their sessions harder. Difficulty isn't the issue - being a jerk when you cause critical damage to a PC by announcing it to the whole store and laughing is.

Don't worry, I already avoid being at his table. And sadly, I don't see myself ever being able to swallow his particular personality quirks.

TechieMoe, which location do you attend your game days? I am based in WA (if you play in Idaho as Big Norse Wolf indicated) and would like to help in any way I can. You can contact me at spokanepfs@gmail.com. Thanks.

I'm actually not in Idaho, sorry.

The very short answer is that it's not hard at all if you have the players.

1). Select the people you want to game with, and confirm they will come.
2). Pick your scenario/module/AP.
3). Go online at Paizo with your PFS account, register the scenario/module/AP your (or whoever is elected) will run. Make sure to put down the date and get your event number.
4). Run your game at home. Hand out and sign chronicle sheets as appropriate.
5). Report results under the event you registered.

For a single table of friends, that's all you need to do. It's when you host multiple tables and events that it gets more complicated.

Thanks, Lormyr and Jeff for clearing that up. I was under the mistaken impression that to host a PFS game I had to go through my local area's venture officers. Were I to host my own, it would be at home with friends, not a public event. That makes things simpler.

ware that Idaho, not being the most populace state and this being a small community, there's a good chance he knows you're talking about him or will soon.

Believe me, I debated a long time before asking questions on such a public forum.

...trying to confront the offender (especially when they are in a position of authority) can be counter-productive.

Hit the nail on the head there.

Fortunately PFS has venture officers in place to help with these more awkward situations.

In the meantime, I guess I have a few suggestions (because maybe others won't be able to offer you help in a timely fashion):

1) Organize your own game days. Yes, it's a lot of work, but maybe you and some of your new friends can play on a different night or at a different venue (even at home).

How does one go about that? I mean, I know how to set up a regular PFRPG game at my house, but how would one organize an officially-sanctioned PFS event? I'm sure there's an FAQ link somewhere.

Thank you both for your helpful replies! I'll investigate all that you suggested.

I'm new to PFS, having just started playing a few months ago. I *love* playing PFRPG, and most of the PFS events I've attended have been great. The vast majority of people in my local PFS enthusiast group are decent, nice people.

Unfortunately, we do have some bad eggs. One of them happens to be the guy who organizes our events. He's unpleasant to say the least - actively trying to run off new players, kill the tables he GMs, and just being a general all-around ogre. The people I speak to in the group all agree with this assessment but they just shrug and say, "That's him."

I think they put up with it because, for all his faults, he does keep PFS running and organized. I want to love PFS and play more of it, but I feel that it's inevitable that I'll come into conflict with this person - especially if I GM more. This PFS group is the only one close to me, so it's not like I can just go somewhere else. I've made friends among the other players so I'd hate to leave all that behind.

Any advice?