William Griggs's page

Why didn't you have Depora kick him off? I definitely would have, 'cause to my way of thinking, that's what a Drow would do, or am I missing something?

I’ve got a few scenes that I could share, but I thought my players enjoyed this one quite a bit.

Our little group of adventurers had a rough time in the smuggler’s tunnels and were forced to go back to the surface to heal. They didn’t know it but they turned around just before reaching Depora’s lair. (Part of me wanted to have her attack, but I didn’t want a TPK). The drow followed, and was pleased to find that the PCs left the GG entirely, and it was after midnight.

The heroes returned before daybreak, planning to sleep until dawn and then take on the rest of the tunnels. However, Depora ambushed them with her dretches in the main gambling hall. The drow couldn’t get anyone to succumb to her sleep poison, and the dretches did not hold up very long against the group’s fighter, and paladin. In desperation she cast darkness and fled before the group could close.

The heroes moved forward cautiously until they heard noise from the kitchen, and realized the drow was fleeing fast. They came to the kitchen and found two doors open; one that eventually led back to the tunnels and one that led outside. The paladin and the ranger headed toward the smugglers tunnels. The fighter and the rogue headed outside where morning was just beginning to start. In the dim light, the rogue thought he spotted someone dart into an alley. They ran full speed to eventually spot Depora heading toward the Runegate. Seeing her run up the structure, the fighter realized that he did not have a chance to catch her. However, he spotted a single ship in the harbor, slowly preparing to leave and making its way under the gate. He stripped out of his armor, and dove into the bay in hopes of making it to the ship (guessing what Depora was up to). The rogue climbed as quickly as he could, and found Depora at the top, waiting for the ship to come closer for her escape. As the rogue tried to close the distance, Depora shot him with a poisoned bolt, and this time he fell to the sleep poison. (I let him roll a balance check to...

Combat in 3.5/pfrpg moves pretty slow in my group. If your experience is different, I'd be interested to see how you keep it moving along.

This actually makes me lean more toward pathfinder. I can't stand most 3.5 supplements.

3.5+supplements > Pathfinder (Pathfinder is completely incompatible with 3.5 supplements, and the entire system will disintegrate on attempt). Main reasons:

1)Class and class features balance in PBeta aren't any better than in 3.X. For the biggest example, any character who can craft magic items will, by definition, overshadow any character that can't if such thing as "downtime" exist in the campaign at all. Monks got the least improvement of all classes, while wizards got really good stuff, etc. For that matter, none of real 3.5 problems are fixed in Pathfinder.
2)Everyone has less mechanically valid combats options, as developers got infected by 4E school of thought ("negative conditions that actually matter should not exist"), therefore combats are less interesting. Of course, this hits melee characters hardest of all, as they never had much options to begin with. Now all they can do is dealing damage.
3)3.X has more of everything. Paizo's work on its game is glacially slow, so don't expect much suppplements.

As about PBeta characters being "overpowered". They are actually significantly weaker that 3.5 characters can be (and must be to overcome published adventure that don't anti-optimize opponents... too much). Unless you allow them to use stuff from 3.X supplements. In which case full casters will rape the game harder than ever before.

Okay, a bit of background. I'm an old-school gamer. I first played the paper rulebooks, then 1e, didn't like 2e (played it twice), extensively played 3 and 3.5. I tried to like 4e. I really did. But there's a few factors that affected my decision to stop.

1)I do not play Warhammer for a reason. I don't want to have to spend $8 billion on an rpg.

2)(and most importantly) it doesn't feel like D&D to me. It just doesn't. I like some of the ideas, but It doesn't feel like the game I love.

So, I'm investigating pathfinder. Bought the beta playtest book and the campaign setting. Bought a few of the Second Darkness books. I'm almost ready to make the switch completely to pathfinder, but I have a few concerns that I wanted to have people that have experience playing pathfinder to answer for me. They are as follows...

1)One concern I have is that some classes (i.e. sorceror) seem a bit...cheesy or overpowered. Is this how it works out for you guys or does it turn up okay?

2)Sort of following question #1, I am the sort of DM that hates cheese. I'm not a player killer, but I like to almost kill the players every game, make them feel like they actually overcame a challenge. I like. Is pathfinder a good fit for this philosophy of DMing?

3)How easy is the transition from 3.5 to pathfinder? In other words, if your players are familiar with 3.5, is the transistion to pathfinder difficult or weird?

Any constructive opinions are welcome.