The Beard's page

Well crap. Come back to Pathfinder after a little over a year long hiatus and find out my necromancer has been rendered non-functional. Wasn't the most powerful build -- animate dead specialists are pretty much always doomed to suffer in other areas -- but I did rather thoroughly enjoy it all the same.

The destruction of Blood Money is.... wow. That sole spell made quite a few things viable for PFS that would normally have been impossible due to how the campaign is set up, especially dedicated necromancers. It didn't actually serve to really increase the spellcaster's overall wealth at all, if one thinks about it. I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect this for years, though; there has always been a very vocal minority wanting to get rid of the spell. Looks like they won.

So, being as I literally just got back into the swing of things tonight, can someone tell me what the rules are pertaining to the change? Are people being allowed to restructure their characters that might be extremely reliant on this spell, or are they simply expected to eat the loss and move on to another one?

Gunslinger comes to my table. After about fifteen minutes of him bragging, we get to a combat situation. .. Gunslinger proceeds to do nothing but jam for the entirety of the combat, destroying a firearm in the process.

... You find out the GM is a Justin Bieber fan, or "belieber" as they evidently call themselves.

Pass check at start of a scenario, explain to the party why they shouldn't attack the caryatid pillars in front of them. Further explain that on your turn, you can neutralize them (and will indeed act before the creatures). ...... Observe as the hunter goes up and breaks his weapon on a caryatid pillar. Observe further as said hunter proceeds to stop right on the edge of your created pit, almost falling in the pit with the group of caryatid pillars you trapped inside it.

You have a paladin in your party and a necromancer sits down at your table.

You realize your insane ex-girlfriend is behind the DM's screen.

The GM is smiling like Alucard right before a entire room full of nazis dies.

Weird Al Yankovic, CG; Bard 20

STR 10
DEX 16
CON 12
INT 18
WIS 16
CHA 9001

Does childscent work on fetuses?

... Wait, Michael Jackson was a witch?

Oh please. My PFS-legal barbarian had an AC approaching 40 at that level while raging and could DPR that summoner under the table. At any rate, he has built his character to specialize. Don't punish someone because they've got enough system mastery to do that, though I will say synthesist is usually iffy. But uh... this guy's synthesist is just "good." It is not "powergamed" by any stretch of the word.

You know, that thing a demon that's been imprisoned for a long time should have done to begin with assuming even minor intelligence.

Half of the players are wearing Sailor Moon cosplay, and all the players are men, but none of them are cosplaying the male roles.

Yeah, let that mental image disturb you.

... then you realize they aren't wearing underpants under those skirts.

You sit down at your table and realize you are the only male. ... Okay, I guess that could be a good thing depending on a few factors. ;P

... the person that was sitting beside you just swiped your character sheet and left with it.

Some of those tier listings are pretty far off in left field. Have you ever seen the sorts of things an adequately well made ninja is capable of pulling off, for example? Whole encounters become little more than a laugh by one's mere presence beyond a certain point. A ninja in a setting where the GM can't adapt encounters to limit their abilities is pretty much unstoppable nine times out of ten. Another thing I would point out is that limiting classes by "tiers" would seriously cut into the fun; we aren't here to whip out a ruler and have a measuring contest, though I'm sure some do see the game that way. PFS is not about optimization or absolute victory, but a combination of enjoyment and the social interactions between players that are sure to come with playing the game. Besides that, those tiers are not even remotely close to absolute. There are fighter characters that could feasibly solo some gods with the sheer amount of broken you can milk out of that class, for example.

Overall this just looks like you disagree with some long standing mechanics of different classes (and have an abject hatred of anything able to use composite longbows to great effect). Removing all the things you've listed would absolutely destroy the fun of a very, very large portion of the playerbase. Is it really worth doing that just to fix some perceived holes, not that those builds listed (other than gunslingers; we all know those are broken) actually create holes in the first place. Furthermore someone should not be effectively punished because oh hey, their build more effective than X or Y! That is called player diversity and it's a good thing. You shouldn't expect the game to be "fair." So what if someone has a better class or is better at building characters? See it as an opportunity to learn instead of expecting a ban.

I think maybe the most confusing thing you're calling for is a ban being placed on composite bows. ... Why would anyone do that? The degree to which it would destroy ranged builds that don't rely on guns is ridiculous, not that some of the other proposed changes wouldn't be equally disastrous. Martials are easily the highest damage dealers in the game; amongst casters only the cross-blood sorcerer has a reasonable chance of keeping up with their magic, and even then only with a very specific build. Wizards happen to be good at battlefield control; they should not suffer for this. It has always been their schtick, being as sorcerers have always outclassed them as damage dealers. The ninja can move undetected in all but the most extreme circumstances, walk on walls, can stay invisible pretty much as long as they damn well please, and generate a wide variety of other, equally powerful effects. Should they be nerfed out of that as well? A good ninja is going to do damage comparable to any barbarian, fighter, gunslinger or sorcerer; it may even go higher in some cases. They can't aim at touch AC but good luck stopping them from hitting you. Unlike the rogue, they have tools to boost their hit chance.

taldanrebel2187 wrote:

How do you veteran DMs handle parties like this? :O

Rock falls, everyone dies :-))

I adapt the campaign to fit the new direction it's going. :P

For these reasons the DMs fun frankly is more important because the game doesn't run without him, and if he's not enjoying the game in general, it's time for him to end it.

Or the DM could choose to be a good host and accept that the player's opinions are important. Guess what? They have no game to DM if they piss their players off into leaving due to constant hardass behavior. Compromise is the buzz word, not "dominance." For this reason (among others) it's important to get a bit of social contract going between players and GM before the game. That way it's less likely for someone to quit due to strong disagreements with the DM's policies and mindset.

Justin Bieber (CE Human Bard)
STR 9
DEX 16
CON 10
INT 5
WIS 5
CHA 1

Sheila Heidmarch. /end statement

Clearly it's a good idea to kill your players because they didn't follow your campaign idea to the letter. I mean, it's not like someone should maybe have been "fair" about it and given them a chance or anything, right? Some people like campaigns with a lot of violence; a lot do, in fact. What is the point in doing the equivalent of DM lightning to the party for choosing the path of bloodshed? Yeah, there are consequences, but individual authorities generally won't travel beyond their jurisdiction. They'll just rely on bounty hunters (that should rarely work together contrary to popular belief) to do the job beyond the borders. They can spread the words to other sources of law and/or authority as well. That doesn't mean the PCs just just be insta-screwed because they're evil. Reward them for doing what they need to do to survive the situation as opposed to going lulz I give you impossible odds now. ... Well, if they happen to just go HERR DERRR with their survival methods then yeah, off'em. I'd say the same about a good party.

... and the tablet you have all your scenarios on dies.

... a few minutes into the scenario, the trio of witches realizes that everything encountered will probably be immune to mind-affecting hexes.

... the GM realizes your witch is built so it can still affect things immune to mind-affecting things.

I've actually played in all of those scenarios, Selene. >_> But then, one must also consider a few things. A.) It is not evil to decimate your enemies; nor is assassination, in and of itself, an evil act. These particular actions have their alignment impacted by the intention behind them. B.) The Pathfinder Society is a neutral organization by default--neutral and seeming to lean a little more evil than good most of the time, honestly. I doubt if anyone would be surprised to have any of those NPCs tell them to do some terrible things to the enemy. C.) There are times when one must be willing to pull the proverbial trigger regardless of consequences. There has been at least one mission in the past that just completing it ran the risk of nailing you with an alignment infraction. ... From what I hear, most people's characters chose to finish what they started.

I was referencing when he impaled the prisoners from the first Turkish army along the road into his territory where the second army could find them.

Fun, mostly useless fact: the punishment for failure if you were an Ottoman general was to be killed by being strangled to death with a silk cord by eunuchs.

An extremely old painting of that incident actually surfaced at some point; I believe it's in some museum right now. It was a depiction of the sun slowly setting as the approaching army encountered their kinsmen, hoisted along the roadside for as far as the eye could see. I don't know about you, but I definitely wouldn't proceed after seeing a forest made of people. That level of crazy (and the fact that he had proven to possess an almost inhuman level of intelligence) isn't something you can ride into battle against without much psychological preparation. ... And yet Vlad's people loved him as much as they feared him.

The amusing thing is that he was hailed as a hero at some points in his history in spite of the atrocities. He might've gone about it through some messed up ways, but while he was in charge, crime in his country plummeted. The question, then, would be what alignment someone would actually assign to a character based on Vlad Tepes; one that does unspeakably bad things yet accomplishes the greater good they sought after in the process.

You realize the GM has only a small wedge of mustache above his lip, perfectly sculpted hair, the gift of the silver tongue, and always seems like he's standing at attention even while sitting.

I'm not saying all PCs are immoral. I'm saying that even if you claim you character is a paragon of virtue he has still personally ended more lives than the worst historical mass murderer (those that did their work personally, that is), and then probably took their stuff. That is an indisputable part of Pathfinder and DnD in general: It's a combat system, what do you expect? Your character probably justifies his actions, but in the end he's spilled enough blood to be able to swim in it, and probably doesn't feel all that bad about it.

With that in mind, I don't see you as much different than the assassin. If you run a non-combat Pathfinder game, I apologize for projecting onto you, but it's safe to say you aren't the baseline if you do.

... I don't know about that. Vlad Tepes filled probably a hundred graveyards just with his own two hands.

Which brings me to my next "in trouble" moment!

... the party barbarian is dual wielding short swords.

So someone thinks the paladin should just go wantonly kill people whose power aren't even close to his own--people so weak that a small army of them could not even dent him. So much for being honorable.

