TheRealHoratio's page

After reading all the replies from everybody, I realize that I was probably overreacting. We still haven't played a game yet, but I did talk with them and learn a little bit more about their characters. In reading some of the responses, it seems like 6 books to a character really isn't all that much. I have much better feelings about this adventure, and about the experiences I am creating for them as well as the challenges they are going to pose for me. Thanks to everyone that contributed.

I suppose this is an opportunity to expand my skills as a game master. I do realize that I have unlimited license to make the game as easy or as challenging as needed. After my initial post and reading the responses, I guess I am overthinking it. I can't really make any decisions if we haven't played any of the campaign yet.

Basically, what I wanted advice on from the community, is do the types of gamers that make these characters do so because they want to be able to breeze through the content, or because they want the challenge of seeing what they can survive? I guess it could be both, or something else entirely. Either way, thanks to the folks that actually contributed something meaningful to the thread.

I've been playing D&D for about 15 years now, through editions 3, 3.5, and 4th. I've always been the DM, and have run content for groups of between 2 and 6 players. Everyone I've played with before has made fun, interesting characters using maybe only one or two sourcebooks, all of which you would probably say weren't exactly "optimized". I never disallowed any books in my games, or banned any races or classes because they didn't "fit". When someone came to me with a character that they wanted to conceptualize, I would usually help them get there, because being able to play what you find attractive is a big part of the game.

I had to take a break for about 4 years, due to moving away from my old players and not being able to find new ones, but I recently came across a group that wants me to GM a Pathfinder game for them. During the character creation questions, I disallowed 3rd party material, cause I've read threads on here talking about some of the stuff that's out there, so I decided to just keep it limited to Paizo books. They told me what classes and races they wanted to be, which sounded fine, so I gave the greenlight on everything. Now, it is getting close to our first session, and I'm discovering the actual characters these guys have made, and it honestly has me terrified.

We're talking about basically a flesh golem of rules, stitched together from maybe 5 or 6 books apiece, in what I can only describe as less of an actual character and more just shiny numbers on paper. From reading threads on these forums, it's what I suppose you would call min/maxing, or optimization, which as I understand is very commonplace in the Pathfinder game system. What makes me feel even worse is that I tacitly allowed it. I figured that since I had never played with these guys before, I wouldn't say no to anything, or disallow any content except for 3rd party stuff, but I had no idea of the extent to which it would be taken.

Is that just how people play the game now? Is it really treated like an adversarial tactical miniatures game, where instead of a group of people coming together to tell a story, it has turned into another game that one side feels they have to "win", by getting as much of an edge as possible? That's not my play style at all, so I don't think I'm going to be able to provide the experience these gamers are looking for. I'm not one of those DMs that whines about not getting to "play with their toys", but if all this game is really about now is me setting up bowling pins to be knocked down, then what exactly is the point?

I'm not putting anyone down, cause everyone is certainly entitled to play whichever way is going to allow them to have the most fun, but I will say that my excitement over meeting for our first session has been severely diminished. Are there people out there that still want a good story, with challenges to be overcome, where victory might seem uncertain at first, but eventually the day is won through hard work and a little bit of luck? My personal feeling is that the game has become more of "What can I get away with chaining together for my benefit?" rather than making a believable character that fits into the story.

Maybe I'm overthinking things. I've never played with people like this before, so I really don't know what to expect. I know it is my job to make encounters interesting, but I feel like my only options are to slap the Advanced template on everything, max out the hp, and double the number of monsters per encounter in order to rise to the level that these players need/want, but again, that just isn't my style. I don't know if it is worth doing all that extra work, or seeking a group that is more my speed.

Oh, hey, forgot to mention, they're spiral-bound so I can open them up and lay them flat on my table. Totally worth the extra price; I wish Paizo would make spiral-bound APs...

that's exactly what I wanted to do if I ever had them printed. Were they able to get the cover the same thickness as the ones Paizo prints, as well as the same material for the pages? My Wrath of the Righteous vol. 1 feels like it is going to fall apart soon, and I'm thinking of having it spiral-bound.

Also keep in mind eBay and Amazon as options. I only started playing Pathfinder proper about three years ago, but I've acquired every AP volume except for Kingmaker through a combination of ordering new/used from Amazon and ordering entire APs for less than cover price on eBay (except for Carrion Crown and Kingmaker which are much rarer, you can usually pick up any of the APs for between $70 and $100 on eBay, which is a decent bit less than cover price).

When you say $70-100 on ebay for an adventure path, I think all 6 volumes, but I looked at bastards of Erebus and wormwood mutiny, and they are in the $70 just for the one volume. Maybe that is due to popular demand?

Cuuniyevo, this may be nitpicky, but I noticed that you left off reign of winter from your rankings. Is that because it isn't very good? Another thing I was hoping to get out of this thread was sort of a general recommendation as to how good the adventure paths are themselves. So is your list based just on availability, or does it also have something to do with content?

Rise of the runelord is the one that I would recommend but guess if you have ran it before, you might as well run Shattered Star, the older player of 2e might enjoy the classic dungeoncrawl feel of it, while the new players have nothing else to compare to and would just enjoy the AP.

I've not run any of the ones I actually own yet. I briefly described each one to the group, and they chose Wrath as the one they wanted to do. The 2e player just said that all he cared about was that he got to fight a dragon at some point, but they were interested in the story of Wrath.

That's true about the PDFs, but I like having all the stuff on a shelf. I like having the poster maps, I like being able to flip through the books, all of that kind of thing. I was considering Skull & Shackles, and volume 1 of that is oop, so I'd have to get the PDF of that, but what I'm talking about here, is if any of these adventure paths are really worth owning as the books. Sure, I could have just downloaded the Rise of the Runelords PDFs, but I bought the big expensive collector's edition, cause I like owning the printed material. I'm not above just buying the PDF, but I'll take the printed volumes if I can get it.

I'm relatively new to Pathfinder, but have been playing RPGs for 15 years prior to this, only as a DM. I don't have a ton of time to write my own material now that I'm not shirking my homework in high school to write the greatest Eberron campaign you've ever read, so these days I make use of published adventures.

When I began my collection of Pathfinder Adventure paths, I picked up Rise of the Runelords, Wrath of the Righteous, and then signed up for the subscription, so I have Giantslayer coming in the mail. When on the Paizo website a few days ago, there was a rather large article about a number of products that have a limited number of copies left, and to my dismay, many of them were adventure path volumes that I really also wanted to acquire.

Based on reading the short descriptions of many of them, I had it narrowed down to Mummy's Mask, Reign of Winter, and Shattered Star that I was truly interested in, but I saw that a number of other AP volumes were going out of print as well, like a few (if not all) of Serpent's Skull, Carrion Crown, Iron Gods, Council of Thieves, Jade Regent, and even as I write this I see that Carrion Crown vol. 2 has been stricken from the list.

What I would like advice on is this: Were I to be able to only get an entire path of one of these that are going out, which one do you guys recommend? The group that I recently acquired are 3 people who have never played an RPG before, and one guy who played back in 2nd ed. D&D, and who thinks that rogues have a "stealth mode" like in WoW, so he may as well be starting over from nothing anyway.

I would like to assume that they would play anything I brought to the table, and my running Wrath of the Righteous is really going to test that form what I've read about it here on the forums, so when considering another AP to get, I'm really open to anything. Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions.