If I were your GM upon the switch to PF I would have everyone re-generate ability scores from scratch, otherwise everything gets completely out of hand.
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Here's one that happened in my last game: A goblin is captured at the end of a fight via a hypnotize spell. His hands are bound and he is forced to guide the PCs to the lair of his tribe, which he does. Upon reaching the lair's location the group is attacked by kobolds, one of which attempts to kill the goblin captive. The goblin, predictably considering the nature of goblins, panics and runs off. The party's dwarf barbarian runs him down, breaks both his legs, and when he passes out from the pain crushes his skull. Evil? Also, this particular dwarf barbarian aspires to become a cleric of a good aligned deity.
I think one of the most silly and dysfunctional things is how accuracy rolls are separated from damage rolls. Say someone has an AC of 12 and I roll a 13. I just barely managed to land a hit on him... then I roll max damage. Even worse would be if I crit on 18-20 and roll an 18 against their AC of 17. The possibility of just barely managing to nick them... for max damage crit... doesn't jive with me. That's why you have to confirm a critical hit with another t-h roll against that high AC. And there are not differing degrees of hitting with an attack, either you do or you don't.
Just found this & like it very much, I'm going to implement it in my game. Thanks guys & great work! :)
::shrug:: If I didn't care about my game I wouldn't tinker with it.
Certainly. My ability score generation method (no one else uses it to my knowledge) works like this: You first choose your race & class. Lets say I was going to make a half-elf wizard using the above house rule like the person I mentioned above did. Keep in mind I'm not the best with optimization. You start with the following array: 15,14,13,11,9,7. You assign these as desired. What they represent is the minimum each score can be before racial modifiers. Str-7
You then roll 4d6(drop lowest) for each score in order from top to bottom. If you roll higher than the score you assigned from the array you get to keep the higher score. If not it remains what it was. Str-7 Roll:11=11
You then apply racial modifiers: Str:11
Random, but produces a playable character every time with no need for re-rolls. You get a surprise sometimes though--one of my other players is a dwarf barbarian & now wants to multi to cleric because he managed to get a 18 wisdom even though he dumped it.
Well I certainly appreciate SOMEBODY replying to this, I wondered if anyone would. Apparently not too popular of a view. But you'll notice I posted this in the house rules section, not the advice section if you take my meaning. Seems to work just fine with my players, I have a half-elf in the group & she not only agreed with me that it should be that way, it actually influenced her final decision to play a half-elf. It actually doesn't cause a problem with my ability score generation system because after you determine the minimum for each score with the array you then roll for each score IN ORDER, so it's pure luck, not just picking the highest number you rolled--basically you're guaranteed a decent score in your prime requisite, but it doesn't necessarily use your highest roll. Anyway I posted this purely for the benefit of anyone like-minded who it might not have occurred to. Just my little contribution...
More specifically half-elves & half-orcs. I started running a PF game about 6 weeks ago, having become disillusioned with the direction 5th ed. D&D was going. Anyway, one of the first things I noticed about the rules was that I didn't really like half-elves & half-orcs using the same ability score bonuses as humans, I'm of the opinion that they should have their own identity in this respect. So I thought about it and what I came up with was this: use half of each bonus/penalty to each score for each "parent" race. Like so: The half-elf uses half of the modifiers for elf: +1 dex, +1 int, -1 con.
Half-orc, using stats for orc out of the MM, is: +2 str, -1 int, -1 wis, -1 chr plus the floating +1 for the human half. I just thought half-elves/orcs should have elf/orc like tendencies as far as their ability scores were concerned, while still retaining a measure of human versatility. Note that the +1 from the human half can be put anywhere the player desires, including scores that already have a bonus/penalty from the non-human half. This has the effect of making it possible for a half-orc to have a +3 to strength, but this is fine with me, I think being just a little stronger than a human fits the half-orc's racial identity just fine. I don't know, this may not work that well with point buy systems, but I don't use them anyway...what I use is sort of a hybrid, random rolls that use an array for the minimum each score can be before racial adjustment, I can post it if anyone's curious.
Thanks guys... What book is the earthbreaker in?
I just recently switched to Pathfinder after playing D&D since the early 80s and am preparing to GM my first session. My group has generated it's characters, no problem, but there's a couple things I'm having difficulty locating bookwise/knowing if they are usable in PF: Dwarven mordenkrad, Ragemage. Thanks in advance for any help. |