My hellknight pretty much starts his day with the intention of taking as many criminals into custody as possible (usually after rendering them compliant via the pimp hand). Unfortunately, for those apprehended by the Order of the Gate, what they are subjected to after being arrested is thought to be considerably worse than if they had actually been killed. Running afoul of people that keep a fully functioning hellgate in their basement = bad plan. To note, yes, this is a Pathfinder Society character. The society is morally grey, not good like most people seem to want it to be.

When you look across the table and see the would-be mugger whose ass you kicked the week before.

... you know the GM has a bad temper, and you're playing a "God" wizard in a scenario where everything has low will saves.

I'm going to agree here. If all a group can do is mindlessly attack, they aren't stretching their full strategic muscles. Next time, they'll prepare fly, or bring potions--or come up with more unorthodox strategies.

Teaching an inexperienced group to buy potions of fly by annihilating the entire party is more likely to just drive them away, not provide any educational benefit. I suspect this would've been the outcome if I hadn't provided the party with a cave to take cover in, not that it actually saved them. It just allowed them to actually confront the dragon head on. Down side is that it had'em trapped there, and I'd given it some of the breath weapon feats from the Draconomicon. The party wizard wound up grabbing the survivors (while staggered), teleporting to the nearby capital city, and immediately collapsing into unconsciousness (and consequently starting to bleed out). The other two couldn't heal and they were already out of potions so the wizard wound up dying. Wisely, he chose to use his turn getting everyone left out of harm's way instead of chugging the potion in is hand.

In any case, the party was very upset with how things went. It was their first time ever encountering a dragon in D&D; these were also their first high level characters. It wasn't the defeat that left them so agitated, but the fact that I chose the "school of hard knocks" option for breaking them in. In hindsight, I believe they may have been justified in being peeved. Some personality types are not suited to getting a crash course in dragonomics.

Jayson MF Kip wrote:

"Ah, crap. Did I nonlethal that guy to death?"

I was at a table like that.

... Those exact words have come out of my mouth before. Trying to nonlethal someone down becomes really awkward when you crit on the last swing.

"Shop smart, shop S-Mart."

My response: "Groovy."

Sneaky types that slip ahead in PFS tend to wind up dying for their troubles.

Ross Byers wrote:

Plane shift as an offensive spell. Nothing bogs down a session faster than dealing with the fighter's new solo adventure on the Plane of Fire.

I dunno, I'd figure the adjudication would be pretty quick there.

GM: "Do you have Fire Resistance?"
Fighter: "No."
GM: "You burn to death. Moving on..."

"No. I have cold immunity and have coated my entire body in brown mold."

And on that day the plane of brown mold was born.

Causing a very powerful enemy NPC to full retreat as a result of being sundered into nudity.

Well SKR, if you happen to read this post at any point, all I can say is see you around, and I hope life hands you all the best things it has to offer. Can't say I disagree with you about living in the city anyway in all honesty. There's just something nice about the peace and solitude of living away from all that mess.

This took longer to start insulting Americans than I was expecting.

In any case, I haven't seen anybody argue that slavery is "good" or "morally right" here in real life land. All that we've been saying is that at present, it is considered a legal option that will not shift your alignment to evil. That is it. I have not seen anyone actively condoning slavery, nor would I be able to stop myself from making some smartass remark to them if they did.

If the local media in Seattle finds out that Paizo runs an organized play environment where players can choose to purchase and own slaves, how do you think that's going to go over? How do you think this would go over in Atlanta? Or D.C?

I have serious doubts that it would even register. PFS, nay, Pathfinder as a whole is looked at as being the equivalent of a video game with dice by a lot of the populace at large. Would you be having this same reaction to video games with slavery? Skyrim had slavery, several MMOs have had slavery, the Star Wars franchise is full of slavery that is recognized as legal by the galactic powers in any given era, and even Star Trek has some civilizations where slavery is legal. Due to this legality and their own rule structure, the Federation is unable to intervene in the least. Slavery is a very commonly touched upon subject in many games, movies, and settings; some more than others.

I would also think that martially inclined characters could look at someone and go "this stance will not allow them to hinder me further. Time to move on ahead." Nothing metagamish about that at all.

I believe I would grow bored without risk of permanently losing my characters in games. Gotta have that challenge, otherwise what's the point? ... But there is a line between providing a challenge and trolling your party maliciously.

Make an intentionally terrible bard named Justin Bieber with a negative perform check.

... and the DM is wearing Cthulhu pajamas.

You sit down at the table as a gunslinger and realize you forgot to buy ammunition during your last buying spree and have only six gold left.

Suddenly your class is only a little more powerful than all the other martials rather than an auto-win button.

Just getting some of the bear necessities on them would be nice.

The obvious inferiority of those of the ursine persuasion is simply unbearable. Surely Paizo can address this most grizzly of issues.

You know you're in trouble when the person playing a diviner takes out an actual ouija board to conduct class business. Even worse because the GM actually talked most of the table into actively using the damned thing. Do not want.

Last GM that said that to my regular group stood in awe as all walls in that temple were sunder spammed to completely circumvent the normal pattern.